Witch King/Suladân Tournament Report: Dagor Dagorath

 

Imrahil and his Knights attempt to break the lines of Mordor

Having settled into life in Australia’s capital, it was time for my first tournament. Now living within driving distance of Sydney means I can attend their (many) tournaments, and I decided to take advantage of it with Dagor Dagorath. With a solid Mordor/Serpent Horde list behind me, I was excited to see what the Sydney scene was like. Could the new hotness of the Witch King and Suladân propel me to success, or were my wins up north just a product of ‘big fish, small pond’? Read on and find out!

Tournament Format

This tournament was 750 points, with three pre-released scenarios (Breakthrough, Command the Battlefield and Lords of Battle). That selection

 of scenarios was pretty balanced, and honestly didn’t play into my choice of army at all. Breakthrough encouraged combat lists and numbers, Command encouraged mobility and numbers but could also favour shooting, and Lords favoured elite models and shooting. So, basically everything.

The more exciting part of the tournament, in some regards, was that it was a charity fundraiser for the Sony Foundation, which raises money to help bush kids with serious illnesses stay in inner-city hotels before hospital visits. The funds from the tickets– as well as the post-event raffle– went towards this work, and it was definitely nice to be making a small positive difference to the world as we played with our toy soldiers.

Listbuilding

This list should come as no surprise to regular readers: I’ve run smaller versions of it at two previous tournaments in the past (here and here), written up a battle report of it here, and run through it as part of a Mordor list-building article here. It’s also really taken off in the UK over the last year, winning a lot of events over there (although I maintain that I was running it before it was cool).

You know it, you love it (maybe), it’s the Witch King and Suladân!

That's a lot of models, given how solid they all are 

Mordor/Serpent Horde

Warband 1

Witch King 3/10/2 on horse with Crown (Army Leader)

7 Black Númenóreans

7 Morannon Orcs with spear/shield

Orc Tracker

Warband 2

Mouth of Sauron on armoured horse

6 Black Númenóreans

6 Morannon Orcs with spear/shield

Warband 3

Zagdush

6 Black Númenóreans

6 Morannon Orcs with spear/shield

Warband 1

Suladân on armoured horse

Serpent Rider

44 models, 11 Might, 4 fast models, 1 bow

This list is just good. In particular, it has the wholly trinity of powerful battleline, punchy combat characters and scary magic. That gives it tools in any matchup and any scenario, and means it’s never entirely out of the fight. Lists that rely on their heroes for damage output will often dislike the double casters, lists that want to swarm you with troops will probably bounce off the Black Númenórean/Morannon wall, and lists focussed on elite troops often haemorrhage them against the four combat heroes. In short, it can do a bit of everything, and just has a bit more stuff than you’d really expect.

The three controversial choices in the list are only having a single Tracker, my Witch King being only 3/10/2, and fielding Zagush over any of the other Mordor heroes (with Gorbag being the obvious swap). That first ‘choice’ is honestly just a model-availability one: I’d have preferred to have 6 more Trackers in exchange for dropping 3 models from the battleline and downgrading a Morannon to an Orc, but I only have three Tracker models. So, that was out. The cheap Witch King does remain my firm preference though, because honestly I just don’t find that I need more than 10 Will. I’ve said this many times on this blog, but people really overestimate how long games tend to go at tournaments, and also how often the Witch King is able to both cast and fight in the same turn. That generally only works about every second turn, because on turns that your opponent is moving first you can’t cast if you’re on the frontlines because you’re probably getting tagged. As such, I am once again running a barebones Witch King, and I would be surprised if I got too stung by it.

The Witch King at a past tournament handily showing why he only needs 10 Will

Finally, I think Zagdush is just better than Gorbag. Gorbag has the edge when he’s fighting two warriors at once, but I very rarely find that’s something I want to do with one of these 3 Might Captains with Strike. They’re generally best off taking on and killing one model a turn to build up attrition, or getting into Strike-offs with more expensive heroes to either burn their resources or take advantage of a successful Transfix/Compel. For either of these roles, Zagdush is far superior.

All lists were made public in the week leading up to the event, giving me lots of time to overthink every matchup. Overall I liked my odds into most of the lists, but there were a few (Riders of Théoden and the Beornings in particular) that absolutely terrified me. But hey, if a list didn’t have any bad matchups then the game would be in a very poor state!

With my army assembled and ready to go, all that was left was to prepare for my first matchup, which was…

Game 1: Fiefdoms in Breakthrough, 9:0

Some very heavy cavalry were going to be hitting my lines!

Ian’s list had a lot to scare me: some very punchy heroes, a solid selection of infantry and no less than 8 mounted Knights of Dol-Amroth. Yikes. I’d have to leverage my magic and superior numbers to pull this one off.

Deployment went well for me, as we faced off over a beautiful (and thematic!) Osgiliath board. One of the centreline objectives was just on the edge of a building, with a small gap between it and the roof of the next building. That meant whoever had that deployment side could cram more rooftop models within 3” of it, which gave an immediate edge to that player. Winning Priority let me take advantage of it, and we were off to a great start. I split my force into two main thrusts, one through the centre and the other (led by Zagdush) facing off with Ian’s Captain of Dol-Amroth on my right flank.

Ian made two mistakes in deployment here, which combined probably cost him the game. Firstly, he deployed Imrahil and his Knights over on his right flank, ready to sweep around and strike at my backline objective. I could see the logic here, but the way the terrain was placed meant that I could keep him entirely out of the fight for the first two turns, and then pin him into a bottleneck from there. That meant that he could never really leverage 260 points of his heaviest hitters, which gave me an immediate edge.

This is a very powerful hitting force, but it has a long way to travel before it can really hurt me

Secondly, Ian placed his Captain’s warband aggressively on his left, forgetting that I still had Zagdush to drop. As such, he put his mounted Knights right on the frontline, where I could charge them on Turn 1 and get started on neutralising the rest of his heavy cavalry. Zagdush attempted an assassination run on the Captain but was only able to chip a wound off, although I did manage to take out all three Knights on that flank over the next couple turns. 

The Knights are swamped and whittled down while their infantry struggle to support them

That, combined with my numbers edge and higher Strength/Defence, allowed me to grind out this warband entirely, reducing them to a single Foot Knight and the wounded Captain by the penultimate turn. This wasn’t helped (from Ian’s perspective) by his Captain failing two Terror checks in a row to charge Black Númenoréans. Not a great showing from him!

In the centre, things were also broadly going my way. The Mouth hacked down a pile of warriors, cutting a hole through Forlong’s warband. That allowed my numerically-superior and tougher troops to swarm through the gap and around the flanks, setting up traps that rapidly snowballed to wipe out the warband. 

The Mouth does well here, but Suladân does not. Well, he does, but I don't

That was in spite of Suladân’s incompetence, which was really my incompetence. On the first turn he went in to a Transfixed Forlong and Struck up, preparing to ride down a hero for little effort. I won the duel easily enough, but only inflicted two Wounds. I could have spent my remaining two Might to guarantee the kill, but opted not to on the basis that I wanted to keep my Might for challenging Imrahil. This made a degree of sense, but I knew within about thirty seconds that I’d made a mistake. Spending two Might to take out a combat hero (who himself had a full three Might to burn!) is always a good idea, and over the next two turns Suladân had to burn his last two Might anyway in the protracted duel, while being beaten up and reduced to a single Wound to boot. Pah!

In the end, the Mouth had to ride in and finish off Forlong, while Suladân contented himself with running down a couple more warriors. Great work.

The other area where things weren’t going well was up on the rooftops, where six of my infantry were facing off for the objective against Ian’s Blackroot Vale archers. We realised that Ian could still contest the objective from his building, and also block off my troops from jumping across to push him off it. He had very little interest (sensibly enough) in jumping over to face my D6/S4/F4 block with his fragile archers. I, meanwhile, couldn’t really move my troops away, because Ian could then jump across and pin me off the building. So I was left to just sit there, getting shot, for the entire game. Lovely.

Just before my second Move phase. Imrahil successfully resists a Compel to avoid going into the centre of my lines

By Turn 3 Imrahil had finally made his way around the buildings and into my backfield, and managed to resist a Compel on a single die thanks to a natural 6. If he’d failed then I would have been able to swamp and kill him with everyone in the area, but dice do dice things. Imrahil won the subsequent Move-off and led a charge into my screening Black Númenóreans. However, my magic did better this turn, with a nasty Black Dart dismounting Imrahil and stalling out his charge. I managed to pin in the cavalry and mitigate their impact, and eventually (with the assistance of the Mouth and Suladân cantering back to lend their assistance) I was able to drag down most of the remaining Knights. 

Imrahil is dismounted and the charge is blunted. You can also see the extremely annoying archers atop the building, although thankfully they start running next turn

The Fiefdoms were now very much Broken, and most of the Blackroot Vale Archers fled from their secure position atop the building. This put Ian within two models of being quartered, but I still needed another turn to make sure I was in control of all the objectives. As such, I did the dishonourable thing of shielding everywhere I could, dragging out the game for one last turn and locking in a few more points. 

You'll notice a distinct lack of Fiefdoms troops remaining in the centre

In doing so, I cleared the last Fiefdoms off the right objective, with the Captain of Dol-Amroth dying at last. It wasn't really his game.

Zagush and co finish off the Gondorians here

I also achieved majority control against the lone remaining archer (still safely-ensconced atop his building) and made one last assassination attempt on Imrahil. The Witch King Transfixed him and Struck up, but couldn’t get through his Fate even with the Mouth and a pile of other warriors involved.

A cool shot of the last few Knights, defiantly holding on here but unable to take my objective

Still, with all the objectives in my control and Ian Broken, I’d picked up a resounding 9:0 win. A great game to start!

Game 2: Fell Beings of Mirkwood in Command the Battlefield, 12:0

This was our board. Amazing

My table in the second round was off in a side room, and it was a very funny board to show up to. It was dominated by two terrain features: first, a wall running the length of the battlefield, broken in many places; and second, by an enormous model of Orthanc. It was far too tall to really be anything other than a line-of-sight blocker, but it was great fun to play around its base. Rob and I enjoyed joking about Saruman looking out from his balcony, thoroughly confused as to why two of Mordor’s armies were clashing in his front yard.

Speaking of which, Rob’s list was classic Fell Beings, with 10 Spiders of various kinds (including the Spider Queen), a collection of other Bats and Wargs, and Razgush’s Orcs. 

Spiders and Wargs and Bats, oh my!

It was a pretty rough matchup for him, in quite a lot of ways: my magic is very scary for his heroes, my heroes are great at carving up Spiders, my troops will smash his Orcs and my Terror is devastating for everything in his list. Moreover, I’ve also played enough with Spiders, Bats and the Spider Queen (including here, here and here) to know their tricks, so I wasn’t likely to be taken off guard by their shenanigans. 

My troops assume a solid defensive position along the table edge. No surprise attacks here!

Maelstrom went fairly well for me, only needing to burn a single Might on Zagdush to get everyone in the same spot. Rob managed to get most of his troops on together, but opted not to spend a Might on the Spider Queen to stop me bringing her in near my lines. As such I was able to rapidly get some troops into his Orcs and Spiders, picking up quite a few early on. More significantly, I was able to put pressure onto the Spider Queen early with magic, eventually Compelling her out into the Witch King and a bunch of troops, who swiftly dispatched her. The Mouth also lead a group of warriors Heroic Combatting from one Spider into two more, but the second combats went much worse than the first and he was dismounted, wounded, and lost both his buddies. Urgh.

The Spider Queen is dragged forward and taken out

The most amusing part of this clash was a lone Tracker, who escaped the slaughter of his warband to get into a shooting war with my lone Tracker. Rob and I made a gentleman’s agreement that these two would have a little shooting duel, without my nearby heavy infantry intervening. We subsequently decided that whichever Orc won would get to roll on the Path of the Ranger from Battle Companies, and it was honestly a real highlight of the game. In the end Rob’s Tracker took mine out, rolling up Expert Shot as a reward, before being immediately killed by a Black Númenórean. Ah well, it was a good effort.

The Black Númenórean umpires the two Trackers as they have their duel

Elsewhere, Rob and I ended up clashing in the centre and along the edges, and my troops and heroes rapidly began to get the edge. Razgush suffered at the hands of my magic, and his troops struggled to deal with my Terror wall. That let me pick the terms of engagement for most fights, and Rob was soon Broken. The Mouth managed to take out his Orc Captain to redeem himself somewhat, while my heroes carved their way through enough Spiders to decisively win the war of attrition. 

The lines collide, and my superior stats and numbers give me the edge across the board

On the final turn, Rob opted to Heroic Combat Razgush off a Morannon and into Suladân. Suladân promptly fended off both Razgush and the Spider he was facing, wounding Razgush to add insult to injury. Elsewhere, my troops had effectively cleared Rob out of three quarters and the fourth was entirely uncontested, giving me another big 9:0 win!

This game was an absolute hoot, filled with chuckles at every turn. Both Rob and I leaned into the silliness at points, and moments like a lone Warg facing down 9 of my warriors and the Mouth and killing a Black Númenórean (Paralysed by a Mirkwood Spider shooting into combat!) were particularly amusing. Rob did a great job of laughing through a bad matchup, and I’m very keen to play him again.

Game 3: Isengard in Lords of Battle, 0:3

This scenario was the one I was most concerned by, because there were a lot of very elite armies present. Against the Beornings or Riders of Théoden I would be in for a rough time. 

Mercifully I dodged those bullets, and ended up matched into Vaughan and his Isengard. I had a sizeable numbers edge on the Uruks (44-35), and would ordinarily have felt quite confident in the matchup. That was somewhat reversed by the terrain, however, which (after Vaughan won the roll-off for table sides) allowed him to take up the perfect defensive position. This was buttressed by a fence on one side and a rocky outcrop (which we treated as a defended obstacle) on the other, and allowed only a small frontage of my troops to engage him without having to attack over obstacles. 

This savvy deployment saw me lose about 5 models to shooting on the way in, although I did also Black Dart Grima as I slogged forward. The Witch King does not share Aragorn’s compunctions about murdering a treacherous counsellor. The Witch king also managed to drag two Might and a Will out of Gorulf to resist being Compelled forward and Heroic Combatted off by Suladân and the Mouth. 

My troops spill wide around the Isengard position, desperately scrabbling for a foothold

Saruman struck back, dismounting all three of my mounted heroes over consecutive turns. Vaughan was extremely canny with him, using Sorcerous Blasts to foil my assassination attempts on Gorulf (who was Transfixed every turn) by Blasting a model into their combat and knocking everyone prone. He had to burn a lot of resources to do so, however, and my Witch King also began targeting him with Your Staff is Broken. Eventually, with no Might and limited Will remaining, he failed to knockdown Suladân, who promptly hacked down Gorulf at last. 

That was clearly a severe blow to Saruman's confidence, and I followed it up by Breaking his Staff on the next turn to turn off his casting entirely. It was a big swing, although Lurtz winning a Strike-off (with no Might remaining) against Zagdush and the Mouth and straight up murdering the Orc made up for it a little. I did manage to get Suladân into Lurtz (Transfixed again) on the next turn, however, making use of a trap to take him out at last.

Gorulf falls, but Lurtz strikes back to take out Zagdush

By this point I had also managed to break my way into Vaughan’s little castle and things were beginning to snowball in my favour. However, my troops had also taken heavy casualties in doing so, and I was just starting to bring the wounds tally back towards parity. Time was called and we were on our final round, and the resulting carnage left Vaughan exactly one wound ahead as we went into the final combat. Neither of us were Broken (Vaughan was one off, I was 3-4 away), and it would all come down to who could get ahead on that tally.

The lines are intermingled, and my heroes are starting to turn the tide at last

Saruman, out of Might and alone, was facing off against three of my warriors. He had charged but was now trapped, and had no Might to burn. If Vaughan won then he would retain his tiny lead on the tally and get a minor victory, if I won then I would only need to strip two Fate or deal a single Wound and I would take the win. And if I managed to actually kill him then I would get a crushing win, as it would also Break the Isengarders. Vaughan had the Fight value advantage, but I had three dice to his two. We were both coming off two massive wins, and it turned out that first place was riding on this fight.

Everything comes down to this

I rolled my dice, and...

Well, shit.

For fun, we decided to roll my wound rolls out to see what would have happened if I’d gotten the 5+ I needed. The Mordor warriors rolled hot and actually bodied Saruman, which would have given me a huge 8:0 win. I’m not sure whether this made me feel better or worse about the whole thing. But in any case, Saruman won the combat and smashed down a Morannon to seal a 3:0 win for Vaughan.

Heartbreak aside, this game was one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever played. Vaughan was an excellent opponent, both in the sense of being very switched on, but also just being a delight to play generally. The joking back and forth was excellent, and it had the delightful atmosphere of two experienced players who both trust the other one to play optimally and to not take advantage of that trust. 

We agreed at the start to just assume optimal special strikes, such that I would be Piercing Striking when he was Transfixed or Immobilised and he would be Feinting whenever he had a pike support, whether we remembered to say the words before the duel roll or not. In other words, where there was no downside to doing an obvious thing we would each assume the other one would do it. It’s the sort of casual thing that takes a lot of unnecessary mental load out of the game, and meant we could both focus on trying to outplay the other instead of  saying magic words at the right time. The game was filled with little things like that, and it made Vaughan a really enjoyable opponent.

Gushing aside, the game was a very interesting one tactically. The matchup really does favour me a lot, but the scenario and terrain flip that entirely, and Vaughan did excellently to take advantage of them to such an extent. It forced me to take a lot of casualties forcing his defensive position, which was the right call but felt very rough. The Wizard’s duel made us both think hard, while my heroes’ many attempts to take out Lurtz and Gorulf really stretched our tired brains. I wish we’d had another turn for the Mouth and Suladân to swing things back in my favour on the kills, but alas, such is the price of heavy thinking.

This shot does capture quite how hard my troops were having to work here

After a minor loss and two big wins, I was hopeful of ending up in the top third. But with how the scoring played out I actually ended up taking home second place, just (and justly)  behind Vaughan in first!

Tournament Review

This tournament was really impressive. Upon showing up at the event you were handed a binder of laminated pages, containing copies of all the scenarios we were playing, your list to show your opponent, and the profiles of every model in your list. Not only was that extremely useful as a reference point, but they also supplied marker pens so you could cross off the stats from your heroes as you expended them, and erasers to reset between rounds. Talk about making life easier!

Lunch was provided, and excellent, and the venue was great. The terrain was truly top-tier as well, with each board having a lot of coverage and a very clear theme. The Isengard board was obviously a bit of a stand-out, but honestly every table looked awesome. The prizes were great (I took home a voucher and an awesome carry case, which will certainly improve on my current transportation approach of ‘put all the minis in a cardboard box then stuff it with fabric scraps’), and the raffle afterwards was absolutely stacked with things I wanted.

A cute themed lunch, I love it!

Speaking of the raffle, this was fundamentally a charity event, and it ended up raising nearly four grand for the Sony Foundation! This was helped along by Andrew Medbury (of Medbury Miniatures) pledging to design and produce a model for whichever player donated the most throughout the day. 

Overall, I was very impressed by this event. It ran extremely smoothly throughout, and just felt very ‘deluxe’. I would highly recommend it, and will be aiming to make it to the next one!

 

List review

This list is a bit of a known quantity, but man is it strong. In every single game I felt like I was favoured in the matchup, and it was only some tricky terrain that stopped it walking over everything it faced. 44 models is a lot at 750, especially when they’re all (or nearly all– the Tracker is pretty rubbish) tough and punchy. Having 4 heroes and 11 Might means it can actually out-muscle a lot of lists, and the double spellcaster means you have so many options at any point. Terror is sometimes annoying for your opponent and sometime backbreaking (as against Rob), and it just feels like it has so much stuff.

Even in a tricky terrain/scenario matchup against Vaughan, I was really impressed by its ability to just keep grinding. It took some heinous casualties, and still ended up bringing the kill tally back to near-parity and being in position to roll him over if we'd had a few more turns. It's a remarkably resilient list, and that makes a big difference in the tough games.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this list is probably the strongest thing in the game right now, maybe by some margin. It has its bad matchups, but it’s never out of the fight, and it’s a nightmare matchup for a lot of other lists. The Witch King/Suladân meta is real, and it can hurt you.

Wargs and Spiders prowl, failing one Terror check after the next

In saying all of that, there are a few tweaks I would make to the list in future. Having 6 more Trackers would have been useful in every game, and I consistently had enough troops in the shieldwall that I could have dropped a couple. Again, model availability was the issue there, but it’s certainly a change I’ll try and make for next time.

The heroes, on the other hand, were absolutely perfect. The Witch King had exactly the right amount of Will in Game 3, and several more than he needed in Games 1 and 2. Suladân was obviously as excellent as ever (my unfortunate error against Forlong notwithstanding), and the Mouth was often crucial. Being able to Transfix heroes without having to waste the Witch King on it was awesome, and just having another F5 mounted hero is a big deal. He should be the third hero in this list at anything above 550 points, and I don’t think it’s even close. Honestly, this tournament has really convinced me on him generally, at least in any Mordor list that has another spellcaster. He doesn’t cast quite as well as Muzgur or a budget Ringwraith, but he still does so quite reliably, and he hits so much harder.

The reason the Spider Queen didn't resist the Compel is that she'd had to burn Will already against the Mouth's spellcasting

Zagdush also proved his worth, giving me great value in every game. In the first round he was able to constitute a legitimate threat to the Dol-Amroth Captain thanks to A3 and S5– which Gorbag could not have done– and otherwise was mostly fighting lone models anyway because I’d gotten myself the numerical advantage on that flank. Round 2 he was again only ever facing one opponent, where his extra Attack helped out with his reliability substantially. And in Round 3 he made it much easier to kill Gorulf, before dying to Lurtz in exactly the same way Gorbag would have. Having a third Striker instead of Guritz (the other main competition) also made a big difference in Rounds 1 and 3, while Guritz’ Maelstrom ability would only have saved me one Might in the second game. 

Zagdush leads the charge against the last Dol-Amroth models

Overall, the list did good, and if I had another 750-point tournament tomorrow I wouldn’t change a thing. Now I just need to get myself some more Trackers!

Tournament Wrap-up

A second place at my first tournament down south is certainly a great result, and I had an absolute blast to boot. All of my opponents were lovely, with Rob and Vaughan being particularly excellent to face. And the community seemed generally to have a really lovely vibe, which I’m keen to experience more of this year.

I’d love to hear your comments on the list, the tournament and the matchups. Fellow Zagdush supporters/Gorbag haters, I want to hear from you. Guritz lovers, tell me why I’m wrong. And people who don’t field the Mouth as their third hero, tell me why you’re wrong. Comment below or on social media and I’ll do my best to reply whenever I can.

Until next time, may you always win that critical final fight!