Addendum to the Dunharrow Faction Focus: Heralds

Apparently the spooky pennant-bois always come in pairs

I had a few questions in response to my last article about the place of Heralds in the Dunharrow army list. I initially responded to these in the comments section, before realising I had far too many thoughts for Facebook and I was better off just posting a follow-up article. As it turns out, Heralds are a quite interesting unit, and one that I’ve had very mixed experiences with on the battlefield.

On the one hand, Heralds relatively cheap for what you get. They cost as much as 5 Warriors, but with two attacks at F4/S4 they probably hit about as hard as 2.5 Warriors, and are as resilient as 3. So you're losing about two models worth of grind in exchange for that Might and Resistant to Magic. That’s pretty standard pricing for a Captain-tier model, so there’s nothing to complain about on this front. Unfortunately, fielding a Herald poses some tricky problems for the Army of the Dead, and particularly a horde-Dunharrow build.

Problem number one is that they make you more vulnerable to enemy heroes and monsters. Aragorn/Bolg/Boromir etc will all be delighted to smash apart a Herald, and will do so much faster than they'll kill 5 Warriors. And if you hide the Herald behind your lines to avoid this then suddenly you have both the King and the Herald hiding, and are probably too outnumbered on the frontlines to win the war of attrition. Moreover, because a Herald is effectively investing points into the King, you're more keen on having him on the front. But even with an extra three Heroic Actions he's still gonna get smoked by any decent combat character, so you're risking losing Leader VPs as well. To my mind, these factors make any matchup where your opponent’s best hero outfights you (i.e. basically all of them) a lot harder.

Pictured: about the only army leaders that won't outfight the King of the Dead (Jay Clare)

Problem number two is that you don't really care about extra Heroics or Resistant to Magic. With Terror, high numbers and D8 you're at least as happy moving second as moving first, so Heroic Moves are only occasionally relevant. Heroic Strikes are useful, but if the King is facing something that he needs to Strike against then things are going pretty badly for you anyway. He's never going to beat a real combat character, so being able to Strike really just gives you some insurance for if they manage to corner you. And the King doesn't kill reliably enough for Heroic Combats to be great options, although they may end up the best bet for the Herald 'Might' points if you do field one. The only Heroic Action you’re actually that interested in is Heroic March, and even that is only relevant in certain scenarios and matchups.

Resistant to Magic is even less reliably useful. On Warriors it's always pretty middling, and on the King it's not much better. He's got 6 Will and generally isn't on the frontline, so it's solidly a 'nice to have' thing not an important rule for him. If the King gets Transfixed then he probably just stands behind your lines doing nothing for a turn. Realistically, that's most of what he does anyway, so it's not a huge loss.

The King of the Dead gloriously standing still, far away from the fighting. If he was Transfixed you probably wouldn't notice!

A third problem is that the extra Warriors have lots of added benefits that a Herald can't match. They raise your Break point, let you swamp/Trap a line a lot easier, can spread out to contest objectives and count as more models at the end of the game. These are all great advantages, and a Herald doesn't touch any of them. Sometimes having an extra Heroic Move on the final turn will be important to help you play objectives, but generally extra bodies will be a bigger deal.

Finally, Heralds fall into an unfortunate trap of being torn between Dunharrow’s two ‘styles’ of listbuilding. If you’re running a horde list— of the style I detailed last article— then you don’t really care about the Herald’s rules and are likely more keen on raw numbers. On the other hand, if you’re bringing Aragorn along, then either Legolas or Gimli seems a lot more compelling than a Herald. They’re more flexible, they’ll kill more models, and they’re a lot less vulnerable than your ghostly pennant-bearers. Extra Might for the King will be useful, but Resistant to Magic becomes even less relevant because now all available magic will now be going towards Aragorn instead of the King of the Dead. You can definitely field Heralds as a supplement to the Three Hunters, but by the time you buy those three, the King, a Herald and a respectable force to back them up you’re suddenly into some very high points values. If you regularly play above 750 points then perhaps a Herald becomes easier to fit in, but at least in Queensland we tend towards smaller games at our tournaments.

Be honest, which of these guys are you leaving at home to bring a Herald along?

Overall, I think Heralds are fine. I’m glad that GW went with an interesting profile and role for them instead of just making them Captains with Blades of the Dead, but I don’t think they really fit into most Dunharrow lists. They’re priced decently enough that you’ll rarely regret fielding them, but I’ve yet to miss them when I’ve left them at home.