Army List Review: Defenders of the Pelennor

Dan Stu: In a change from the last 2 weeks of highly restrictive army lists, review #4 takes us over to the Pelennor for one of the most iconic last stands in all of fiction! 

The sales pitch: An honest to goodness, traditional salad-type army list with tons of crunchy variety and only a light, low-calorie dressing. By which I mean this army is heavy on the roster size, light on the special rules. If you’ve got the old Pelennor box set, if you’ve built up a sizeable collection of Good models and want to run a supergroup, or if you want the closest experience to the old allies matrix but in the new edition, this is the list for you.

Credit Games Workshop

What makes it tick?

Disclaimer – as this is such a massive roster, we won’t be doing a deep dive on any of the specific units, which will be covered in much more detail in future instalments.

Remember list building? Like, actual list building, with tough decisions and opportunity costs? That’s what this roster offers. The beating heart of this list is its unbelievably good selection of top and middle tier heroes. Whereas most lists in ‘new SBG’ revolve around a single main hero and a smattering of named or generic captains, Defenders exudes so much star power it would make Varda herself blush. Your massive hitters are Aragorn, Gandalf and Eomer, supported by Legolas, Gimli, the King of the Dead, Theoden, Eowyn, Gamling, Irolas… The list goes on. Whereas a lot of new edition army lists can be accused of building themselves, that is certainly not the case for Defenders.

The troop selection is equally varied, with a broad selection of warriors including cavalry options from Rohan, great all-rounders from Gondor and super-heavy brawlers from Dunharrow. You’ve even got really robust ranged options from skirmishing Riders, longbow-wielding Citadel Guard, and even a trebuchet if you’re feeling frisky.

And while your army bonus only gives you one special rule, it’s a good one – a free heroic combat, once per game, per hero. If we compare this with Riders of Theoden’s ‘Death’, it’s very favourable – the free heroics aren’t gated by your General being alive and within range, and don’t all have to be called on the same turn. Definitely powerful, and potentially game-deciding if used well, either to blitz enemy troops to even up the model count, or to make a play for a key enemy hero.

However, there is a slight catch. Not only do your troops not get any special rules - there is an opportunity cost in that they are also not gaining value from army bonuses they would have had in other lists. It means no +1 strength on the charge for your Rohan cavalry, no  +1 fight value bonus for your ghosts, no fearless Minas Tirith troops. Your rank and file are strictly limited to what is on their profiles, which may cause them to struggle in a world where a lot of armies' special rules give their troops an edge. This isn’t terrible for Minas Tirith warriors with their very robust stat lines and shieldwall, and they should probably make up the bulk of your troops allowing you to mitigate this shortcoming. However, it can sting for your more elite options.

A cool feature of Defenders is that it shares many units with other lists, so that you can often take a list built under a different army (e.g. Atop the Wall) and run it as Defenders. It's a nice change of pace - you can even 'ally in' a new hero to keep things fresh – again, trading in that list’s army bonuses to do so.

Some people have expressed a bit of disappointment in this list and in its evil counterpart, the Legions of Mordor, and their limited and fairly generic special rules. I think this criticism is fair, and speaks to the designers being cautious around armies with lots of list building options in a new world of highly restrictive armies. Still, I wouldn't have minded something a bit more thematic in an army list that covers so many memorable cinematic moments.

So all in all, what you lose in specialism and army bonuses, you’ll need to make up for in versatility, or by making some off-kilter skew lists at low points that might catch your opponent off-guard. It’s a supervised outing for old-school SBG list building.

Credit Games Workshop

Assembling your Army

Putting together a Defenders list is surprisingly tricky. The high cost of your big heroes puts you squarely in to ‘lean army’ territory (by which I mean you'll likely be running at a below-average model count), which is exacerbated by some of your key units (Aragorn, Legolas and Eomer) only being able to bring along expensive ghosts and cavalry in their warband. This means that if you want to assemble a strong shieldwall, which you probably do, you’ll need to ‘pay the Gondor tax’ by bringing the likes of Gandalf or another Gondorian hero. Their defensive troops just need to stand still and die slowly, as it’s the beefy & mounted heroes that will do most of the work, in what's known as a hammer and anvil playstyle. The doughty Irolas is a good choice to helm the battle line while your big hitters get to hitting.

A more elite infantry approach, if you're OK with added complexity in your deployment and being at the mercy of terrain and maelstrom, is a front rank of shield ghosts backed up by F4 WOMT or Citadel Guard with spears. The complexity is due to these troops coming from separate warbands, something I'm often hesitant to do as any disruption in your deployment can torpedo your game or force your heroes to deploy in restrictive locations. 2 of the current 6 matched play scenarios have irregular deployment, and scrambling to assemble your battleline at the start of a third of your games is not ideal - it can and will cost you games. That said, bumping up from a D7-when-in-shieldwall MT warrior to a D8-all-the-time ghost for 6pts is steep, but you get terror and blades of the dead in the bargain, as well as a convenient F4 support to sidestep the ghosts' lack of fight value. This sort of list building chicanery to mitigate units' weaknesses feels really reminiscent of old SBG, and I'm here for it. If you add Irolas and Citadel Guard with spears in the mix, then you're looking at a really potent infantry centrepiece. 

In terms of collecting models for a Defenders army, there are no wrong answers. Use the models you already have, followed by the models you want the most. Almost every named hero in this list is available in glorious new plastic sets, the only outliers being metal Gamling and resin Irolas, although they’re both lovely models. Each represented faction has at least one plastic troop option, with a few metal models still lurking about, like the Rohan Royal Guard and the Citadel Guard  - both still readily available. The Three Hunters gets you your unmounted plastic heroes, and Legolas and Gimli should probably find their way in to a lot of Defenders lists due to their outstanding value and versatility. You’ll need a banner, which can come from Gondor (Minas Tirith Commanders), Rohan (Mounted Rohan Commanders) or Dunharrow (Army of the Dead banner bearer). The army is ludicrously scaleable, to the point where you can use it for massive narrative 5000pt Pelennor re-enactments without even spamming generic heroes, so grab your favourite troops and go from there.

However, it’s worth saying that this army really comes in to its own at very high points. Defenders will still be adding named heroes when most other armies are spamming captains and banners. Its natural habitat is at points levels that are rarely, if ever, seen in competitive play - so it's really half way between a narrative and matched play army. If you want to run this list to its fullest cinematic potential, with all factions and their heroes fully represented, you’re looking at a huge number of purchases and hobby hours. Taking every named hero comes to over 1300 points before adding troops - that’s serious SBG endgame stuff. Bonus points if you’ve roped in a friend to do the same for the Evil half, with a massive Legions of Mordor list. Even more bonus points if you send us pictures of it.

Possible Pivots

Honestly, for newer players, I’d say this is really a list to pivot to, not from. It’s something you would run because you have the models to run it, not the other way around. Once you have a good chunk of the models, it’s not a bad army to aim towards at higher points.

The obvious counterpoint is that if you’ve managed to snag an out-of-print Battle of Pelennor Fields box set, in which case this list becomes a fantastic starting point, and I’d just pick up the Three Hunters to have a hero lead the ghost contingent.

If you’ve bought and painted models with specifically Defenders in mind, then you can take your Rohan, Gondor or Dunharrow troops and be well on your way to a full army. If you’ve gone for Rohan, for example, Riders of Theoden/Eomer are easily done. On the Gondor side you’ve got lists like Minas Tirith and Atop the Wall which are easily assembled if you’ve already got your block of troops. Return of the King is a particularly straightforward pivot from the ghosts, only needing a couple of heroes and a banner.

Credit Games Workshop

Pros:

Massive unit selection

Legolas

Proper old school list building

Multiple strong combat heroes

Access to Magic

Legolas

Free heroic combats

Cons:

No special rules to help troops

Cannot capitalise on the huge roster at low or medium points

Legolas (oops, this one is a Pro)

Lack of specialisation

Expensive troop options for most of your best heroes

  

Lists & Discussion

In these reviews, we’ll start with an ‘entry level’ list that you might want to aim for as you start collecting the army, 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:

This fun little kickabout was a happy accident from a slow-grow league in which our own Dan Slob wanted to run Return of the King at 400pts - only to find that , after including the mandatory Aragorn and King of the Dead, he was left with a pitiful 140pts to spend on ghosts (and any Dunharrow player will tell you that 140pts does not a lot of ghosties buy). However, ghosts are also present in Defenders, and Leggy and Gimmz come in at a really reasonable 200pts, offering up a huge amount of utility and resources for that cost – especially if you can keep Legolas ahead on kills, thus turning Gimli in to an effective 3A S6 F6 dervish. You could also easily add in Irolas, a banner, and a bunch of citadel guard to this list for a higher points option. 

Is this list in the ‘spirit’ (excuse the pun) of this Army? Debatable, but this is just the type of skew list building that’s often absent in the new version of SBG.

List #2:

Definitely more what you have in mind when you think of Defenders of the Pelennor! It’s all heroes, all the time. For 1000pts this list is very lean (our regular benchmark for 1000pts is 50 models), but with 5 free heroic combats (edit: 6 free combats, we forgot Pippin!), magic, several mega brawly heroes and a rather tanky (if small) battle line, it can do a lot of damage quickly. The 6 Citadel Guard could be equipped with bows, but the added punch they get from spear supporting near Irolas gives your shield wall a bit of teeth, something they're sorely lacking. Your plan here would be to anchor your 13-wide battle line against terrain, protect the flanks the best you can, and hope they last long enough that your heroes can win you the game.

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: 6 at low points, 10 at high points – we’ll call it an 8.

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: 6

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: 7

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: 8

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: 6

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

Total: 35

A tough army to score! Theme may be controversial, but I think in most standard points levels, only a small subset of the Pelennor will be represented. The power may look a bit on the low side, but in the hands of a skilled player, strong heroes, Magic, and free Heroic Combats will always create opportunities – as will list building options. Collectability scores reasonably well, as you can collect this army in all plastics, but the cost can seriously balloon if you want all of the options. The hobby factor scores high - a fully realized Defenders army is a serious hobby goal. The fun of this army really stems from its mass of list building possibilities. And from Legolas, of course.