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!