You don't need to play Dale to beat the Eagles: How to deal with the terror of the metagame

 

Turns out the answer for how to beat the Eagles ideally involves some terrifying heroes. Who knew?

The Eagles are at (nearly) the top of the meta right now, and are living rent free in many a competitive head. Players everywhere are asking themselves whether they can deal with 6+ flying monsters, or what they do against a Piercing Cry in the middle of their lines.

Fear not, because the Eagles are beatable. They are a powerful and flexible list, but one that has real weaknesses that an experienced player can exploit. And today, I’m going to share those weaknesses with you, on the basis of 40+ games with the faction this edition. This article is building on yesterday’s How to Play the Eagles article, so be sure to read that if you haven’t (although I’ll summarise the key bits as we go).

Specifically, I’ll be diving into what makes the Eagles such a scary faction to face (for those not yet victimised by the list), before breaking down how you need to deal with them into two stages: Mitigation and Counterattack.

What makes them a nightmare?

The birds are really hard to face this edition, but why? What’s changed to take them from mediocre to bonkers? And how does this play out on the battlefield? I’d break their power down into four key points: their two consecutive charges, their damage output, their grinding power and their capacity to jump on objectives fast in the lategame.

When I talk about two consecutive charges, I’m describing the classic Eagle one-two punch of committing on a turn that they are moving second (using their 12” Fly moves), and then calling a Piercing Cry on the following turn to pin half your army. This allows them to charge twice without you getting to respond. Getting hit multiple times without options to counterattack is bad, and in smaller games can be enough to win the battle outright.

That couples with their crazy damage output to make sure that they are getting maximum value out of those two turns. I talked through this damage output extensively last article, but it’s remarkably high against either warriors or heroes. Against warriors, an Eagle will average nearly two kills per bird if charging into two spear-supported warriors, which can add up really fast – if six birds each kill an average of two warriors per turn in their first two charges, then most 600-point lists will be nearly quartered before they even get to move. Yikes!

Those are some big damage numbers!

This damage output is also excellent into heroes, who have a tendency to just vanish if caught out by a bird. There are definitely heroes who can survive 6 S7 hits, but they tend to be only the most powerful and expensive ones. And coupled with Barge and F7, it can be very hard to avoid those devastating blows.

On top of this, the durability of the list means that it can keep punching into the lategame. With D8 and 3 Wounds basically across the board, it’s never going to be easy to bring down and Eagle, and that just gets harder as you start losing resources. That’s especially true because a wounded bird is just as scary as an untouched one, and because they can keep doing all their Brutal Power Attack tricks into the lategame where you’re out of Might. And if you need to rely on Heroic Strikes to match/exceed their F7, then you may well be running out of Might even faster, while their native Fight value will still be just as scary as ever.

The large majority of these heroes end up being whittled down and killed in the long run

And finally, because the whole army can Fly, they have an unrivalled capacity to play the objectives in the lategame. They can beat up your list for 5 turns and then split up and fly two birds off the board in the final turn, or burn two supplies, or yeet themselves in to Dominant (3) all over the centre. This is what separates the Eagles from the Trolls or Ents, who can also stomp through lists quite comfortably: the Eagles can do that and then also win the game afterwards.

Core plan

Okay, so that’s what makes the Eagles so scary. To respond to that, we therefore need to mitigate the damage output of their first two charges, before counterattacking in a way that overcomes their durability and kills enough birds to prevent them from playing the objectives lategame.

Mitigation: blunting the first two charges

Realistically, the Eagles are going to be the ones charging you, unless your opponent is just really bad at the game (in which case, rejoice! The Eagles are actually quite a high-skill army, so you should be able to pummel that noob). However, if you play well you can force them to commit on a turn that they are moving first. That can be by shooting them a bunch – especially with siege engines – or by moving rapidly towards objectives in a way that forces them to charge in without being able to wait until they’re moving second. This is a big deal, because it lets you move in between their initial charge and their Piercing Cry, so they will ‘only’ get one turn of moving without you getting to respond.

As they’re engaging, do your best to limit the damage. This can involve using terrain to ensure that the birds can’t all get into favourable engagement spots, and using anti-fly formations to screen out sections of the board. If your opponent can jump straight over your lines and charge whatever they want, then they will do so and you will have a bad day. On the other hand, if you can stop them physically landing their birds in vulnerable areas of your battleline (because there are warriors standing where they would like to land), then they will be forced to engage where you want them to. See my final game at Cancon for an example of an opponent doing this to mitigate my damage output substantially.

Not a lot of good places to land a 60mm base here

While you’re doing this, hide all of your heroes (or at least the ones that can’t hit F8 reliably) extremely thoroughly. This can involve multiple layers of warriors, or clever use of terrain: an Eagle can’t Barge a solid wall out of the way, nor easily move into a forest. The reason you want to do this is because the Eagle player will be trying desperately to burn you out of resources, either by killing your heroes or by forcing them to Strike (i.e. ‘Bolging’). If you waste 2 Might on all your heroes in those first few turns calling wasted Strikes, then it will be very hard for you to come back from there.

If you can, you also want to still be able to call a Heroic Move on the second turn of combat. Chances are that you won’t bother to do so, because your opponent will call a Piercing Cry and shut it down. But if you don’t have the ability to get a lot of your army moving before theirs, then they may not need to call the Cry initially, and can save it for a third turn. You really don’t want that.

The key for this first turn is just to endure. If an Eagle has charged into two warriors with spear supports, don’t even bother with the spear supports, just shield: your chance of dealing 4xS3 hits back averages 0.15 of a wound, and using those spear supports adds about 0.6 extra kills per Eagle on average. Put another way, the spear supports don’t make you any more likely to win the fight relative to just shielding, but they dramatically increase your casualties when you lose. You may see a good avenue to counterattack on the first turn (and you should take it if you do), but generally you won’t. Instead, the key thing is to just survive, and retain sufficient striking force to counterattack after the storm has been weathered.

I'm returning to this table a lot because it's a really important one to understand when playing or playing against Eagles

You also want to be preparing for that Piercing Cry turn, primarily by limiting the amount of models that will be caught by it. Gwaihir is probably going to slam himself into the centre of your list and ca-caw, but if you have at least some models that will still be free to move then you can mitigate this somewhat. The key is particularly to have fast models on the flanks (especially mounted heroes) who won’t be caught, such that they can leap in and tag some birds before they get to move. Remember, heroes in the Piercing Cry bubble can still call Heroic Moves, they just can’t move: this can allow models outside the 6” bubble to still act before the Eagles, unless Gwaihir is willing to burn one of his 3 precious Might on a Move-off.

The caveat to all that talk of spreading out, is that there isn’t much difference between ‘unable to move’ and ‘too far away to do anything’. If you spread your list out too far, then the Eagles can just pounce on half of it and ignore the other half. This might be okay in some scenarios, but in general you need your troops to still be close enough together to be useful to you.

Finally, you’re gonna have to deal with Barge. In general, it’s fair to assume that an Eagle can get anywhere within your formation after a Barge, because frankly it’s really hard to stop. I’ve played 40+ games with this list and a good number against it, and even I often don’t see the Barge angle until it comes time to resolve that combat. Barge is incredibly flexible, as I covered last article, so don’t ever assume that an Eagle can’t get to your model unless you’re genuinely inside a building or forest.

Now this is safe from Barge

In saying that, there are ways to limit Barge. Screening more thickly than usual can mitigate it, but there’s an upper limit there. Instead, try to rely on base-to-base shieldwalls wherever you really need a bird not to get through. A model can only Make Way for a Barged model if doing so would allow the Barged model to Back Away the full 3”, so if there just isn’t enough space for the models fighting the Eagle to go 3” then your opponent won’t be able to force another model to Make Way. Your model will still get knocked prone, but you’re facing Eagles, so half your army is going to be prone most of the game anyway. And again, don’t spear support on turns that they’ve charged, unless you’re absolutely certain that they’re going to want to Hurl whatever they’re facing anyway (this might happen in a fight next to one of your mounted heroes, for example).

And as I mentioned above, terrain is king. Eagles are crazy, but they can’t see through walls, and they can’t Barge their way through terrain either. Forests are incredibly annoying for flyers as well. Use these things they can’t control –and their big bases sizes – to protect what you need to protect.

Don’t panic, just endure.

Counterattack: killing some birds

Once you’ve made it through those first couple of devastating turns, you’ll be absolutely hankering to kill some birds. As many birds as possible, with every stone you’ve got. Opportunities for counterattacks can happen on the first two turns, but generally speaking you’re expecting most of your damage output to happen on turns 3+ of combat. In particular, you’re hoping to get the kills when you’ve managed to win Priority/a Move-off, because swarming them is dramatically safer and more reliable when they don’t have all their charge bonuses.

There are two primary methods of killing Eagles, both of which rely on traps to overcome the incredible durability of the birds.

First, you can swarm them with warriors and hope. A trapped Eagle facing 4-6 warriors isn’t realistically dying this turn (unless you’re playing something like Ugluk’s Scouts), and it always has a minimum chance to win the fight of at least 33%. These random sixes will occur at the most annoying times for you, trust me. But nonetheless, if you can put 3-4 Eagles in this sort of position over multiple turns, then you will start dropping birds. I have quartered Eagle lists with Ugluk’s Scouts before, for example, just by swarming every bird and waiting for a few to flub their rolls and get dragged down.

Gwaihir could plausibly have died here. He didn't, but he could have

More reliable than this is the classic Heroic Strike/Combat. This is the absolute best way for most lists to deal with the Eagles, and there are very few ways for the Eagles to deal with it. It has three critical elements:

-         First, make sure you can get above F7 (generally through calling a Heroic Strike);

-         Second, throw enough dice to reliably win the fight and hopefully kill the bird. Ideally you’re stacking S4 here, two-handing, burning Might on wound rolls and doing whatever else you can to make this kill happen; and

-         Third, call the Heroic Combat. You’re doing this partly to give you the chance to kill multiple birds in one turn of combat, but also to guarantee that this fight happens before your opponent gets a chance to Barge/Hurl and disrupt your big combo.

If this all plays out, then you can chop down 2-3 Eagles in a single turn. And if you managed to get above F8, then you can even go into Gwaihir and take him out. If you can make that happen then you’ve basically won the game, or at least gotten most of the way there. In my last game at Cancon, Kylie’s Glorfindel/Earnur combo carved through two birds on the first turn of combat, putting me miles behind and reducing my damage output below what I needed to win.

9 times out of 10, this will be the way to beat the Eagles. Get these Heroic Combats rolling and do devastating damage, and you can hopefully mop up from there.

Conclusion: It ain’t easy, but it’s possible

The Eagles are a really powerful list in the new edition, and there are only two armies that have a legitimately easy time into them (Dale and Smaug). Every other faction in the game needs to respect that devastating combination of mobility, damage output, control and durability. All of which is especially true in smaller games, where there just isn’t as much that a list can do to respond.

Now this guy likes facing Eagles

However, I hope this article has given you hope that there are ways to take them down. If you can weather that initial storm, win a clutch Move-off or two, and start setting up those traps, then the birds will melt faster than you might expect. And if you can do all that while retaining your own key resources for the lategame and continuing to play the scenario, then you’re in for a real shot.

Until next time, may you always win the Turn 3 Move-off!