Rise of Angmar: First impressions and analysis

Hell yeah!

It’s that time again. I may not have been sent an early copy of Rise of Angmar, but I have spent the last 24 hours pouring over the reviews released online. And let me tell you, there is a lot of content to be discussed!

This article won’t be going over the supplement line by line, so if you’re looking for the full details then I’d recommend a combo of Mountain Goat Gaming’s review and the three Goonhammer articles on the topic. It also won’t be covering the lore or the scenarios; again, look to Goonhammer for that one. And finally, everything I say here is subject to change if it turns out that the reviewers misread a rule. I’ll try to call out anywhere that I think there’s uncertainty, but take it all with a small grain of salt.

But for now, let’s dive into the last supplement of the edition: the Rise of Angmar.

Good profiles

Classic hero pose, if a little bland

We start off on an interesting note with Aranarth, First Chieftain of the Dúnedain. He’s a solid model on his own merits, with decent combat stats and Expert Shot, but I think he may struggle to find a home in many lists. He doesn’t fit well in Arnor, because his main schtick there is allowing you to bring Rangers of the North and Dúnedain, but they don’t appear to gain the benefit of their Army Bonus when doing so. 1-Attack Rangers are nowhere near being worth 25-30 points (even with his 6” banner effect), and I'm not sure Aranarth is worthwhile bringing on his own in Army of Arnor, given that they have several other solid hero choices available to them. A second Striker is nice, but probably not quite worth the points. And in pure Rangers you’re left wondering why you’re not taking either Arathorn’s Last Stand or just fielding Aragorn instead (it’s also not immediately clear to me that he can be taken in the Rangers by default). Aranarth is a cool model, but I’m not really seeing where he might fit into a build at this stage.

Nothing crazy here, just a solid little combat piece

Argadir, on the other hand, is a pretty simple and solid model. He provides some good combat punch when mounted (albeit without Strike), and has Master of Battle and (I think) Heroic Defence to inconvenience enemy heroes. Not too much to say here really; you probably take this guy on horse over a Captain in most Arnor lists, which drops your model count by ~4 but gives you more Might and combat punch. Seems like a decent trade, although not so compelling that you’d never choose the Captain instead.

I was really predicting 15 points for these guys, they are really spooky at 14

The Knights of Arnor, on the other hand, are frankly a bit terrifying. 14-point cavalry with war spears and F4/D6 are very scary, and I expect them to make a big impact on the meta. For context, that’s a Serpent Rider (already a great cavalry model) gaining D6 for a single point! C2 is annoying, but Arvedui and the Arnor Army Bonus exist, so I anticipate these guys to be a real bugbear of competitive play.

His rules aren't great, but I love this guy's model

Less impactful is likely to be Ëarnur, who will never see play outside his LL but may be decent there. His stats are pretty solid for a 100-point mountable hero who can take a lance, but his special rules are probably a net negative: Master Duellist letting him boost his Strike value against a tiny handful of opponents is pretty unexciting, while having to charge enemy heroes is a legitimate downside. In some respect it’s actually worse than Théodred’s similar rule, as if he has a choice between slamming into warriors or into the Balrog then he has to choose death. Fitting, but unfortunate. The restrictions he imposes on your Gondor lists are more hassle than he’s worth, but at least his LL looks cute.

Speaking of which…

 

Good Legendary Legions

This Legion isn't amazing, but this photo is sick

This Battle of Fornost LL forces you to bring along both Ëarnur and Glorfindel, which is a lot of investment in heroes once you inevitably supplement them with Círdan. The rules also aren’t too crazy, with Resistant to Magic on everyone (making Glorfindel delightfully resilient against spells, with three free dice to resist!), +1 Fight value for charging Gondorian Knights, and… Ëarnur being immune to Courage modifiers. He can keep that where he keeps all his other useless rules.

Overall, this Legion is probably more thematic than competitive. F4 certainly helps Knights of Gondor, Resistant to Magic is neat, and being able to stick a cheap Gondorian frontline in front of Elven spears is never an awful thing (especially with Círdan to back it up). Is this better than allying Boromir with flag and Glorfindel in a yellow alliance? Maybe, but not by a huge margin, and I don’t think that was the strongest list in any case.

Argardir is severely out-classed here

More competitively, the Army of Arnor seems very solid. It’s basically Arnor without Hobbit Archers, but with everything else that you would want in an Arnor list (and also Dúnedain and Rangers of the North, which unfortunately don’t get their second Attack). It gets the standard Arnor Army Bonus, but supplements it with several neat Malbeth-specific benefits. To start with, he basically gets Elrond’s Foresight rule to add or subtract from Priority rolls, which is always great. And even better, his 5+ save is improved to a 4+ for nearby Hero models (some reviews have listed this as all Arnor models, but I think they just missed a keyword there and the other reviews are correct. If I’m wrong, then prepare for this Legion to be busted). That’s a noticeable defensive boost for Arvedui and the Captains, and is enough in itself to make a real difference to the power of the faction. Given that Arnor is already a solid army  and have gained some very efficient cavalry and a new combat hero, I think this puts them in a really powerful position going into the closing months of the edition.

Arathorn and his buddies getting ready to shoot you to pieces (u/Nico_GZ)

Finally, Arathorn gets a Legion for his Last Stand. Like the Army of Arnor, this is basically The Rangers+, with Arathorn and Halbarad leading Rangers with their standard Army Bonus (one review described this as adding 2 to their Attacks characteristic, which would have been flatly broken and is much less likely than the alternative of increasing Attack to 2). The special bonus in exchange for giving up the option of allies is that Arathorn effectively doubles his Might store (he rolls a dice every time he spends a Might and gets it back on a 4+) and all warbands get +/-1 on reinforcement rolls. That’s legitimately great for a list that will often have dozens of micro warbands, as they really don’t want to be spending Might on Maelstrom rolls and this means they generally don’t have to.

This is overall a pretty noticeable buff to the ‘standard’ way of running Ranger, and goes some way towards powering them up. It still has a lot of its traditional weaknesses, but it’s certainly an improvement, and I could see it doing quite well in small-to-medium games.

Overall takes on Good

The Good side of this supplement seems to have followed the Army of Dale approach, in that it’s basically removed the Rangers and Arnor factions and replaced them with Legendary Legions. From a game design perspective that’s somewhat unfortunate, as ideally it would have been nice to have competing, legitimately viable options between the base faction and the Legendary Legions (like, as we shall see later, the designers managed with Angmar).

GW's apparent inspiration when designing some of these Legions (Tim from Warhammer Community)

Instead, GW have basically used two of these Legendary Legions as tools with which to buff up the Rangers and Arnor. I’m not sure the latter really needed it, given the new models they’ve received, but it certainly has done a lot to boost them in any case.

Competitively, I think the biggest change here will be that Arnor shoots up the leaderboards still further. Expect to see them topping more low-point tournaments sometime soon.

Finally, the Battle of Fornost is very cool, but not very strong. I don’t expect to see it making waves, but it will definitely create some fun and thematic lists to play around with.

From here, let’s dive straight in to the Evil profiles!

 

Evil profiles

Here we get some of the most exciting parts of the new release, at least for me; I’ve never been a big fan of Gondor or Arnor, but Angmar? Hell yeah.

One of these is probably much better than the other. Hint: it's not the Orc

That starts off on a fairly low-key note with Nazthrak, Orc Captain. He’s a classic named Orc Captain with Heroic Defence and 3 Might for 50 points, so he’s in direct competition with an Orc Captain on warg (a staple of competitive Angmar lists). Heroic Defence isn’t a huge deal in Angmar, which has lots of ways to shut down enemy heroes, but 3 Might is great for a faction that really struggles to get above 6 normally. Finally, when he kills models he gets to steal their stuff. This rule is hilarious, but very gimmicky: he’ll probably steal a shield off a warrior, and may get a spear or bow as well, but he’s unlikely to end up with Anduril or the Banner of Gondor. Yes, you could Paralyse the enemy then have him finish them off, but frankly Nazthrak’s damage output isn’t high enough to make him the finishing piece in those combos. It’s a really fun rule, but not a powerful one.

On the other hand, the Shadow of Rhudaur actually seems quite strong. For 30 points more than a Barrow Wight you gain 2 Might (amazing!), 2 Fate, an actual combat profile (F5/A2 with Blades of the Dead), and an expanded-but-weaker spell list (lots of useful spells, but no Paralyse). He also gets to harass a specific hero with -1 Courage and -1 to Fate rolls while he’s within 6”, which could be useful as part of a broader plan to whittle down a hero’s Courage if it stacks with Harbinger.

In general, this guy seems like a decent upgrade over a Barrow Wight, trading raw efficiency for a lot more flexibility and those two critical Might. Expect to see him a lot as the second hero in Host of the Witch King lists. I do find it amusing that GW have finally released a Barrow-Wight-esque hero with Might, and it doesn’t have Paralyse. They really don’t want us using the Channelled version of that spell!

I love the models, and long for the day that generic monsters are competitive

We then step down a level again, with Hill Trolls. Cave Trolls stats with some cute (and legitimately useful) special rules do not a competitive model make, unfortunately, and they still suffer from the key Troll problem of being exceptionally vulnerable to heroes. Being in the Angmar list does admittedly mitigate this a little, but I still see these guys as waiting for a fundamental monster rework next edition.

The biggest surprise profile of this supplement, and I am hyped

Thankfully we jump straight back up in power to Werewolves, which seem awesome! F5/S5/A2/W2 are already some very strong stats, and getting Knockdown against infantry takes that to the next level. They’re particularly good at solving the classic Angmar problem of how to kill models you’ve magically disabled, which is a great add at a bargain cost. These guys will hit very hard, and make a great replacement for two Warg Riders in traditional Angmar builds.

Honestly, I think this has been a change for the best. So long Chill Aura!

Rounding it off, we have a radically reworked Shade. The big news first: no more Chill Aura. Frankly, good riddance. It was a miserable special rule to play against, and while it facilitated some interesting builds (Captain spam being the main one) it was generally just a bad addition to the game.

Instead, the model is now a general buff piece for the army that addresses several of its traditional weaknesses. This includes providing -1/-2 to hit against nearby models– great in the shooting matchups that haunted Angmar in the past– and +1 Courage for nearby Orcs– mitigating the C2 of most of the list. They also provide a tiny bit more combat punch, and a different vantage point for your Ringwraiths to cast from (with the ability to sacrifice a Wound to add +1 to the roll as well!). Given the much-reduced price tag, this seems like a solid suite of abilities overall. It’s hard to tell whether there’ll be a place for the Shade in Angmar lists, but I could see them slotting in as the fourth hero in higher-points builds; you’ll need to develop your own core game plan first with the Witch King and whichever supporting heroes you want, but once you’ve got those then adding in someone to paper over your worst matchups is a good shout.

From here we move onto the Carn Dûm profiles, which seemingly can be taken in Angmar lists or in their own LL, just like for Dunland. Unfortunately, and again just like Dunland, I don’t expect to see many of these models in basic Angmar because I don’t think they synergise well with the army.

I quite like the aesthetics of this model, even if I'm a little less sure on his warriors

Most tempting is Aldrac, who does bring a legitimate amount of combat punch for his cost. He’s solid against troops thanks to conditional free Heroic Combats (a rule which I really like for its elegance and the tradeoffs it forces), and can punish Paralysed heroes with Mighty Blow and S5. He’s overall pretty solid, but at 120 points I’m not sure he quite makes the cut in traditional Angmar builds.

Love a good flapping cloak

Freacht is more laser-focussed on his LL, providing some solid and flexible buffs to Carn Dûm models nearby at a fairly budget cost. The ability to pivot between extra durability, damage and mobility will be great for that LL, although the durability buff is by far the strongest. Given that his buffs only affect Carn Dûm models and you won’t be fielding them in normal Angmar (as you’ll see in a moment), don’t expect to see this guy outside of his LL. That’s especially true because his buffs only have a range of 3” by default, which is quite rough for abilities that you need to expend Will to use.

Somewhat janky models, to match some very janky profiles

Carn Dûm Captains, again, might be alright in their LL but will never taken elsewhere. Extra Courage and a bonus to wound heroes (in case you manage to beat them with your F4/A2 Captain) are just not worth the cost over an Angmar Orc Captain on warg.

And finally, the Warriors of Carn Dûm are a bit of a disappointment. S4 and C3 are both nice, but +1 to wound enemy heroes is even worse here than on the Captains. And at 9 points, these guys are paying two whole points for C3 and Glory Seekers, which is an awful trade. In their LL they may be worthwhile, but outside of it I think you should leave these guys at home.

 

Evil Legendary Legions

No Crown no problem for this Witch King!

Our first Evil Legendary Legion is relatively traditional, but looks very powerful: the Host of the Witch King. It locks you into the Spirit heroes (minus Gully) plus Orcs, Spectres and Warg Riders, which is a fairly permissive set of restrictions overall. Oh, and I guess you have to take the Witch King; I’m sure someone was running Angmar without him.

In exchange for those restrictions, you basically get the Angmar Army Bonus (great) and a set of neat buffs for the Witch King. These involve what’s effectively a free Morgul Crown (lol), F6 against Men and only losing a Will in combat if you lose the fight. Other Ringwraiths also get to reroll a casting or resisting die, which makes them significantly more compelling (pun unintended, believe it or not).

This list can basically play ‘classic’ Angmar with the Witch King, some Barrow Wights/Spectres and a horde of Orcs, but with an even better/cheaper Witch King. You can use the points you would have spent on the Crown on upgrading a Wight to the Shadow of Rhudaur– giving you a wider spread of spells, more combat punch and 2 more Might– or even to a Shade, giving you less magic but some anti-shooting/Terror protection. You could even justify a second Ringwraith with their casting rerolls, although I’m still not sure what you’d specifically looking for that they provide over the other options. The Legion may also have 6" Terror bubbles rather than the standard 3" (this has been mentioned in some reviews but not in others), but it doesn't really need it in any case. Overall, a really strong looking list that gives up some tools for extra efficiency.

About as many Carn Dûm models as I expect to ever see on the table

The next LL is the army of Carn Dunland Dûm, which limits you to the Carn Dûm heroes and warriors, plus Angmar Orcs, Warg Riders and Trackers. You only have to take Aldrac, and honestly I could see him being the only Carn Dûm model you take in this build, as the basic Carn Dûm warriors are just less efficient than their Orc equivalents (and aren’t especially incentivised by the Legion rules). Carn Dûm heroes get +1 Fight after killing a model, which is great for Aldrac but less impactful for the Captain or Fraecht. Fraecht’s Incantations increase in range to 6”, which makes him much more viable, but this still relies on you fielding plenty of Carn Dûm warriors to be useful. The only buff for those warriors, meanwhile, is that their banner increases to 6” range; a buff which equally affects Angmar Orcs.

Overall, this LL is let down by the inefficiencies of its basic troops. Unlike the Army of Dunland, which layers powerful boosts on moderately efficient profiles in order to make up for your reduced options, this LL is boosting models that mostly aren’t great to begin with. I could see someone running it at ~500 points with Aldrac, a Captain and a swarm of Orcs of various kinds to take advantage of the 6” banner and the boosts to Aldrac, but I struggle to imagine an actual Carn Dûm battleline being particularly viable even with these buffs.

The breakout stars of the edition, and the most exciting LL

Thankfully, things step back up again with the Wolf Pack of Angmar. This is a hilarious LL, with Warg Chieftains, Werewolves, Wild/Fell Wargs and nothing else. Your leader gets an extra Might/Will/Fate, you can call a once-per-game howl to give everyone +1 Fight and reroll 1’s to wound, and everyone gets Knockdown when they charge into infantry as if they were cavalry. Oh, and if your leader gets wounded then he counts as a banner to everyone near by, as they get all protective.

These are some quite impressive buffs, and it’s certainly fun to contemplate F6 Werewolves/Chieftains and F4 Wargs with Knockdown. You can also fit in some impressive numbers, with 37 models being very achievable at 550. That’s pretty scary for a list where everyone can move 10” every turn!

In saying that, it’s probably not quite as good as it sounds. Wargs with F3-4 and Knockdown are great, but they’ll still struggle to break battlelines, and with those big bases it will be hard to get everyone into the fray at once. You’ll rely on your Chieftains and Werewolves to crack through, but they’re quite vulnerable to combat heroes– which you don’t really have any answers to. It’s a list that will dominate in certain scenarios (imagine playing Reconnoitre against this!) but will probably find itself haemorrhaging models too fast to compete in more killing-focussed games.

I don't think Burhdur necessarily needed a new model, but I do like this one

And finally, we get Buhrdur’s Horde. For some reason people seemed to assume this would be a monster-mash-style LL, which I found amusing when it was described as a ‘horde’ in the Warhammer Community article. And voilà, a horde it is. You have to take Buhrdur, and can supplement him with Warg Chieftains, Orc Captains, Hill Trolls, Orcs, Wargs and Warg Riders. Given how cheap most of those models are, that probably leans the Legion towards a swarm playstyle, possibly with some cheap monsters/pseudo-monsters (the Warg Chieftains) for spice.

The swarming is facilitated by everyone gaining Woodland Creature and Mountain Dweller (making Hill Trolls’ special rule less useful, weirdly), alongside Burhdur’s warband gaining Ambushers to arrive from a terrain feature or board edge on Turn 3. This is slightly worse than it sounds, because his big base means that you’ll struggle to find an appropriate terrain feature in a lot of games. But still, being able to respond to someone’s initial moves by bringing in a Troll hero and his warband somewhere behind their lines is potentially very powerful. That’s especially true if you can force your opponent to spread out to play the scenario. Buhrdur also gets Blood and Glory and Fearless if he kills an enemy hero, which is neat but pretty limited to small points values: above 500 the threats available to enemies start to rapidly outclass a F6 Troll, especially when he doesn’t have any magical backup to call in like in normal Angmar.

 

Overall takes on Evil

There’s a bit of a mixed bag here, but I am generally excited.

There's still nothing else in Angmar that can do quite what Gully can do

To start with, ‘generic’ Angmar seems to have remained a viable option (unlike for Arnor or the Rangers). It’s still the only way to bring Gûlavhar, or to combine the new Werewolves with magical support. I could definitely see Angmar hordes that supplement their magical prowess (possibly with the Shadow of Rhudaur replacing a Barrow Wight) with a couple of Werewolves to add punch in key locations, or adding Aldrac as a mixed blender/assassin to kill key targets. And Gûlavhar builds will remain as powerful as ever, so that angle on Angmar remains unique to the ‘generic’ faction. I think it’s great that GW have put out 4 new Angmar Legendary Legions, but the base faction remains a viable choice. They did this successfully with Mordor (arguably too successfully) but largely failed with Rohan, so it’s great to see them hit the mark here.

Pictured: the once and future MVP of Angmar (nicolachibbaro)

On the LLs themselves, I think Host of the Witch King is the clear standout for power. It’s taking an already-solid build and giving it 25 free points and a buffed Witch King, which is the sort of efficiency that creates powerful builds. Expect to see this doing well at tournaments.

Wolf Pack is less powerful, but it’s flavourful and cool, and I expect to see a lot of people running it over the next few months. Werewolves look great, and though I think generic Angmar may be a better home for them than this Legion, this remains the most exciting list to try coming out of the supplement.

Buhrdur’s Horde is quite interesting, and I could see a skilled player getting some real value out of it á la Fell Beings of Mirkwood. But in the hands of average players its lack of easily-applicable power will probably hurt it.

And finally, the Army of Carn Dûm is a decent Legion that seems to be struggling with how expensive its warriors are. Carn Dûm Warriors could have gone down a point and been perfectly balanced both here and in Angmar, and I think that’s really going to hurt this Legion that’s meant to be based around them. I’m sure someone will put up a good run with them at some point, but this strikes me as the weakest LL in the book at this stage.

Conclusion

A stunning Angmar army to close things out (u/RePeDeLL)

I’ve been hyped for this book from well before it was announced, and I remain hyped. The new Angmar profiles are all extremely cool, even where the points value doesn’t quite support them, and I’m keen to try them all out over the last few months of the edition. As a #shootingsucks player I’m less excited by the Arnor and Rangers boosts, but good for whoever’s invested their life savings into an Arnor army; they deserve their upcoming meta dominance.

As ever, remember to take all of this with many grains of salt; I literally haven’t touched the book yet. Please let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong in this review, and give me all of your best takes on the shiny new meta we can expect. Will Carn Dûm warriors be overrunning tables with their 5+ Malbeth save and S4? Have I missed a use case for Aranarth? Is this finally the time of the Wolf Pack? I’m keen to hear it all!

Until next time, may your review videos always use footage that’s easy to screenshot!