Hot Takes on Defence of the North

New release hype!

Games Workshop has blessed the MESBG community with a new expansion, and boy is it a doozie. Packed full of narrative scenarios, new profiles and a swathe of Legendary Legions, it seems like Rhovanion is going to be getting back on our boards. To that end, I'm reviewing all of the Matched Play content to try and give you all a sense of how these new rules are going to play out. One quick note before we dive in: I'm not going to go through full statlines for everything, partly because I think that kind of content is pretty boring to write, and partly because this review is already way too long. This book is chonky! So lets dive into the hottest of my takes, with...

New Profiles: Good

At least one of these models is really solid now

We’re jumping right in with the two ‘new’ Dwarven profiles in King Dáin and his son Thorin. Dáin is theoretically unchanged from his experimental rules, with one key exception: the Erebor Reclaimed Army Bonus now gives all Erebor models the benefits of a banner if within 6” of him. Notably, Erebor is now a keyword handed out to everyone in that list, so Dáin’s banner is much more useful than his cousin’s. Honestly, that’s all Dáin needed, and he’s now an extremely solid choice. He’s almost the same price as Thrór, trading a little durability for much better killing power and getting to be in a better army list. Given that Thrór is already excellent value, that’s a massive win for Dáin and makes him instantly a solid choice.

His son Thorin probably doesn’t fit quite as well. He received a much-needed price drop to 110, which is a big deal, but is perhaps still a tiny bit overpriced. I don’t mean that in the context of the broader game: if you told me I could either take Thorin or Celeborn, for example, Thorin would be in ten times out of ten. The problem is that Erebor reclaimed is absolutely packed with exceptionally efficient heroes, and I just can’t see myself fielding Thorin over someone like Glóin. That may be different in the Legendary Legion, where he gets a nice 3” banner aura, but it’s not an amazing place to be outside of that. An average of 1-2 extra Might points is legitimately solid, but that price tag is still a tiny bit high.

The experimental rules were fun, but that price tag needed to go down at least ten points

On the flipside, he certainly looks a lot better than either of his Dale contemporaries. Brand is the same price as Thorin, half as resilient against S3 and S5 attacks, has lower Fight value and Courage, and probably has worse special rules on balance. He does get Move 6” though, which is… something. Bard II is basically the same as his dad, and so suffers from the same comparison. Games Workshop seems to have (mostly) realized this edition that heroes that don’t get mount options need to be undercosted relative to their mounted equivalents, and that’s why almost every Dwarf hero is shockingly cheap for their stats. On the other hand, both Brand and Bard II seem like they were costed in line with Éomer on foot. They have almost identical stats, with Éomer being a little tougher but giving up some interesting special rules, and it generally seems like a fair comparison. Except no one is running Éomer on foot, because he’s so much better on a horse for such a small points increase. Overall, both of these heroes are fairly-costed combat heroes, who forgot that foot heroes are bad unless they're underpriced. You might still field them because Dale isn’t exactly packed with options, but they’re not great.

The whole somewhat-overpriced gang

Thankfully, Knights of Dale are in a happier spot. They’re probably a tiny bit overpriced too -- compare them to an Uruk with shield, which is just as tough and probably hits as hard on average for a point less-- but in the context of the army list you’re still probably fielding them in every game. Dale needs D6 and it needs a bit of combat punch, and sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and pay an extra point for it. Just don't think too hard about what you can get in Erebor for the same price...

Also, the Windlance exists. If you wanted to field the Windlance, it’s certainly better here than when it cost you the use of your centrepiece hero. Still pretty bad though.

Perhaps my hottest take is that these two are perfectly balanced against each other

Briefly slipping in before the real stars of the show, we have Orophin. This guy has received some hate, but honestly I like him. He’s almost exactly the same as his brother Rúmil, trading D7, Heroic Defence and Swift Parry for A3, Heroic Strength and a cute special rule that gives him an average of 0.5 extra strikes per turn. The big money here is the third Attack, which to my mind is dramatically better than D7. Heroic Defence is clearly a better choice than Heroic Strength, and Swift Parry is much better than Orophin’s special rule. But A3 alone increases your damage output by around 75% against warriors, which is a huge deal. I think this guy is actually perfectly balanced: he’s the same price as either of his brothers (once Haldir gets his standard kit), is more killy but less resilient than Rúmil and is better in combat but worse at range than Haldir. He certainly doesn’t compare well to Erebor Reclaimed options like Nori or Glóin, but, well, no one really does.

Don't talk to me or my human form ever again

Finally, we have the Beornings. Grimbeorn is pretty identical to his dad, being noticeably worse at killing things in man form and marginally weaker in bear form. However, he gets to shoot a bit, and he doesn’t have to charge when he’s a bear. That probably makes him a little better overall, but Beorn was never exactly lighting up the tournament scene. However, the big change here is the Legendary Legion buffs, which make this dude and his father astronomically better than ever before.

The rest of the Beornings actually seem pretty strong to me. They can be compared almost exactly to Half Trolls, being marginally better at killing things and a little cheaper in exchange for being around 50-100% easier to kill. On balance that seems like a decent trade to me, and the free banner from being around a bear probably makes them quite powerful overall. Amusingly, they don’t get the banner from Beorn or his son while they’re human, just when they’re bears. Imagine being such a bad leader that you’re actually more inspiring when you can’t speak. I think these guys are pretty powerful, but will do much better in Good v Evil formats where there’s less accurate shooting to turn them into overpriced pincushions.

 

New Profiles: Evil

Evil was similarly blessed with new profiles, and honestly I think these are all pretty solid.

If your opponent is bringing Elves, then this guy is gonna feel super strong. If not, I hope you like Spiders!

Starting with Mordor, Razgûsh seems decent to me. On the one hand, if you compare him to Shagrat or even Gothmog then he looks fairly overpriced. On the other hand, if you’re in an Elf-heavy meta then perhaps he’s actually underpriced for those special rules. Where he gets really interesting is his capacity to import some powerful tech pieces from the Dark Denizens list. At that point it’s basically a choice between bringing him or bring the Spider Queen, with the latter being much more powerful and the former retaining your Army Bonus. Outside of his Legion I’m inclined to say he’s a little weak, but close enough to fine that I imagine builds with him will work.

I love this guy. He's interesting, he's different and he's incredibly well-balanced!

Muzgúr, on the other hand, is just good (un)clean fun. He’s exactly the same price as the Mouth of Sauron, fulfilling the same army role (support caster to the Witch King) and trading some combat stats and March for a better spell suite and some Will regeneration shenanigans. Given that the Mouth is pretty good in that role, it really seems like an almost 1:1 swap. Losing March constrains your options for the third hero, but Wither is noticeably better than anything the Mouth is bringing. This guy is genuinely really solid game design, as he’s got a clear niche that he’s aiming for without totally outcompeting the existing options for that slot. Great stuff. His Legion is also pretty excellent, which is fun.

Compare this model to the Dale heroes. Oof

Moving onto the Easterlings, we have a veritable swathe of new and ‘new’ profiles. Rutabi is a shockingly good profile for a foot combat character, hitting that sweet spot of ‘looks underpriced until you remember they’re on foot’. She’s noticeably better value than Amdûr, but her inability to take a mount means she’ll never constitute the same threat. Rerolls against Trapped models are good, but nowhere near as good as being able to knockdown enemies. For her points, she actually compares almost identically to Thorin II, which is a great sign, and she makes both the new Dale heroes look extremely bad. She’s the same price as Brand, yikes.

Not the most exciting model, but solid value

Brórgîr is also probably in a good place. Easterling War Priests are one of the better Shaman variants, and he’s basically a Shaman who gets an extra Might and Fate and an average of three extra Will. For 20 points that’s a great deal, but probably not to the point where you’d never consider a basic War Priest instead. I don’t really rate access to Tremor or Enchanted Blades, Bladewrath is probably a better use of your Will in most games, but just those raw stats increases are worth the price of admission.

Unfortunately, all those muscles are just for show

The Dragon Cult Acolytes have been out for ages at this point, and I think most people would agree that they’re solid. Compared to Hunter Orcs, you’re swapping S4 for F4, then paying 3 points for throwing weapons, +2 Courage and a couple of useful special rules. Hunter Orcs are pretty solid themselves, so it comes together into a package that’s flexible and strong enough to do some damage, but probably isn’t worth spamming. That’s… exactly where GW should be aiming for these guys, so good work.

How big is the War Drake? More like the big boy or the baby?

The other new warrior option was a bit of a surprise: Rhûnish War Drakes. I’m going to start this by reminding everyone that GW has been publishing different versions of the ‘wound a model and it gets some stat debuffs’ rule for well over a decade, and to my knowledge they have never been good. Yes, you can theoretically wound Elrond and make him F5 and A2, but that isn’t a realistic scenario. Any hero with Fate will save them for the Drake if that’s a concern, and generally once heroes start getting wounded by warriors it’s because they’re trapped and going to die anyway. Rules like this are ones you can totally ignore, then be a bit excited if it happens to come up.

Thankfully, the model is otherwise quite well-costed, so GW obviously agree that the Slow-acting Venom rule isn’t worth paying points for. Even without that rule, the Drake is the same price as a Giant Spider and hits equivalently hard, trading out some mobility for an extra two Defence. Alternatively, they’re Beornings with one less Fight and no free banner rerolls, but Terror and an extra Defence. On either comparison, these look solidly good, especially for the famously-S3 Easterlings. Pay attention to the base size when these do get released though, as that will make a huge difference to their viability.

What's better, the model or the rules?

Finally, we come to the Dragon Emperor. This guy absolutely slaps, although I think his true value is somewhat less than it could appear. On rate he’s a pretty solid profile with all the stats you’d like, a solid damage output, and some crazy auric buffs. These start out okay with a super Stand Fast, then spike rapidly upwards with a 12” banner effect and a 6” aura of +1 Fight for Easterling warriors. Sadly, I don’t think the Fight buff affects the Drakes, but an aura of F5 for Black Dragons and a banner for your whole battleline is incredible. That’s substantially better than the Banner of Minas Tirith, which is generally acknowledged as worth more than its 40 points.

This is all tacked onto a decent combat profile, although distinctly not a world-beating one. Yes, the Emperor can pump out 9 strikes a turn, but that’s actually less damage output than a standard A3 hero on a horse. Outside of the Legendary Legion he’s generally worse at winning combats than that generic mounted hero, and chances are he’ll lose a few Black Dragons along the way as well. Most importantly, that huge base size and low Movement means he’s going to be a pain to manoeuvre with, so don’t expect him to do any crazy shenanigans. He’s gonna sit in the centre, charge the 1-2 enemies he can touch, and hopefully churn through them. Finally, remember that all the cunning plans people are suggesting around dismounting him early to get some free Black Dragons also involve sacrificing your 12” banner and 6” bubble of +1F. So, don’t do that.

For that price tag though, you don’t need him to do anything crazy in combat. Compared to Boromir with the Banner and all the trimmings, he’s distinctly less scary in a fight and a lot less mobile, but a bit better at buffing and a whopping 45 points cheaper. I would honestly say Boromir is the more powerful model, but is he 45 points more powerful? Almost certainly not. Perhaps the better comparison is Imrahil, who provides marginally worse buffs and, a little more combat ability and way more mobility for 10 points less. That comparison is actually a little in Imrahil’s favour, really, although that might just mean Imrahil is underpriced. 

The more I think about it, the more I think this guy should be more expensive

The Emperor isn’t a crazy combat monster, he’s not worth 400 points and he’s probably not going to wreck your opponent’s whole army. However, he is still extremely aggressively costed, and I can’t imagine not fielding him in an Easterling army of any real size. And that’s before we get to his Legendary Legion…

 

 

Legendary Legions: Good

Speaking of which, we have a nice handful of Good Legendary Legions. First and simplest of these is the Dale one, which is basically Dale without Girion, but with Sworn Protector (Brand) on everyone. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, but there’s not a massive amount right with it either. If you wanted to run pure Dale, then it’s probably worthwhile ditching Girion and running this instead. If you didn’t want to run pure Dale before, then this Legion won’t be changing your mind.

This picture probably represents the Defence of Erebor Legion well: three Dale dudes and a heap of Dwarves

The Defence of Erebor Legion is actually quite a lot more interesting, in a quiet sort of way. You really don’t give up anything to take this relative to a green alliance except for Shoot 3+ on your Dale bows, and the benefits are extremely solid. They start off strong by letting you reroll 1’s to wound while within an inch of the other faction’s models. That means that as long as every second spear support in your shieldwall is a Dale model, you get a tasty 17% increase to your damage output. Plus, if you’re careful you can probably still get Shieldwall on your front models most of the time. Awesome. That gets built on by giving a 3” banner to all of the new heroes, which is great. You also get some fun free Heroics if your heroes get Trapped, which is very cute but won’t come up. In fact, it’s probably so forgettable I wouldn’t bother taking the right heroes to trigger it.

Overall, this Legion is basically just the green alliance with a lot more combat punch and a little less shooting. You still get access to elite infantry and Goat Riders, so just take one each of the Dale and Erebor heroes and make a nice Iron Hills shieldwall with a few Dale spears and bows sprinkled in. This Legion isn’t anything fancy, but it’s definitely stronger than the green alliance, and possibly even stronger than pure Erebor Reclaimed.

Add Monstrous Charge, Resistant to Magic and a 5+ Fury to this guy and you have a great foundation for a Legion

Finally, we get to the really exciting Legion: the Beornings. Realistically, I think that you’re always taking both bears if you’re running this, because they straight up receive a 5+ Fury save, Resistant to Magic and Monstrous Charge. That takes Beorn and Grimbeorn from ‘solid, but pretty overpriced’ to ‘terrifying avatars of destruction’. They also get to automatically pass the roll to shapeshift, which is neat. At that point they’re effectively unkillable for a lot of armies, and with their dramatically increased damage output that’s a scary thing. The flipside of this is that you’re backing them up with scary-but-fragile warriors which don’t really want your opponent to be directing fire their way, but if you hit combat you could do some serious damage. As with all skew lists, it’s not without weaknesses (low model count, low mobility, no way to deal with archers), but the raw power of those two bears is perhaps enough to carry you. I’d probably run this at 500-600 points and just count on Beorn and his son to kill stuff while your 5-10 Beornings bully anyone who tries to take objectives off you. Before I started writing this review I was thinking this Legion might be overpowered, but I’ve now come around to it just being heavily skewed. If your opponent’s game plan is ‘bully you with F4 infantry’ then they’re going to have a bad day, but a Serpent Horde or Corsair list will probably make you cry.

 

Legendary Legions: Evil

Everyone hear is at least F5. Wow. 

First of these is the Dragon Emperor’s Legion, which is just a straight upgrade on ordinary Easterlings. You have to take the big boy himself, and Amdûr and Khamûl are off the table, but in exchange for that low price you get free Black Dragons and an extra duel reroll on all your heroes. That’s straight fire, immediately boosting your whole army to be much scarier in combat. You’re committing hard to the classic Easterling plan of ‘build a phalanx, grind, hope your heroes can kill theirs’, but your whole phalanx is now F5 and your heroes are all rerolling two dice to win the fight. Oh, and you keep the Easterling Army Bonus too. It’s not particularly important, but it’s neat. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed in this Legion because while I don’t think it’s game-breaking, it’s also kind of invalidated ordinary Easterling lists. Easterlings weren’t great before so all the buffs they receive here are more of a balancing mechanism than oppressive, but it’ll be a shame not to see Amdûr or Khamûl around anymore. Fingers crossed that those two get their own Legion for the Pelennor at some later point. Maybe when Gondor gets a proper Legendary Legion…

Being able to take a Spider Queen does make up for a lot of flaws

Moving on from there, the Fell Beings of Mirkwood are a little less exciting than I was expecting. Getting to bring along the Spider Queen is awesome, and the army list is moderately well-rounded, but the bonuses themselves are pretty dull. Woodland Creature is useful enough, and getting even more bonuses against Elves is good if they’re dominating your meta, but it’s all pretty situational. There probably is a build in this, but the only thing you’re reliably getting over a yellow alliance is Woodland Creature. Given how much you’re limiting your hero choices for it, and the fact that you’d never normally take Razgûsh and the Spider Queen together, it’s a bit of a miss for me.

The gang ready to make a Spider invisible and F6/S7/A4 (u/Blaktaurus5)

Assault on Lothlorien, on the other hand, feels wild in every sense of the word. You’re somewhat limited in your unit selection, but the special rules are absolutely excellent. Giving all your Shamans the Crown of Morgul is a bonkers starting point, and makes this the place to be for all your Druzhag/Ashrak shenanigans. It also makes your standard Shamans and Muzgúr much more reliable, which is nice. All your Giant Spider also get Venom for free, which is a nice bonus. The +1 to wound when outnumbering is surprisingly easy to trigger by the standards of these rules, as it’s basically Animosity but you can trigger it with two Orcs or two Goblins (or even a Goblin and a Warg?). For what will probably be a horde army, that’s incredible. Finally, every game is Clash by Moonlight. At base, that means you’re not getting shot outside of 12”, which is potentially excellent for rushing down shooting armies. Where it gets wild is when you start to spam bows on your Goblins. A list like this could easily be packing 15-20 bows, all of which get to outrange your opponent and get +1 to wound! That makes it way easier to force your opponent to spread out and come to you, letting you leverage your mobility and numbers in a big way. This synergises so well with the rest of the list, it’s a really excellent inclusion. There’s probably a really scary build here that just spams Goblin Archers and Prowlers, and I’m here for it.

This Legion looks incredibly fun and interesting, and it really feels like it got all the love that the Mirkwood Legion didn’t. I’m a little concerned there might be a game-breaking build in this Legion, but I’d have to put it on the field a few times to be sure.

 

Overall Impressions

Before I dive too much into my overall takes, I’d like to quickly acknowledge how good it feels to be getting new content. My review of this book is already twice as long as my review of Fall of the Necromancer, and honestly I feel like I went into less depth than I wanted to. This book is big! The new models look awesome, I really like the effort that went into refreshing the Dale/Easterling ranges and expanding the timeline, and generally just feel great about this book in general.

My favourite parts of the book are probably the Moria and Beorning Legendary Legions, alongside some of the Erebor, Mordor and Easterling profiles. It feels like a lot of work went into making almost all the new profiles unique and different, while remaining balanced against the pre-existing options.

I barely even mentioned this thing. It's not great

Where things fall flat for me tend to be everything Dale related, and the Mirkwood Legendary Legion. All of the new Dale profiles are overcosted, and even when they fill gaps in the army it doesn’t feel like you want to be taking them. I mean, yes, Knights bring you D6 and a way of getting above S3, but they’re not exactly Khazad Guard (yes, those two models are the same price). The Dale Legion is better than pure Dale, but that’s the most you could really say for it. And even the Defence of Erebor Legion feels like you’re probably going to be sticking in a handful of Dale models to buff up your Erebor Reclaimed list. It’s a strong Legion, but the Dale bits are kind of the low point for it.

Your opponent's face when they realise your whole Legion is tailored to killing their specific army

Razgush’s gang, on the other hand, just feels like an afterthought. It’s not bad, but all it does is polarise your army even more towards beating up on Elves. If you don’t face Elves then you’ll basically just have a worse Mordor list (maybe feat. the Spider Queen), and if you do then you’ll probably stomp them. It’s not awful, but you flip the page and look at the enthusiasm that clearly went into writing Muzgúr’s Legion and it makes you think. The last few books have all shared this trend, of some Legions feeling like labours of love while others feel like afterthoughts, and it really makes me wonder what the creative process is like. It’s obviously totally understandable to be more enthused about some Legions than others, but when you compare the Rise of the Necromancer to the Vanquishers, or Lurtz’ Scouts to the Breaking of the Fellowship, or Fell Beings of Mirkwood to Assault on Lothlorien, the difference gets pretty stark. It’s not that those latter Legions are more powerful necessarily, it’s that it feels like they got the time and love that the former ones didn’t.

Also, no Elf Legendary Legion. That was weird.

Finally: is this book going to break the game? To my mind, there are four ways it might.

A free 6" banner does add a lot to those Erebor Dwarves

First, the buffs Erebor gets could make those rock-hard Dwarves a little oppressive. On balance I think the buffs here aren’t big enough to make that happen, but it’s definitely a possibility.

Second, the Beornings could be a bit much. Those bears are truly heinous, and I can imagine a bad matchup against these guys would feel pretty rough. Imagine facing this Legion at 600 points on Lords of Battle or Contest of Champions, for example. I don’t think it’s really Vanquishers level though, even with the noticeably higher model count, so it’s probably just our yearly reminder that GW likes skew Legions and we have to learn to live with them. Is that a good thing? Reasonable minds could differ.

Imagine a dozen of these kiting you with +1 to wound and no way for you to shoot back

Third, there might be something absurd in that Assault on Lothlorien Legion. A horde that can win shooting wars, has powerful magic, gets substantial boosts in combat and has excellent mobility is something we haven’t seen before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a feature on the tournament scene. The skill ceiling on this build could go very high indeed, and the base mechanics of the army are very strong.

Finally, the Dragon Emperor and his buddies might just be too efficient. This Legion is never going to fundamentally break the game, because it’s not doing anything especially new. Imrahil and some Men-at-Arms backing up some allied Minas Tirith Warriors is basically the same list, so a somewhat-better version of that shouldn’t be too oppressive. The raw efficiency of the Legion might make it more powerful than it should be, but it’s still going to have the same bad matchups and scenarios that the pike blocks always had. Easterlings have gotten a lot stronger, but they still play in the same way. If you could beat them before, you can probably beat them now.

I hope you enjoyed this review! I’m super excited for the new book, and can’t wait to see how it fares out in the wild. What are you most excited for? Will your Easterling deathball stomp everything before it in the name of the Dragon Emperor, or will Beorn just crush him to death? What absurd jank can you think of for the Moria Legendary Legion? As ever, I’m keen to hear from you.

Until next time, may your Legion always be the one that Jay Clare feels inspired to write!