500 Under 50: Ents! (April Fool's article)

It's been a while since I wrote one of these, and with the fantaSTICK new Treebeard model having just been released I figured why not release a new 500 under 50 dedicated to Fangorn Forest?

Of course, the new Treebeard model will set you back £45 from Games Workshop directly, so as we normally do, we're going to suggest a much cheaper way to start the army.

We're going to tell you how you can get yourself a 500 point Fangorn list, with 3 Ents, Merry and Pippin for under £50! I kid you not.

First off we have the list:

Treebeard with Merry and Pippin
Quickbeam
Beachbone

A pretty simple list for sure, but one that will certainly pack a punch. 3 big trees all with Might points, you'll certainly be no slouch in combat!

Okay, so how are we going to put this list together? How are we going to get all of our three of our Ents for under £50? Normally, we'd tell you to go to your local game store, support your club and buy them from them with the usual 10-15% discount you normally find in those store, but today we're going to suggest you venture somewhere that may be unfamiliar to us gaming folk. The great outdoors!

Simply take a short walk to your local park and look for any twigs and sticks that have fallen from trees, careful not to break any off the trees that are still alive, else feel the wrath of the mighty Ents yourself.

Once you've collected up enough sticks, about 5 per Ent, make sure to grab a handful or two of grass and leaves too, they'll come in very handy later! Make sure you make a small offering to nature too, and simply throw some crisp five pound notes to the wind, letting nature take them as a thank you for providing you with such a bounty of building materials.

When you get back home, make sure not to dry the sticks out in the oven or anything like that, a lot of websites and guides will tell you to do this to avoid letting the sticks get mouldy and rotten over time, but if anything, this will add to the sheer realism of your army and details will effortlessly add themselves to your model over time, at no extra effort to you! 

Of course, you're going to need a few essentials, some glue and some blue tac will go a long way to aide in the construction of these mighty tree herders. You're also going to need a base, Ents come on 60mm round bases, and these aren't to expensive online, but if you really wanted to set these models in stone as being a legal Games Workshop model, you'll need a Games Workshop box, like the afore mentioned Treebeard. Simply cut up the box of the new Treebeard model into 3 bases and throw the weird plastic frames away that come inside it... You wont be needing those anymore!

When you have your bases it's time to start constructing the Ents.

For all of them we're going to stick to of the shorter sticks onto a small ball of blue tack to form their legs. Add a long stick to the top of the blue tac to for the torso, then simply stick the other sticks to either side of their torso to form thearms. Depending on how many sticks you collected, you may want to add joints into some arms to give them more realistic posing. This is entirely optional however.

This is the basic construction of all 3 Ents, there are just some details we need to do to really sell them as being each of the characters.

Treebeard, known for his impressive facial hair is easy. We're going to add a big dollop of PVA to his face, then stick a big handful of the grass to it. This gives Treebeard his mighty beard! Our list included Merry and Pippin to, you'll need to source these models yourself, eBay is full of them. You don't need any special models or anything, just a ball of blue tac under their bases and stick them to his shoulders. Easy!

Quickbeam, the fastest of all Ents will require a bit more modelling prowess. You'll need to make a pair of trainers from blue tac and stick these to the base of his legs... You can't run fast without running shoes! A classic Nike style tick will really sell these as “run faster shoes”, so your opponents will be able to recognise him instantly!

Beachbone needs to live up to his name however so slap on some of that good PVA and give him the trip to the beach that he's always wanted. (Are we sure we've got his name right here? Just want to double check so we're not called out on this - Slob)

Once your models have dried and are all glued together, stick them to their bases, plenty of glue should help here, but if you're having trouble a small ball of blue tac or green stuff will help.

When you have the models stuck to their bases, use the rest of the grass you collected to cover each base for a really natural realistic forest look. Feel free to raid your spice rack too, dried herbs and spices make for excellent basing materials! We've used a little Paprika (smoked, of couse!) to give the impression of flowers on Treebeards base... As well as a delicious smell!

Don't forget to paint the rims of your bases too, we've opted for black for that classy, Golden Demon winners look.

And with that your models are done..... Wait a minute... they look pretty dead and lifeless, not a problem at all! We're going to add some googly eyes! Why spend ages trying to perfect painting eyes? Simply glue two eyes to each model. Perfection!

And with that, your 500 points of Fangorn is complete! Be sure to let them models age to really get that natural look to them before you get them on the table!

500 Under 50: Angmar

Dan Slob: With the return of some key models to GW's stores we can have a good go at putting together a decent Angmar force for not too much money. Now fair warning, this is not going to contain any of the 'big names' in the Angmar list because they are either out of print (Gulavhar) or would eat up way too much of our budget (Witch King). So with that caveat out of the way let's look at what we need to purchase:

Barrow Wights (£8.20 for 2 from GW)
2 Wild Warg Chieftains (£8.70 each from GW)
1 Box of Mordor Orcs (around £20 from discount stores or even less on eBay/Trade Groups)
1 Box of Wild Wargs (£11 from GW)

This comes to a grand total of about £56. Not bad considering how many of these are direct only!

We are going to use every single one of these models in our list as we don't get many points per £ here! So the list is:

Barrow Wight

4 Orcs with Shields
4 Orcs with Spear
1 Orc with Two-Handed Weapon
2 Orcs with Bow
1 Orc with Banner*

Barrow Wight
4 Orcs with Shields
4 Orcs with Spear
1 Orc with Two-Handed Weapon
2 Orcs with Bow
1 Orc with Banner*

Wild Warg Chieftain
3 Wild Wargs

Wild Warg Chieftain
3 Wild Wargs

494 points, 34 Models, 4 Might (room to fit in 1 more Orc if you can find a spare somewhere!)

*These will need a little bit of converting from two of the Two-Handed Weapon Orcs, but a bit of brass rod and Green Stuff will see these done in no time.

The idea behind this list is to try and emulate the brutal Witch King/Gulavhar combo that does so well at higher points. Normally you’d throw an Immobilise with the Witch King at whatever you want to delete and then “Gulavhar” them. The Immobilise stops the enemy hero from Striking up to above Big G’s F7 so then he can knobble them. Here we are trying to do the same thing but sub out the Witch King’s Immobilise for the Barrow Wights’ Paralyses and Gulavhar’s combat power for a couple of Wild Warg Chieftains. 

Now obviously this is absolutely a poor man’s version of the tactic above but it can still be scary.
Paralyse is a better spell than Immobilise (though harder to cast here) and despite not getting to the coveted F7 that Gully has, F5 is still pretty decent from the Chieftains, and S6 is just brutal on such a cheap model. 

Surrounding these combo characters is a solid core of Orcs. You’ll want to keep them clustered around the Wights to benefit from the Army Bonus and this will really help keep the Orcs alive and in control. We’ve also got 2 banners which is a little excessive but we just can’t fill the points without spending more money! Is does mean your Orcs can spread out a bit more if they need to and the warbands are completely self contained so can operate independently. The Wargs can be used as flankers and to pull off traps when the lines clash, as well as grabbing objectives. 

Overall I like this list quite a bit and I’m amazed you can get it for around £50! If money was less of an object I think I’d be adding in Buhrdur instead of a Chieftain and a banner but alas that isn’t the point of this series!

So what do you think of our cheap scary list? Let us know!

The Conversion Corner - Easterlings & Khand

In this post, I'll be running through the bulk of the conversion work I did on my 'Men of the East' Easterling / Khand alliance.

The aim for this project was to unify both armies under the Easterling aesthetic as much as possible, as I'm a huge fan of it! I wanted the whole force to look like one seamless army.

For those interested in just the finished results - you can see them here.

Unfortunately I'm limited by the photos I took at the time, so I can't do a full illustrated tutorial for any of these models. There are, however, some new Easterling models in the pipeline which (in my opinion) could use a bit of work to match the Easterlings' visual style, so consider this post a little prelude to the full tutorial I'll be posting when those arrive through my letterbox.

Khand

First up, Khand! As I was trying for the Easterling look, most of the heavy conversion work was done on the Khandish models. Let's start with the model that inspired the army in the first place!

Khandish Charioteer, Chieftain on Chariot, King on Chariot

I think it's fair to say that the Chariots are the centrepiece of the army, so I really wanted these to pop. In fact, I made these chariots before I had decided to make a full Easterling / Khand alliance, and it was because of how well they turned out that I decided to expand upon the theme.

Fortunately, the chariots are fairly straightforward to convert, in that simply switching the rider and the horse for their Easterling variants gets you most of the way to 'Easterling Chariots'. I did decide to do a fair bit of extra work on them, but that's really all optional. 

For the riders, I used Easterling Warrior archers, as the pose is close to what I was looking for - a rider with the reins in one hand, and a polearm in the other. 

Before/after.

The conversion wasn't too tricky - I chopped off the bow, and then cut the model at both shoulders and wrists. The hands were easy to reattach at the correct angle with poly cement, and the arms were rotated and fixed in place with minimal green stuff. I also drilled 1mm holes through both hands. (Be VERY gentle when doing this! It's best to start with a tiny pilot hole and work your way up to 1mm slowly - the hands are easy to break.)

Here are the 4 riders after repositioning. I later removed the face masks of the bottom-right model and replaced it with a Kataphrakt mask, and this model would go on to become the Khandish King. 

I am really happy with the his pose, especially his bulky stance and the effortless way he holds his glaive - he looks very confident and threatening. This wasn't particularly intentional, as I was just working around the limitations of the model, but it worked out nicely. 

As Khandish Charioteers use hand-and-a-half axes, the logical weapon swap was an Easterling Glaive, the weapon used by Easterling Captains. I used blue stuff to press-mould the glaive's head, and fixed this on to 1mm brass rod with green stuff and superglue. 

Blue stuff mould of the glaive head.

As a side note, blue stuff is very easy to use, and I'd recommend that every hobbyist keeps a blob of it in their toolkit. This was my first time using it and it's very straightforward to pick up and start making parts. The glaive head was quite a fiddly shape to mould and involved quite a bit of clean up, but I managed to get 4 decent copies of it with a little bit of trial and error. 

Khandish King on chariot.

Here was the first 'proof of concept' assembled rider. I also stuck a Khandish flag to the back to tie them in to the Khand design a bit more. It also adds a nice dramatic vertical element to the model's silhouette.

Fortunately, I had a few unassembled Kataphrakts that I could test to see if I liked how they looked before committing to the idea (I did.) However, I needed a total of 8 horses - so I had to buy another pack of katas which I raided for their horses, making this quite a pricey conversion! (It all worked out in the end, as we'll see later).

Here are the four pre-assembled chariots. Getting everything to line up on the bases correctly was a bit of a pain and took some work! For the cobblestone base, I just used milliput and a green stuff rolling pin from Green Stuff World.

Everything base coated and ready for assembly. 

Assembling the reins was very fiddly, and unfortunately I don't have any good photos of the process. I took fishing line, painted it with an airbrush, and fed lengths of it through the gap in each horse's reins, just under the chin - so it looks like it attaches to the horse's bit. This was fixed in place with a tiny dot of green stuff, which I pressed tightly in to the crevice using a piece of brass rod as a tiny rolling pin. As the fishing line would be under tension, it needed to be really secure. This took a bit of back and forth to get right. 

I let the green stuff set for a couple of days and applied a dot of superglue to each side before touching the fishing line again. The fishing line was then fed through the hole drilled in the rider's fist, pulled tight, and superglued in to place. 

Author's note: I actually would not recommend using fishing line, and if I made these again I'd use something else. The fishing line is not optimal for a couple of reasons - firstly, it is quite springy and resistant to being bent, making it awkward to work with. Secondly, the shiny surface makes it incredibly difficult to glue in to place, and superglue takes forever to grab it - and even when it does it's not a strong bond. I'd heartily recommend using something else, such as model rigging, to anybody looking to use this method. 

I carried on tinkering with these models for quite a while, and made a few changes which included:

- Replacing the King's flag with the larger flag from the Khandish Chieftain, for a bit more drama.

- Adding magnetised Easterling 'crests' to the top of the flag poles so that I could run them as Chieftains, or remove the crests to make them regular charioteers. I used tiny 1x1mm magnets for this.

- Adding a 3d printed drake skull to the front of the King's chariot - both for a bit of flair, and so it could be more easily identified on the table. 

The finished articles!

Khandish Horsemen

The Horsemen were a bit of a happy accident. After I decided to bulk out the Khandish charioteers in to a full Khand contingent, the Khandish Horsemen had just been added back to the GW webstore, and I was wondering how I was going to convert them to look more Easterling-y. But when talking with a fellow hobbyist, I realised that I had some Khandish horses left over from the chariot conversion, and also the horse riders from the Kataphrakt kit which were languishing in my bits box!

I almost literally just needed to put 2 and 2 together.

This worked out quite nicely, as the Khand Cav needed to be visually distinct from the Easterling Kataphrakts I planned to run in the same list, and the unarmoured horses Khandish horses are instantly identifiable as the 'light cavalry' I wanted. We'll just have to ignore the fact that they're wearing full suits of armour despite only being D4!

There are a few in-between photos missing here I'm afraid, but here is the proof of concept for the Khandish Horsemen. 

As the chariot horses were never meant to stand independently, I had to secure them to the base with brass rod, but I don't dislike how it looks - it's not too noticeable when painted black. The horses themselves have lovely dynamic poses. 

The Kata riders are also quite flexible, which gave a nice range of posing options with the axes. My favourite is the guy that has his axe casually slung over his shoulder (top right of the below image). 

I knew I'd need to add bows, and creating dynamic 'archery poses' was beyond my conversion skill level - but I'm happy with these arrows and quivers which I ordered from Unreleased Miniatures. The quiver sticking out over the shoulder gives them a unique silhouette so they can be identified at a glance. 

I didn't like the look of the Easterling glaives on the horsemen - a bit too visually dominant as well as very impractical looking - so I press-moulded some Khandish axe heads and fixed these to 1mm brass rod and slotted them in to holes I'd drilled in the hands.

Here's the warband. I'm happy with the range of poses I achieved. In a perfect world, I'd have attached Khandish flags to their backs, but with the bows on there this really wasn't doable. 

Painted and ready for assembly. 

Annoyingly, I realised at this point that the Kata riders don't fit neatly on to the 'chariot' horses, as their thigh gap is too narrow. There are a few small gaps between the saddle and the rider. I thought about filing these down to fit better, but didn't in the end - it's not too noticeable on the finished models. But if I'd noticed the gap before painting, I'd have fixed it.

Painted up and ready for the table. (They're still waiting for the table... Thanks, covid!)

Khandish Warriors

I don't really foresee using these much in games, but I needed dismounts! Ideally, these would have matched the horse and chariot riders better - i.e., they'd have full armour. But I couldn't think of a way of making this work such that they'd be distinguishable from Easterling Warriors at a glance. I don't think an Easterling Warrior with a weapon swap would have cut it, so I decided to just use Khandish Warriors instead.

It's perhaps a little immersion breaking when a horse or chariot rider has to dismount and suddenly loses all his armour, but the tradeoff is that the Khandish warrior models are gorgeous and the robes add a distinct visual element to the army. Rule of cool wins out.

However, I did still want to tie them in to the Easterling aesthetic, so I decided on a simple head swap - which again, resulted in another box of Easterling models to raid for parts. In for a penny, in for a pound! (Or 26 pounds, to be exact. At least I got 4 more pikemen out of it...!)

Proof of concept for the Khand warriors. Snipping and filing down the heads to fit the masks was very time consuming on metal models - as well as being heart-breaking because of how nice those faces are!

Some of the helmets were quite tricky to fit - in particular, on the models where the face is partially obscured by the model's arm. These involved a lot of careful filing, trimming the bottom of the face mask to the required size, as well as a fair bit of green stuff gap filling - but I got there eventually.

The helmet fitting neatly over the collar at the back of the head was a really cool detail, and a complete fluke, but I am very happy with how it looks. 

All assembled and ready for paint. 

And with that, my Khand forces are done... for now!

Easterlings

I also added a few converted models to my Easterling forces. These were a lot less in-depth, but I'll add them here just so everything is in one place.

Dragon Knight

I wanted to run some Amdur and Double Dragon lists, but I wasn't a fan of using 2 identical DK sculpts in the same list. I noticed that the DK's arms were positioned in a way that would make them fairly easy to line up and insert a brass rod, and decided to make the second DK carry a polearm to fit this pose.

This isn't really in keeping with the rules, as they can't take 2-handed weapons. But again, rule of cool has to come first, so I went ahead. 

This was the proof of concept. I was actually very happy with how it looked, considering how easy it was to do. 

The right arm was chopped at the shoulder and repositioned, using green stuff to fill the gaps. Then both hands were chopped at the wrists and rotated. I'd recommend drilling out the hands before reattaching them! I gently inserted my rod, trying not to break off the hands in the process. 

I'm still really happy with this pose, for so little work - it really did feel like the model designed itself. Another happy accident! The upwards-swinging momentum of the horse and rider looks really natural, and I daresay I prefer it to the sword variant. 

For the blade, I simply used an Easterling Warrior sword with the handle chopped off. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best! I fixed it using a small 'doughnut' of green stuff and it seems secure enough - no mishaps yet, anyway.

After painting, I realised I wanted a bit more drama to the model, so I added some streaming cloth that I found in my bits box. I think these are from an Eldar Shadow Spectres kit from my dark 40k days! You never know what'll come in handy. 

Another little happy accident is the way that the streamers flick up at the end, matching the billow of the DK's coat tails. 

Finished model - happy with this one. 

Khamul the Easterling

I'm not massive on the Khamul foot model - I find the pose a bit boring and goofy. I decided to use the Dol Guldur model for the dismount, which meant I needed to do a head swap on the mounted version, and a weapon swap on the dismount. 

Nothing too tricky here - the hardest part was getting a decent press mould for the helmet, which is quite an awkward shape and had to be cast in 3 parts (the head and the two horns separately). It took a few tries, and the end result isn't perfect, but it beats buying 3 Dol Guldur sets (I will eventually be using the same method to convert a Fell Beast rider.)

Press-moulded Khamul head.

The mounted Khamul's original head was snipped and filed away, and the new head green-stuffed in to place. It took a of time bit to get the position correct on the model, but I'm happy enough with it. 

Finished and painted. 

And I think that about does it! I really enjoyed converting up this army, and for the most part it was very easy. There was no demanding sculpting involved, and all I really needed was a sharp hobby knife, green stuff and a bit of patience. I hadn't really done much conversion work before, so this was a great project to introduce me to it - I've certainly caught the bug, and will be looking to include conversion work in as many of my SBG projects as possible in the future!

Bonus Conversion - Easterling Banner Bearer

When adding a second banner to my army, I really wasn't a fan of the old metal bannermen - not without their charm but really showing their age - but I didn't want to buy a second Easterling Commanders set. I had inherited a couple of older metal banner bearers from a friend, so I snipped the banner and head off, and used a banner and a helmet from the Kataphrakts kit to spruce it up a little bit. I drilled a 1mm hole down in to the fist to make sure the banner had a secure attachment point. 

Very easy to do, and really brings the model up to date in my opinion. 

Okay, that's all! See you next time, when I'll be looking at a somewhat controversial new addition to the Easterling roster!

500 Under 50: Easterlings

Dan Slob: Since we started this series the Easterlings has probably been our most requested army list. However it is one that has proved uniquely difficult. Three separate members of the DC team have at, one point or another, tried and failed to put one together. However, as I was reading TMAT's excellent review of Cirith Ungol last night, inspiration struck. You see, the Easterlings have several things stacked against them:

1) Lack of available products (only 5 in print at time of writing)
2) Each of those products costs £20+ and you need at least 3 to make 500 points
3) Very low points per £ from the kits
4) The basic troops box contains as utterly bizarre mix of equipment that you would simply never want to use (only 4 pikes and 8 bows?! Come on GW, seriously?)

So how can we possibly remedy this? Well, as Tiberius suggested for Cirith Ungol, we can get around problem (2) and (3) by using Captain Spam! Now, fair warning, I am pretty sure this list is terrible, but as ever that is not the point of this series (to get started with an army cheaply). So this is what you will need:

1 Box of Easterling Warriors (Around £20 from discount stores)

1 Box of Kataphracts (£25 from GW)

And that's it! Total of £45! Very nice. Now to try and address problem (4) I will give two lists, one where you don't need to do much conversion at all (more or less just an arm swap and sticking some pike substitutes to the back of archers) and one where you can go all out on conversions. Let's take a look:

Easterling Captain with Horse and Shield*

4 Black Dragons with Shield

4 Black Dragons with Pike and Shield

3 Easterling Warriors with Bow and Pike**

1 Easterling Warrior with Banner and Pike***

Easterling Captain with Horse and Shield

1 Black Dragon Kataphract with War Drum

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

18 Models, 10 Might, 3 Bows

*I'd suggest using the one with the cape to signify your leader.

**Literally a toothpick glued to their backs will do, maybe some brass rod if you are feeling fancy.

***Use the banner from the Kataphracts kit and do an arm swap with one of your archers.

(Also before you think I've gone mad, we are keeping 4 Sword and Shield models aside for dismounts)

Ok so lets try to overlook the obvious negatives (low model count, capped at S4, no Strike, etc.) and look at the positives. What we have here is an elite, fast moving force with an abundance of Might (seriously, 10 at 500 points is a lot). You'll have a small Phalanx of foot troops as your core block (4 wide 3 deep) that should be at F4 most of the time as your anvil, and 5 Captains as your hammers. With a Drum and Heroic March you can really get moving with these guys and should be able to run rings around you opponent. I'd recommend trying to anchor you Phalanx between scenery while you Captains run around the flanks to trap models at the rear. You should also have a decent shot in objective based scenarios as you are so mobile. 

So if you want to make the list better and don't mind doing some conversions you could instead try:

Easterling Captain with Horse and Shield 

4 Easterling Warriors with Shield 

7 Easterling Warriors with Pike and Shield 

1 Easterling Warrior with Banner, Pike and Shield 

Dragon Knight with Armoured Horse 

1 Black Dragon Kataphract with War Drum

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

Easterling Captain with horse and Shield 

18 Models, 10 Might

So here we have basically traded in all our Black Dragons for a Dragon Knight upgrade to one of the Captains and more shields for the troops. This gives you a better way to deal with scary characters as you now have access to Strike. However you are going to have to convert one of your mounted models to have a second sword arm instead of a shield and probably press mold more shields and pikes for your foot troops. Definitely all do-able but perhaps not something you would want to do if you are newer to the hobby. Alternatively you could just drop an extra £15 on the actual Dragon Knight model himself.

Featured here is fellow DC writer Dan Stuart's Easterling forces.

So there we go, a task previously thought to be impossible has been accomplished. Never mind that the list is never going to break the meta (we are talking about Easterlings here after all) but it is definitely something you can have a lot of fun with. Let us know what you think! We'll be doing a follow-up article soon looking at how our other Dan at DC went about creating his Easterling force through some very crafty conversions to help bolster your force!

Top 10 Good Heroes of Valour

So in the run up to Valourbowl (see here: LINK) we will be doing a series of articles on the Heroes of Valour in the game, starting out with which ones we think are the best! In short, Valourbowl is a 500 point tournament where, in addition to the usual 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc, the grand prize is for the player whose nominated Hero of Valour achieves the most kills over the tournament. Now we should say straight away that this ranking is as it pertains to trying to win the Valourbowl, i.e. who is going to get the most kills over a 4 game tournament. We considered each hero with their most common loadout, as they are usually seen at tournaments (with only a couple of exceptions), and we also considered them more or less in isolation (i.e. we didn't give too much thought to the lists they might be in).

The way we did it was we made a big list of all the Heroes of Valour in the game and then we each chose our top 10. We assigned 10 points to 1st place, 9 points to 2nd etc and then added up everyone's scores to get an amalgamated top 10. 

Honourable Mentions

After we amalgamated the top 10s we had 16 characters altogether. The 6 who didn't make the top 10 were:

Eorl the Young (1 point): 10th place on Colm's list, this guy has all of the Rohan hero stats (F5 S4 3A + mounted) with the added benefit of getting his Might back on a 4+

King of the Dead (1 point): 10th place of Dave's list, this guy's mediocre stats (F5 S4 2A) are made up for by the fact that he can 1 shot kill almost anything in the game using his Drain Soul ability.

Galadriel (2 points): 9th place on Dave's list, the Lady of Light is actually surprisingly good in combat. F6 S4 3A are not what you'd expect for someone whose main job is casting.

Haldir (3 points): 8th place on Dave's list, Haldir has an impressive F6 but S4 2A and no mount stop him getting much higher.

Eomer (5 points): 10th place for Steve and 7th place for Dave, Eomer can be scary on the charge with F5 and S5 thanks to his army bonus. Should Theoden or Eowyn die he goes into beast mode and gets +1 to wound too!

Dwalin, Champion of Erebor (7 points): 8th place for Dan and 7th place for Steve, Dwalin on a goat is fearsome indeed. F6 S5 3A Burly, two handed axe and mounted on a Goat for a possible knockdown is not something that is easily dealt with.

So those are the honourable mentions, lets get on to the top 10.

10th Place: Boromir of Gondor (9 Points)

6th place for Dan and 5th place for Colm, Boromir of Gondor is a very common ally when a force needs a cheap beat stick. We considered him to be fully kitted out (Horse, Shield, Elven Cloak) as that is how he is most commonly used. He has Might coming out of his ears and is F6 to boot, plus he'll have 4A on the charge. However he does have some obvious downsides. 1 Will means he is easily blunted by magic and 0F means that he won't stick around as long as some of the other heroes on this list. He is also "only" S4 and has no way to improve his wound rolls so that stopped him climbing much higher up the list.

Joint 8th Place: Gwaihir (10 points)

The first model on 3 out of 4 lists (10th for Dan, 8th for Colm, 5th for Dave). Now I know what you are thinking, Gwaihir is a Hero of Legend, and that is true unless he is taken as part of Radagast's alliance in which case he is Valour. Monsters with Might are excellent and Gwaihir is no exception. He is F8 S6 3M (only 2A but with Monstrous Charge it goes to 3), and S7 if the army bonus is up. Having Fly is also huge as it means he can choose his targets much more easily than most other models. Really it is just the 2A that stops him climbing higher up the list.

Joint 8th Place: Isildur (10 points)

This guy managed 5th place for Dan and 9th place for both Steve and Colm. We considered him mounted with shield and The Ring, and the blood of Numenor is strong in this one! F6 S5 3A are about as good as a "Man" model gets, and when coupled with being mounted you have a scary hero indeed. The Ring also gives him a bit of utility with all of its various abilities.

7th Place: Beorn (11 points)

9th for Dan, 8th for Steve, 5th for Colm. This guy is just a beast (obviously). In his human form he is already great (F6 S5 3A Burly with a 2 handed axe) but in his Bear form he is just terrifying. Mv 8", F8 S8 3A and he gets whatever MWF that Beorn had. F8 cannot be overstated, there are very few models in the game out fighting him without the aid of Strike. Added to this is his Crushing Strength brutal power attack. Basically you choose a model and continue doing S10 hits to them until they die or you fail to wound. Absolutely horrifying. The thing that holds Beorn back is a really disappointing (and surprising) lack of Monstrous Charge.

6th Place: Celeborn (14 points)

This guy only made it on to 2 lists but Steve placed him very highly at 2nd, while Dave placed him 6th. It't not hard to see what Steve likes so much about this guy. F6 S4 3A are becoming the standard in this top 10 so we have to look at what then makes him stand out: Lord of the West. Getting a reroll in the duel roll is really good but not that uncommon here, however also being able to reroll a wound roll is huge. Added to which he is a good spell caster and will mostly be using spells to benefit himself. Enchanted Blades gives him even more re-rolls to wound (and +1 to wound if Channelled) and Immobilise allows him to get the upper hand in a Strike-off if needed. If this guy had a horse he would be a force to be reckoned with.

5th Place: Aragorn, Strider (26 points)

The first hero to make all 4 lists (7th for Dan, 6th for Colm, 4th for Steve, 1st for Dave). Now it is important to note that we have taken Strider on foot with Anduril. This is because he is overwhelmingly seen in the Return of the King Legendary Legion and that is how he comes there. Now I am sure that I don't need to tell you about Strider but in case you don't know, he is all about his free Might point and his 4+ to wound anything. Something oft-forgotten is that he can also go two handed to wound anything on a 3+. The reason he didn't climb higher than 5th in total is that he will only ever have 3 dice to wound as he isn't mounted. You absolutely could mount him but then he costs so much that you have to start wondering is it worth allying him in.

4th Place: Glorfindel (27 points)

This guy only made it on to 3 lists (3rd Dan, 2nd Colm, 1st Steve) but placed so highly on those that he has ended up 4th altogether. Glorfindel distinguishes himself in three ways: he is naturally F7 which is higher than most heroes without needing to Strike; he has Lord of the West (see Celeborn); and he counts as always having Fortify Spirit active. That means he is very good in combat and also hard to control in the normal ways (through magic). He's also really good at riding Asfaloth, with both Expert Rider and Horse Lord to keep him mounted longer.

So now we come to the top 3, all of whom featured on all 4 lists. You'd be doing well with any of these 3, though I think at this point the army around them becomes more of a factor as they all cost a pretty big chunk of your points. 

3rd Place: Dain Ironfoot (28 points)

5th Steve, 4th Dan and Dave, 3rd Colm. Dain (like Gwaihir) is normally a Hero of Legend but when taken in Erebor Reclaimed he becomes Valour. That does mean he won't get his Master of Battle rule but otherwise he is still an absolute beast. F6 S5 (and Burly with a two handed hammer) 3A and mounted on his trusty Pig. Not having the Master of Battle definitely hurts against Striking heroes but against troops there isn't too much that can stand up to him. He'll be wounding most troops on a 3+ and elite ones on a 4+ and if he doesn't kill them he has a 1 in 3 chance of knocking them down anyway thanks to Headbutt. His Pig is also very hardy with D6 and 2 wounds so he'll be able to stay mounted longer than your average hero. 

2nd Place: Bard the Bowman (30 points)

6th Steve, 4th Colm, 3rd Dave, 1st Dan. We have kitted out Bard with a horse and armour (alas no Windlance) and have also assumed that Sigrid, Tilda and Alfrid are in his warband. For 50 points there is really no reason not to take these 3 considering what they do to Bard. He goes to F6 (standard for this list) but also gets to call a free Heroic Combat every turn. This cannot be overstated. He gets to fight twice as often as everyone else FOR FREE (ok obviously he'd have to win to fight twice but you know what I mean). He also gets up to 3 shots per turn with his S4 Great Bow which means he can start the killing earlier than most heroes and has utility even if he can't get into combat. Bard's biggest drawback is his defence of 5, meaning if he does lose a duel he'll need to be careful not to go down quickly. He also needs to stay within 6" of the girls to stay in his Final Form but this isn't too bad as they can be safely behind the lines.

1st Place: Boromir, Captain of the White Tower (36 points)

3rd Steve, 2nd Dan and Dave, 1st Colm. Super Boromir retains all of the positives of Fellowship Boromir while also addressing his weaknesses. He gets an extra pip of defence, 2 extra Will and 3 extra Fate as well as becoming the coveted F7 (obviously we have taken the Banner because why would you not). Anyone who has played against Boromir knows how scary he can be. I could regale you with stories of him taking out Strider in one go via a surprise Heroic Combat, or taking down Bolg in single combat but I would imagine most of you have felt his effects before. His biggest downside is that he is 215 points which does limit your numbers, but as Minas Tirith has a plethora of cheap heroes he can bring with him this isn't too much of a problem.

So that's it! What do you think of our Top 10? Anyone unexpectedly missing? Perhaps your favourite Valour hero didn't make the cut? Or do you think our ordering is just all kinds of wrong? Well tune in next week where we'll be pitting the Top 8 against each other in a single elimination bracket to see who comes out on top! Place you bets now!

Drawn Combat Painting Competition: Febarad-dur

This month we have the dreaded cold month of Febarad-dur, but we've been warmed up over here at DC headquarters by all the entries to this month’s painting competition! All of the entries are below and we have everything from the Dark Lord himself, to filthy Orcses and venturing into Shelobs' clutches.

As Spring rolls towards so does the 'Last March of the Ents/AngMarch'!You can enter via Instagram by tagging us in the photo (@Drawncombat) or emailing us (drawncombat@gmail.com). Even if you didn’t enter last month then don’t worry, we’d love for you to get involved anyway! If you take it part in 10 out of 12 months we will send you a Drawn Combat dice and enter you into the competition to win a Games Workshop voucher!