Army List Review: Fangorn

The sales pitch: 

Does being hasty fill you with dread? Do you have an overwhelming hatred of Orcs? Do you enjoy painting brown? Then do we have the army for you! An all monster list that has become surprisingly effective in this edition with some very fun new rules to keep it interesting.

What makes it tick?

Fangorn has had a bit of a glow up this edition. All monster lists have really benefitted from the reduction in Magic, the introduction of the Dominant rule and an increase in powerful thematic special rules. In particular now being able to make a strike at supporting models if they kill the model in base contact with them, making them much more effective at clearing out chaff. These all come together in Fangorn to make a really fun army that is super quick to get on the tabletop.

A standard Ent is F7, S8, D8, with 3 attacks and 3 wounds. This is already great for 100 points but then you add in, Fearless, Terror, Dominant 3 and an obscene S10 Throw Stones attack with 18" range!! That is truly insane and means that opposing Monsters and Heroes can be dealt with at range instead of in combat. You can also assign a particular flavour to each Ent in your army and each one comes with a fun special rule:

Beech lets you reroll 1s to wound

Oak gives you +1 wound

Chestnut gives Mighty Blow

Ash gives you a 3+ shoot value and lets you move half and shoot

All of these are great, with perhaps Chestnut being slightly situational. I don't think there is a wrong answer to which you pick but my personal order would be Beech, Ash, Oak, Chestnut, just because I think the Throw Stones is so much fun. The caveat to these is you can't take multiple of them until you have 1 of each etc, so no entire forest of models wounding on 3s rerolling 1s which would be a bit much.

Then come the heroes. there are 3 to choose from, though Treebeard is compulsory. You'll want him anyway though as he gets upgraded to F8 with 4 wounds and 4 attacks, as well as Dominant 5. He also has his shoulder mounted gatling cannons in Merry and Pippin (they have a S1 Throw Stones which is very funny when they wound something). They also count as models for your army's model count so breaking the army is difficult as you have to kill multiple Ents to do so!

Beechbone is also F8 and 4 wounds but only 3 attacks. However he gets rerolls to wound against Orcs, Goblins, Uruks and Isengard making him especially good for Good v Evil tournaments. You have to be careful with him though as he always has to charge these models if able and he doesn't have any Fate so can be liable to getting swarmed.

Finally Birchseed (he'll always be Quickbeam to me), is only F7, S7 and 3 wounds. He also has only 1 Might but 3 Fate so he's another one that you need to be careful with. You do get free Heroic Moves of the opponent chose to take Priority, which is pretty good but as Ents don't have Monstrous Charge it's also not the end of the world for you to move second so this guy is definitely the third choice out of the heroes.

Lastly let's look at the army list special rules. Ents have a bunch of immunities to Magic, including, most notably, Transfix. They also get a unique Brutal Power Attack called Bludgeon (not technically an army rule but they all get it). It's the same as last edition but for the uninitiated you pick up an enemy model in base contact and use it to whack all the other models in your combat. Each time you do both the whacker and the whackee suffer a S8 hit. If your whacking stick dies that doesn't matter and the attack keeps going until you fail to kill a model in base contact. However, it is important to note that this does not combo with the new Monster rule of being able to hurt supports as it is not a Strike but a Brutal Power Attack. I think there is definitely less use for Bludgeon now as the ability to hit supports is just so good when you attack normally. You can max out at 6 Strikes (assuming spears not pikes) when attacking normally whereas Bludgeon only targets those in base contact. You'll need to make a decision as to which is better situationally but it is worth noting that Bludgeon could stop before you have killed anything whereas with Strikes you'll always get all of them.

Assembling your Army

This is very easy, GW literally only sell 3 models for Fangorn: Treebeard, Birchseed and an Ent (though Beechbone has literally just been announced this week!). The Ent kit is very customisable though so you can definitely make a variety of different looking Ents from it. There is also a metal Ent that occasionally goes on Made To Order so keep an eye out for that. See how I converted one here.

Possible Pivots

None! Currently Fangorn is Fangorn and that's it.

 

Pros:

Every one of your models is high quality and can duke it out with the best of them.

Very strong ranged attack.

Dominant means they actually have play in objective scenarios.

Cons:

Low model count.

No access to fight rerolls. Once you are out of Might and fluff your roll you may be in for a bad time!

Some scenarios are very tricky for them (Recon and Destroy the Supplies in particular)

 

Lists & Discussion

As with all of these reviews, we’ll start with an ‘entry level’ list that you might want to aim for as you start collecting the army, and then move on to something more fleshed out.

These aren’t necessarily super-optimised lists, but they will be built in a sensible way that capitalizes on what think are the strengths of the list – and where possible, in a way that doesn’t mandate buying a whole box of infantry for a single model!

List #1:

At 500 points the choice is between the 3 heroes or Treebeard and 3 friends. I think I lean towards the extra body as at 500 points there aren't going to be a huge array of threats across from you and an extra body is really helpful in most scenarios. It also means to be broken all of your Ents have to die which is a tall order for other forces at 500 points.

 

List #2:

Here I have just added the two extra heroes. At 800 you really need the Might so they are a bit of a must at this point. I've split them into 3 squads. You have your all rounder squad in Treebeard and the Ash. They are happy to power forward or hang back and be on rock duty as needed. Beechbone and Beech Jnr are your angry squad, they want to get stuck in and use their rerolls. Birchseed and the Oak are the speed squad using Heroic Moves to get where they need to. The Oak here also gives an extra bit of bulk to this portion. Really though you want to keep them all together as much as possible to stop yourself being surrounded and taken out. 

 

 

On to the scores! Each category is scored out of ten, and we’ll explain below each score what it is we’re looking for.

Theme: 5

How well does this army encapsulate a moment from the books or films? Are all the right models present and does it feel like the moment it’s based on?

Power: 9

How well does it fare against other armies? We’ll be assuming that this is based on the Army’s ‘preferred’ points range, as it’s not very useful to assess how Lurtz’s Scouts performs at 1000pts, or Barad Dur at 300pts.

Cost & Collectability: 8

We’re looking at entry level cost to the army, how many purchases are needed, and are the models available off the shelf?

Hobby factor: 7

How good are the models? Are we dealing with shiny new plastics or stinky old finecast? Does the army require any converting, and does it lend itself to cool and unique paintjobs?

Fun factor: 7

How fun is that army to play, and crucially, how fun is it to play against?

Total: 36/50

Scoring this was tricky as every time I went to write a high number I had a thought that stopped me doing so. Theme-wise, obviously they are Ents but there isn't really anything to capture their biggest moment in the story: The Last March of the Ents. I like that they lob stones and can't be moved but it seems odd they don't have a fear of fire or get extra wounded by it. In terms of Power, from what I have seen they are just really good so they get a high score! Cost & Collectability and Hobby factor both have ups and downs. Ents are cheap and are really fun to convert, but that conversion is pretty much mandatory over 500 points so depends on how you feel about it. Plastic Treebeard is really lovely though. Finally Fun factor, they are super fun to play with but I am not convinced they are fun to play against. I have in the past just stood 3 Ents still and killed off two out of three heroes with rocks before they even got to me. I felt bad about that! There is something about playing by the seat of your pants that I really like though, and I've never had a bad time with the Ents!