List Review: Besiegers of the Hornburg

 The sales pitch:

Do you love Trolls? Do you hate banners, fury rolls, fight value buffs and winning games? Then throw Usurpers in the bin, Besiegers is the army for you!

Credit Games Workshop

What makes it tick?

OK, that intro was a little harsh. Maybe undeservedly so. But it is impossible to talk about this army without comparing it to Usurpers at every step, and the comparison is… not favourable. Fortunately, we covered Usurpers a few weeks ago, so you can refresh yourself on it here! In brief, Besiegers is a very similar army composition, but you trade out Thorne and Freca and get the Troll Trio instead, along with a new smattering of army bonuses (or should I say, penalties…!) As a result, I would treat it as a stepping stone on the way to Usurpers, or as a spin-off if you want to play something slightly different.

Starting with the good stuff, your warriors get a +1 to wound within range of an objective – a good start. Hordes really love wound bonuses and this gives them some surprising teeth, albeit in only a third of the current scenarios. Past that, Wulf gets a free Heroic Challenge vs the enemy general once per game – neat, he usually wants to kill the enemy general anyway.

*Checks notes* that’s it for bonuses. Let’s get to the army penalties.

Wulf must be your leader. Oh dear. He’s great in Usurpers because he can be a hero-seeking ballistic missile on a horse, and you lose no VPs for trading him for a high value target. Not so for this army – you will need to keep him safe or risk conceding VPs - which is not easily done when he must charge an enemy model if possible. Oh dear oh dear. Smart opponents will use this to bait him in to combats he wants no part of, especially if he’s got a 10” charge range. Finally, Shank, Wrot and the Snow Troll can’t benefit from Dunland heroics, and vice versa – we’ll get to them in more detail later.

That’s it for army rules, but it would be prudent to spell out exactly what you’re giving up by playing this instead of Usurpers:

-          Two characters that provide Fight 4 bubbles to your troops.

-          Access to a War Horn.

-          Access to a sodding Banner.

-          An army-wide 6+ Fury save for your Dunlendings.

-          An army-wide +1 to wound Heroes.

-          Access to throwing weapons.

-          Ability to equip 2/3 of your models with ranged weapons (bows & spears).

-          Access to D5 troops.

-          The ability to have Wulf not be your General.

-          One of the best Hero assassin characters in the game (or half his toolkit).

I’ll be referring to this list a lot, so let’s call it “Exhibit A”.

Credit Games Workshop

When I say that the Troll Trio needs to do some serious heavy lifting, it’s because those are the boots they’ve’s got to fill, as you’re getting damn near nothing else in return for losing the above.

So are they? Yeah, they’re pretty good. Shank and Wrot are both F4, S4 D5 with 2 wounds 1 fate. Wrot packs 3 attacks, which is pretty good and can be used to fuel the ‘Loot the Bodies’ special rule – whenever either of them gets a kill, they roll a D6, with a 6 netting you a VP up to 5 VPs. Wrot can also roll a second D6 and potential regain a Wound or Fate. I don’t see these rules winning too many games, until you’re against an opponent that can’t stop rolling 6s – but it is really fun, and could definitely make for some hilarious late-game hail mary plays (i.e. you’re 2VPs behind and your only chance to win is by getting some lucky kills), especially when troops are scattered and they can mop up some stragglers.

But let’s be honest, you’re taking these guys for the Troll. F6, D7, 3A, 3W – and +1 attacks and FV on a turn where he charges. Both 4A and F7 are a big deal, as charging will see you out-fight the likes of Eomer and Lurtz - and going from 3A to 4A equates to an expected 2 wounds increasing to an expected 2.66 wounds, when rending against S4. That’s likely the difference between an alive captain and a dead captain, or bouncing off a three-fate General versus sticking a wound on them. Also, if Shank gets to activate before the troll, he can spend a point of will to ‘Call the Beast’ and give the Troll rerolls to wound, pushing the expected wounds to 3.55 – huge. It also gives him fearless, which will help him to charge Terror-causing models, but will not help him stick around on the board, as if Shank is using his rule then he has already activated his Stand Fast.

However, let’s talk about that Charge stipulation. Given how powerful the bonuses are, that means we’re in the realms of heroic move offs – nobody is going to let you put their heroes at risk voluntarily. As we mentioned, the Troll can only benefit from heroics called by Shank & Wrot, limiting you to 3 per game, or an average of 1.5 successful charges during the might-spending portion of the game if we’re assuming your opponent counter calls every one of your moves while the Trio have might to spend and makes it past the Troll’s Terror. However, it’s not all bad news – let’s not forget Barge, which will be this guy’s bread and butter. It allows him to trade a fight in which he isn’t charging for one in which he is, so he will do this often. There’s the potential for smart positional plays where you keep him away from an enemy F6 hero, only to barge in to them to gain F7. Terror is your other get out clause, and if your opponent fails their courage rolls, you may well get a charge off that way. Plus, if your opponent is using bodies to fail terror checks to tie up your troll, that’s bodies that are out of the fight for this turn.

So the question on the lips of the nation is – are they worth it? Well, that depends. Are they worth 150pts? Yes, easily. Shank & Wrot themselves are probably 100pts worth of hero by themselves, and a Cave Troll – a worse Snow Troll – is 75pts. But are they worth trading in the list of advantages (See Exhibit A) that you give up from Usurpers? Safe to say I’m unconvinced.

For the rest of the army, we’ll refer you back to our usurpers article for the in depth run downs. Wulf is still Wulf – albeit now he’s your General, has to charge, and doesn’t get +1 to wound enemy heroes (this one really hurts his assassin role), but does get his free Challenge. He still always wants his horse and his opponent still wants to take him off it ASAP. The ‘must charge’ is a bit brutal as his D5 is particularly weak to S3 troops, so a smart player will lure him in to a tar pit of warriors, at which point as soon as he fluffs his duel roll, you may as well cut him in to soldiers and dip him in to an egg, because he is toast.

Targg is still Targg, and is generally overshadowed by a pair of Chieftains. Those same Chieftains are still great value – however, they lose the mean trick of taking a 2H weapon and gaining +2 to wound enemy heroes, which I was a huuuuuuge fan of. Crebain are still Crebain (from Dunland!) Your Tribesmen are now locked at F3, making them even squishier and way less killy against most armies. They still bring the same bag of tricks and the same rules apply – max bows, plenty of spears, then sprinkle in torches and two-handers, but don’t sleep on the naked guys. (There must be a better way to phrase that…)

As a final point, I’ve just got to harp on about quite how bad not having access to a banner is. It sucks.  For the record, I really, really like what they’ve done with the rules for banners this edition – they’ve doubled down on them scoring for scenarios, while making them more difficult to pass along, and taking away their ability to spear support. They are now a true battlefield liability that must be protected, as they can account for up to 20% of the VPs. Keeping them safe is a tactical minigame in itself. All very cool and thematic – and yet there are still armies that can’t take them! Besiegers, as well as other armies, will be starting some scenarios at a 4VP deficit - more than the points for killing the leader or breaking in most scenarios. It’s like playing on hard mode. No bannerless army can ever be top-tier, regardless of their power, because they don’t have access to all the VPs other armies do. It makes no sense. It needs fixing. Rant over.

Assembling your Army

Buy the Battle of Edoras box, give the Rohan half to a friend (or keep it for yourself, to play Rohan or to use the Rohan Warriors as Traitor Rohirrim in Usurpers) and then pick up the Troll Trio. That’s everything you need to get up to 500pts (see List #1 below) and to its credit, it’s a fantastic budget entry to the game with only 2 purchases needed (we won’t entertain the idea of running this list without the Troll Trio). This new edition has been fantastic for decent entry-level armies, and this is one of the best examples of that. The only issue is that Usurpers itself is also a very beginner-friendly army - alongside all its other advantages (see Exhibit A).

Beyond the initial purchases, you’ve only got Crebain and more Tribesmen to add. Crebain seemed to be a hot button issue for our Usurpers article – they are fantastic and you can certainly go heavy on them, but with accessibility and budget in mind we’d recommend just one or two to start with. As there is still no Chieftain model, you’re looking at proxies or conversions here – but there are tons of shabbily dressed evil Men out there that could sub in for the time being.

Credit Games Workshop

Possible Pivots

We’re parroting the Usurpers article again here – but you’ve got Usurpers of Edoras itself (pick up Thorne and Freca and some Rohan Warriors if you haven’t got them already), or you can take your Tribesmen and fast forward to the War of the Ring and play them as Army of the White Hand, which requires a few more purchases but can itself pivot nicely in to the Isengard scouts lists.

Pros:

Extremely cheap to collect

Great starting point for new players

Troll Trio are powerful and have some fun tech

Wulf & Tribesmen are still fun

Cons:

(Please refer to Exhibit A)

Very, very few reasons to play this over Usurpers

Almost no troop variety

No Banner

Poor courage

Squishy

Low Fight value

Army bonus not useful in all scenarios

May have to double-call Heroic Moves

 

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:

If you are approaching this game as a self-contained board game with a friend, and have no interest in tournaments or endless expansion – you can absolutely make this list and stop there.

List #2:

If you’re thinking it’s basically the same list but bigger, you’d be correct. Besiegers runs out of variety around the 600pts mark, at which point you’re spamming Chieftains. Still, this army has got plenty of bodies, two large threats and a decent Might pool – though this will dwindle quickly if you’re trying to affect both the Troll and the horde with heroic moves. We’ve also put Targg on a horse, because the more threats we can give this limited army at 800pts, the better. 

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

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: 3

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: 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: 5

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

Total: 30

A measly 30 for Besiegers, and this is really propped up by the fact that the models are new, easily available, and overall it’s a very cheap army to collect. Theme takes a bit of a hit – if we’re honest with ourselves, the Troll Trio were kinda just there at the siege and weren’t really fighting with the Dunlendings, though this is somewhat shown by their inability to share heroics. The fun factor is buoyed heavily by the Troll and its funky rules, and if you’re wondering why it only gets a 3 for power… well, I’ll refer you to Exhibit A.

That’ll do it for our Hornburg coverage. If I’m honest, I’m disappointed in both of these armies, and would only recommend them as a starter kit for those not intending to expand their collections, as a change of pace for competitive players, or as a ‘just passing through’ on your way to playing either Usurpers, Army of Edoras, or other larger Rohan armies. Still, they offer variety to people who have bought or received the Edoras starter box and are not looking to build an extensive collection of miniatures.