With all of the exciting monster changes this edition (buffs to BPAs, striking spear supports, Dominant, and nerfs to Heroic Strike and some magic), the Eagles are all set to be the new hotness. And indeed, they do seem to be doing well in the stats we have available to us so far, as you can read about here. The Eagles are a powerful list, and with how easy it is to pull an army of them together quickly it's no surprise to see big flappy monsters all over the scene.
The thing about the Eagles, however, is that they’re not the
easiest of lists to pick up and do well with. Pure Eagles will have a maximum
of 8 models and 3 Might at any reasonable points level, most of which only have
2 Attacks base and all of which have big flying bases to manoeuvre around the
battlefield. If you just pick up the Eagles and play them like any other list,
you’ll probably find yourself struggling to compete and getting whittled down.
Enter this article, a full guide to the Eagles from
listbuilding to the field of battle. We’re gonna start by discussing why to run
the Eagles, move onto the two listbuilding questions associated with them (pure
or as Radagast’s Alliance, and whether to run Fledglings), explore the
fundamental gameplan of the list, discuss how and when to use Brutal Power
Attacks, and finally explain the key ‘loss condition’ to avoid.
And for those of you just looking to hone in on that loss
condition to fell some fearsome fowl, check in next week for a full article
outlining the weaknesses of the faction and how best to take advantage of them.
Before then though, let’s dive into:
Why play the Eagles?
For many people people (myself included), this answer is as
simple as ‘It’s cool to play a bunch of big birds and make shrieking noises.’ That’s
especially true when all-monster lists have been consistently bad for at least
one edition. If you’re looking for more gameplay-specific reasons, then the
army is incredibly fun to use on the tabletop. The mobility of the list is
insane, and coupled with all its Brutal Power Attacks (BPAs) there will
always be something in your toolbox to deal with adverse situations on the
field of play. Those tools won’t always work (A2 can be fickle sometimes), but
with enough contingency plans and careful planning you can overcome almost
anything.
Plus, and this really can’t be emphasised enough: running a
bunch of Eagles and bowling people over is super fun and cool.
Conveniently, the decision to run the Eagles naturally tends
to sort out most other listbuilding considerations…
Listbuilding: not the most complicated faction
Eagle listbuilding is pretty simple, as you might expect for
a list with exactly 5 options in even its least constrained army list. As such,
it basically resolves itself down into two questions: first, which army list
should you run; and second, how many Fledglings (if any) should you field.
The former is the more complicated question. The primary
benefit of running Radagast’s Alliance is that you get to field Radagast and
Beorn alongside Gwaihir. This immediately triples your Might, gives you access
to magic and Heroic Strike, and generally opens up a lot of options to you that
otherwise won’t be available with pure Eagles. Beorn also gets some free Heroic
Moves for himself, which is cute.
The downsides are pretty simple: you lose 2 Eagles for each
of the heroes you take, your leader becomes noticeably more squishy, and you
lose Piercing Cry. I want to really emphasise that last one because it’s at
the heart of how Eagles play this edition, so you really need to be
certain that you’re getting good value in exchange for leaving it at home.
Overall, I’m of the view that Radagast’s Alliance is worse
than pure Eagles until at least 800, and maybe even a little higher than that.
Having two more monsters on the table is a really big deal, especially in some
of your harder scenarios, and Piercing Cry is just fundamentally broken. I’d be
open to the concept of Radagast’s Alliance being better in some metas or at
certain points values, but in general I think the pure list is the way to go.
Things are much simpler with the Fledgling options. You
should always run two of them at points values that are a multiple of 100 (e.g.
500, 600, 700 etc), where you get a whole extra bird at the cost of downgrading
one Great Eagle. Easy choice!
And what about points values that aren’t multiples of 100?
Should you field Fledglings then?
No.
I wrote a really long section on this, but frankly the
analysis wasn’t that interesting and the answer was so conclusive that I left
it out. Go check out the spiel I gave on this on Mountain Goat Gaming’s pre-Cancon
list review here if you’re interested, or just accept the answer at face
value.
With those two questions answered, listbuilding for Eagles is a simple as it comes: take Gwaihir, fill your remaining points with Great Eagles, then split one into two Fledglings if you’re playing a multiple of 100 points. Easy!
Primary gameplan: how to wield the flock
An Eagles list has a nice 3-step plan for winning most games
(with an extra fourth step for some missions).
Step 1: Charge
First, try to time the first engagement for a turn on which
you’re moving second. You’ve got an enormous mobility advantage over almost
everyone, so this should be doable most of the time. And it’s definitely
worthwhile waiting for, because not allowing your opponent to counterattack you
on the turn you engage is extremely valuable.
There are exceptions to this rule when you really need to
pin the enemy away from a key objective or your Supplies or whatever, and it’s
less of an issue when you can guarantee that their counter-moves won’t be able
to get them any traps (because you have been able to fill up the space between
two terrain features with birds, normally). A list with a big shooting
contingent can also force you to engage earlier than you’d like to, although
it’s important to consider whether you actually care about the enemy shooting.
A dozen Rangers will take several turns of shooting to even chip a single wound
onto your flight of Eagles, so it’s probably more important to line up the
right engagement than to dodge a turn of shooting from them. If your opponent
has a siege weapon, on the other hand, then get your head down and get into
combat ASAP (as you can see in action against Garrison of Dale here).
In general though, you’re hoping to engage on a turn that
you’re moving second to buy yourself at least one more turn before your
opponent can counterattack. Helping you out in this regard is step 2…
Step 2: Piercing Cry
On the turn that you engage, the two things you really want
are to do as much damage as possible, and to make sure that Gwaihir is positioned
as centrally as possible. Because step 2 of the plan is to Piercing Cry right
in the middle of their lines, stopping as much of their army as possible from
moving and then slamming into them again.
Step 3: Kill a bunch of stuff
What this should give you is two whole turns in which you
get to charge the enemy without them being to respond to you almost at all. Your
aim is to do absolutely devastating damage on these two turns that put the
tempo of the game outside your opponent’s reach. I’ll talk a bit more about
exactly what kind of damage you should be prioritising below, but hopefully
these two turns will give you the edge to clean up from there.
Step 4: Remember that VPs exist
Once you’ve got the edge in materiel, the final step in
objective games is to break birds off to score VPs. Thanks to that crazy 12”
Move and Dominant this can often happen later in the piece than for most lists;
an objective 14.5” away with two enemies on it can be flipped at a moment’s
notice, so there isn’t as much need to dedicate birds to it until the final
turn or two. In games like Supplies or Recon you may need to commit Eagles
earlier to killing your opponent’s faster models and shutting down their routes
to your side of the field, but it’s only really in the lategame that you need
to be flying birds off their board edge, for example.
So that gives us our 3(+1) steps: engage when moving second, Piercing Cry, use those two turns to do devastating damage, and then split off to do objectives once you’ve shattered the enemy. But what should we be doing on those two turns where we get to charge without countercharges?
Target priority
As an Eagle player, heroes are your number 1 priority for killing
or burning out of resources. That’s for two reasons: first, Heroic Moves are
the bane of your existence, and you don’t have enough Might yourself to keep
calling them into the lategame; and two, most armies rely on their heroes to
reliably kill Eagles (especially via Strike/Combat combos).
As such, the first thing to aim for on your two turns of
freedom is assassinating heroes. If those heroes have no way to reach F7 or F8,
then this is simple: just fly an Eagle (or Gwaihir) into them and hopefully
flash-kill them. You may need to use Barge to actually get into them (see below
for more details on that), and it may not work the first time. But in general,
if you can get into most <F7 heroes with an Eagle they’ll die pretty
quickly.
Alternatively, if they have access to Heroic Strike, then
you have two options. First, you can just charge them anyway. The Legolases and
Eomers of the world might be able to Strike up above F7, but it’s often still
worth the chance of charging into them. If they do Strike up high enough and
get the 6 they need to win the combat, then chances are they will do 0-1 wounds
back to your Eagle. Annoying, but not really an issue. On the other hand, if they
fluff either their Strike or their duel rolls then you get the chance to
plausibly one-shot their expensive hero. Absolutely worth the risk in a lot of
situations!
Alternatively, you can use ‘Bolging’ to waste their Might.
I’ve covered this before (like in this article from last edition on how
to use Gûlavhar), but in short it basically relies on charging a model near the
target and threatening to Barge into them. In order to reliably survive,
they’ll need to call a Strike or Defence, at which point you can ignore them
entirely and just kill warriors (or even Hurl someone into them regardless:
Heroic Defence doesn’t help against a flying friendly model! [Edit: Heroic Defence does impact Wound rolls from Hurls, but still doesn't stop them being knocked prone!]). If you can do
this to several of their heroes on your two turns of dominance, then hopefully
they will be nearly out of Might by the time they actually get to move. Given
that they’ll need their Might for Move-offs, this neatly removes the threat of the
Heroic Strike/Combat combos that can fell multiple Eagles in a turn.
What about if your opponent doesn’t have any vulnerable
heroes, or you can’t fit any more Eagles in to threaten them? At that point,
the key thing is just chomping through warriors. An Eagle charging 2 warriors
with spear supports averages between 1.7 and 1.8 kills per turn (depending on
things like whether they have a banner or D6 on their back rank), so 7 Eagles
plus Gwaihir (my 850-point list) averages around 30 kills over two turns. Now,
obviously those numbers require unrealistic positioning, but even 20 kills is
often enough to cripple most lists before they get a chance to swing back.
So, doing a lot of damage is clearly good, but how do you do all this killing on a model-by-model basis?
The holy trinity: Striking, Hurl and Barge
In general, there are three key tools in an Eagle’s arsenal:
making strikes normally, Hurling or Barging enemies. Picking the right tool is
critical for maximising your damage output, so let’s explore when to use each
of them.
Striking
Striking blows normally is pretty simple, but it’s actually
your biggest damage dealer in most circumstances. When you’re facing multiple
models – especially with spear supports and especially
on the charge – striking
is your best way to take models off the field. That’s primarily because of the new
monster ability to make an additional free strike against a spear support when
you kill the guy in front.
So if you charge into two models with spear supports and win
the fight (a ~56-59% chance), then you will get to make 6xS7 strikes (in pairs)
at the front rank. This will almost certainly kill both of them, at which point
you’ll get to make a free S7 strike against both spear supports. That probably
translates to 3-4 kills per successful fight, which is a huge amount of damage
output.
As such, if you’ve charged and are fighting multiple models,
then striking normally will always be the right call unless you need a
particular strategic use of Hurl or Barge.
Hurl
Hurl is more complicated, and it’s worthwhile quickly
unpicking how it works now.
To start with, there’s no more drawing lines or anything
like that: you pick up the model, and assuming you pass your Intelligence
check, target one enemy within range and lob at them. Both the guy you’re
picking up and the target take S6 hits and are knocked prone (which also means
they get Knocked Flying and take a S3 hit as well if they were mounted).
The first key use of Hurl is pretty obvious: if a big enemy hero has charged into one of your Eagles, yeet one of their buddies at them and they’ll be instantly knocked prone and be unable to strike blows if they win. Nice! This is a key tool for keeping your Eagles alive, so make liberal use of it. Notably, however, it’s one that’s quite dependent on having Priority, because if your opponent has it then they can resolve their hero fights first to do some damage before being dismounted.
Alternatively, imagine that your Eagle is fighting a lone
warrior (either because that was all you could charge or because your opponent
just charged you with a single warrior). You could just make strikes or Rend
them and that will probably kill the guy you’re fighting, but with Hurl you can
deal 2 S6 hits to the model you’re fighting and 1 S6 to another model
nearby (and knock both models prone if they survive!). It’s an extremely handy
way to get multiple kills from a single combat where your opponent has
otherwise denied you that opportunity. In games like Supplies or Recon, Hurl is
also critical for allowing one Eagle to hold down a whole swathe of the board
against spread-out enemies: just charge one model and Hurl them into another.
And remember, the range is now measured from the monster, so you can swing your
big 60mm base around an enemy to extend the threat range of your Hurl.
This is all made especially effective against cavalry, where
not only are both models automatically dismounted (and thus neutered to some degree),
they also take the extra S3 hit for being Knocked Flying. Against cavalry, it’s
often very worthwhile to just charge one rider and Hurl into another; it might
not quite be the Hurl lines of last edition, but it’s still very scary
for a cavalry-heavy list.
And finally, Hurling is an excellent way to snipe out
banners. To start with, if your opponent has made the mistake of leaving their
banner out of base contact, then you can Hurl into them and either take them
out or (at a minimum) knock them prone so they can’t give out rerolls to nearby
models. Alternatively, if you’ve managed to get into the enemy banner but they
could hand off to the model behind them, then you can Hurl from a different
combat in order to knock the model behind them prone (and thus render them
unable to pick up the banner if it falls). Finally, if you’re in combat with
the banner and it’s not in base contact with any friendly models but could
back away into contact with one of them, then consider Hurling the banner. The
2 S6 hits occur before the model would have been able to back away, and if they
kill the banner bearer then it is never placed in base contact with the model
you’re throwing them at. As such, they won’t be able to hand off the banner
unless they’re actually in base contact before backing away. It’s a niche use,
but very powerful when it comes up.
Barge
Barge is where the real flexibility of the list comes from,
and it’s quite bonkers this edition. To see why, let’s dive into what’s changed
about it.
The first change is the obvious one, and it’s really big:
Barging monsters move D3+3” instead of D6”. This is huge because it means that
your Eagles can reliably flap from combat to combat with at least one variable
(whether they roll high enough to get back into combat) totally removed.
The second change is arguably even bigger, however: the
monster player is now the one who chooses whether a model Makes Way. This means
that if you’re in combat with two models, each of them can force another model
nearby to move 3” in a direction of your choice. And if they were spear
supported, then the number of enemy models that you get to move goes all the
way up to 8 (because Barged spear supports are Backing Away, not Making Way,
and thus can have other models Make Way for them). Also, because Backing Away
and Making Away is sequential (one model moving after the next), you can have
the same model Make Way for multiple Backing Away models consecutively. So if
you were fighting two models with spear supports and Barged, then you could
theoretically make an enemy model nearby Make Way 4 times, moving them up to
12” in 4x3” straight lines (although the exact positioning involved could be
tricky). This doesn’t really come up (I’ve never used it usefully in a game),
but it’s very silly.
These rules are obviously super flexible, and the uses they
can be put to are very varied. The most obvious one is to Bolg or charge enemy
heroes: by using Barge to clear away multiple layers of models in front of the
hero, you can force them to Strike/Defence (if they realised the risk) or just
swoop straight in and kill them if they didn’t. Indeed, sometimes you don’t
even need to move the enemy warriors out of the way; you can just have the
enemy hero Make Way towards your monster (and into a vulnerable position).
3” Make Ways give a lot of flexibility!
The same approach is also an option when dealing with
banners, which are especially vulnerable to either having their nearby models
moved away, or to being moved away from the battleline themselves. Banners are
a key priority target for this list, so Barging them into the open and pouncing
on them is a great use of an Eagle.
Another hilarious use of Barge is to shut down big enemy
threats. For example, in practice games I’ve used it to bully a Balrog, by
Barging a nearby Goblin and thus making the Balrog Make Way. Not only did this
clear a gap for Gwaihir to swoop into the Goblin Captain hiding behind the
Balrog, but because Durin’s Bane couldn’t Make Way the full 3” it was then
knocked prone. I naturally Piercing Cried on the following turn, so the Balrog
was stuck on the ground for several turns, unable to get into my Eagles and
start doing damage. I attempted to do this at Cancon, but fell prey to the
classic Eagle problem of ‘just losing 3 fights to lone Goblins’.
You can also use Barge to make an enemy combat threat move
out of range of your models, especially after you’ve knocked them prone.
Elendil is super scary, but if he’s on the ground and has been forced to Make
Way more than 3” away from your Eagles then there’s no way that he can do any
damage in the following turn.
Finally, Barge is obviously excellent for objective play. To
start with, it’s a non-lethal strike that can be found all across your army; if
you desperately need to not break/quarter your opponent this turn, then line up
your Barges and get to work. And of course, while doing so you also get to
control the positioning of enemy models by Barging them away from objectives
and the like. You can do hilarious things to defend your Supplies, for example,
by charging 1-2 models and using them to Barge off (via forced Make Ways) all
the other models nearby that could destroy your objective.
With all these crazy tricks and sources of raw power, what
could possibly defeat an army like the Eagles?
How you lose: traps and combos
Eagles are super tough, with 3 Wounds at D8. For context, 4 S3
warriors average 0.15 of a Wound per turn of combat, which you will recognise
as a lot less than the 1.7-1.9 kills that the Eagle averages back against them.
So what does kill these majestic birds?
Traps. Once an Eagle is trapped (especially by S4 models),
it can die surprisingly fast. This is why it’s so critical to use Barge and
Hurls to rescue trapped Eagles wherever possible (although a smart opponent
will only allow you this opportunity on turns that you’ve got Priority). It’s
also why you want to maintain gaps of <1” between Eagles a lot of the time
in order to prevent enemy models getting around your flanks and trapping you. It
still takes an average of 9 S4 warriors to kill a trapped Eagle, but even 4 or
5 have the chance to spike up or strip a couple of Wounds.
The more advanced (and much scarier) version of this is an
opponent getting two heroes into one Eagle and trapping them. That allows for a
Heroic Strike/Combat combo, which is your worst nightmare. Not only does the
Strike probably guarantee that they have the higher Fight value, but the Combat
means that this will happen before any of your other fights (and thus before
you can Hurl anyone into the fight to defuse it). If those heroes and warriors
can cut down your Eagle, then they can Combat into another Eagle (or even
Gwaihir) to get double value out of the Strike and probably kill it as well.
It’s a lethal, lethal tool, and you should prioritise shutting it down wherever
possible.
As an extension of this, heroes or monsters who can call
Heroic Combats while natively possessing a higher Fight value than an Eagle are
absolutely terrifying for this list. You can read about Kylie carving through
my poor birds with Glorfindel and Earnur at Cancon in this article, for
example. As such, they are the perfect targets for things like Barge and Hurl
shenanigans to shut down their offensive power, or even semi-sacrificial Eagle
assaults. The Balrog can plausibly Combat through two Eagles in a turn, so
ideally try to keep him on the ground, outside charge range or just fighting
two Eagles at once. All easier said than done sometimes, but hey, I never said
the Eagles were unbeatable!
A lot of how to play the Eagles involves shutting down these threats, by killing enemy heroes, draining them of Might, or just whittling down the enemy numbers fast enough that they can’t consolidate in time to set up one of these big set pieces plays.
Conclusion: Are the Eagles broken?
Look, maybe. The large majority of my experience with Eagles
at this point has been at 850 points, where they felt relatively balanced as a
high skill army with a lot of tricks to play. But at lower points they have
absolutely felt broken, with the stats appearing to bear this out as well: pure
Eagles have a winrate of 65% overall, but a whopping 73% at 600 and below (Edit: at time of publishing these stats have fallen to ~63% and 66% respectively, so maybe the metagame is starting to adapt as people figure out their tricks).
There are a lot of factors in this, but Piercing Cry
certainly seems like the big one. At 850 it can be played around, but at 600
it’s certainly an experience. If anything about the Eagles gets adjusted in the
coming months, then expect it to be the game-warping power of Gwaihir’s big
screech.
In the meantime though, the Eagles are beatable.
Check back in later this week for a full breakdown on to weather the storm and bring
down some birds.
And in the meantime, may you always win those critical Move-offs!
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