Bannermen! The North has been betrayed by House Bolton who have slaughtered the Starks at the Red Wedding. They are amassing in force to claim the North for their own, we must learn of what they can do so that we can be defeated, so play the role of loyal vassal for now as we tell you of the initial information of the faction, but never forget, the North Remembers!
Own Faction?
Asmondee Spain has released a bunch of details on their site about the new Bolton additions to the game.
From the box art it seems like Boltons will no longer be Neutral anymore sporting their bannered pink colour scheme. From the contents of the new expansion boxes, it looks like only one set of rules will be included. However, the Starter Set seems to come with two sets of the rules for the Characters and Units that are currently Neutral available.
Could this be how all Neutral forces work in the future? A Golden Company faction with the Young Griff forces would be something that fits this design whilst also preventing Targaryen Faction to be muddled with this force. Stormcorws could follow a similar route with the other Captains and Slavers being the characters. Mummur’s are not one I would recommend doing this with as they switch factions so often and are only on their own when the Mountain is forced to tear them from Harrnehal, however they have so many characters and at least a handful of other units you could make.
This does solve Brotherhood Without Banners however as they can be their own mini faction like the Boltons without a Neutral line up. The concept of Neutrals will remain the same with Hedge Knights and the Pirates being without a faction for the most part.
Bowmen and Spearmen
Both Units come with no Attachments within them and are 12 models. They also only have 1 Combat Card suggesting they will not be for the Neutral Faction and only for Boltons. Later in this article we can assume that the Cutthroats and Blackguard are still Neutral, however. It is also possible this will be the same from Flayed Men and Bastard’s Girls.
The Bowmen artwork shows the models utilising fire arrows, but the models do not reflect this. Perhaps CMON did not like how the Lightbringer models looked so didn’t do it here, resorting to leaving it in the rules. We do learn from the description that there is a supposed benefit to shooting at units that are engaged just like when the Boltons did this on the Greenfork. This could be a ranged version of Gang Up for the force. I do want to mention that whilst the models for the bowmen look great and are much better than previous bowmen in the game, there are still inaccuracies to how bows are used, for example the arrow is on the wrong side and there are added metal bits on the bow itself that serve no purpose. At least the length of the bow to where the string would be looks better.
Spearmen have been mislisted in two areas, they sport the image for the Heroes Box miniatures and the description is incomplete. The details do say they seek to always cause fear and panic among the enemy ranks whilst having not so great armour. Theorising what rules could be on the unit I don’t believe they will have any Morale rule that will double up with Attachments/Commanders if anything from the description they might have Horrific Visage as it is a defensive morale ability. We could see some brand-new Panic themed rules in this faction.
Starter Set
Contents – 9 Combatant unit cards, 13 Attachment cards, 4 Non-Combatant unit cards, 52 Tactics cards, 1 Special Rules card, and 56 miniatures.
The Contents make little sense, but I think I have worked it out; House Bolton will be its own faction and also continue to have some elements being a part of the Neutral Faction.
52 Tactics Cards is a lot, and whilst some recent releases come with multiple translations there is no combination of this that would make sense other than two versions. 14 Base Deck Cards + 6 Ramsay + 6 Roose = 26 Cards. So Bolton set and Neutral set.
4 NCU Cards suggest Walda and Jeyne are Bolton only with Roose being Bolton and Neutral NCU.
56 miniatures suggests that there are 4 Infantry Units (48) 5 named Characters (53) the 2 Bolton Captains from the Cutthroats (55) this then confirms that Blackguard are in the box as the last miniature is the Bolton Flayer. This follows the structure of most Starter Sets available.
9 Combat Unit Cards is slightly baffling, 4 of these will be for the two Cutthroat Units for Bolton and Neutral, 2 for the Blackguard, and 1 for the Bowmen as the Bowmen box does not contain two cards. This leaves two left over which could only mean there is a third version of one of the Units in this box. I theorise that this is either a unique Honour Guard style Blackguard Unit for Roose/Ramsay, or it is a Roose specific Bowmen since he utilised them savagely on the Greenfork killing his own men. Eddard’s Honour Guard and Bonelord’s Chosen only showed up in their respective heroes’ box so it is likely to be here as well. The only other theory I have is that these two cards are Bolton Faction versions of the Bastard’s Girls and Flayed Men since these won’t get a physical version released.
13 Attachment Cards would be 2 Commander Ramsay and 2 Attachment Ramsay (4) 2 Commander Roose (6) 4 Dreadfort Captain (10) 2 Bolton Flayer (12) and Reek (13)
There is a special rules card here which might explain why there is a new faction of pure Boltons. Or it will be an allegiance chart allowing some Stark Units to be used by the Boltons such as Karstarks who ally with them in the Books.
Characters – Roose Bolton, Ramsay Snow, Walda Frey (Fat Walda) and Jeyne Poole (Arya Stark)
Units – My guess is that we will see 2x Cutthroats, 1x Bowmen, 1x Blackguard. We know from the listing that Bowmen and new updated Cutthroats will be included in the box, and with Cutthroats being a 5pts Unit I do think this is the duplicated kit. From the artwork of the box, we can see someone wielding a shield which is similar to the Blackguard but also is wielding their flail like weapons however it is possible that the Spearmen could be in this box instead.
Heroes 1
Contents – Steelshanks Walton, Skinner, Bitter Alyn, Ben Bones, Tybald and Damon Dance-for-me.
To note here, there are 14 cars in this box which suggests no new Neutral characters inside unless they are only Neutral. The only character I can see being this is Tybald the Maester since he is only mentioned working with the Karstarks.
Steelshanks Walton is the character charged with Jaime Lannister’s escort to King’s Landing by Roose Bolton. He is warned that Jaime must live and helps him defeat the bear from the Mummer’s when saving Brienne. He is a high-ranking Bolton character and surprisingly a very important one as he steals away someone claiming to be Arya Stark. He is known to wield a spear, so it is safe to assume he is the spear wielding character. I expect Walton to be the Commander in this box since there are only 6 Tactics Cards listed in the contents.
Skinner is a part of the Bastard’s Boys, a group of soldiers loyal to Ramsay Snow. There aren’t many notable moments for Skinner however he does flay Theon a bit for him and has some vile desires he boasts about. I only see him being an Attachment in this box and something like the Bolton Flayer Attachment.
Sour Alyn is likely referring to Sour Alyn who is a man-at-arms for House Bolton. He isn’t much of a figure in the books and really is just someone carrying out Ramsay’s orders of throwing people over battlements and guarding “Arya” from the supposed attack of Mance and the Spearwives. Very likely just an attachment in this instance.
Ben Bones is the Kennel Master for House Bolton at the Dreadfort. He is an old man tasked with looking after the Bastard’s Girls and was instructed to train them to kill wolves. He was also asked to make a collar for Reek. Ben Bones is likely an Attachment that should work well with the Bastard’s Girls and is likely the model with the rock on the base.
Tybald is the Maester for the Dreadfort and has not shown up in the books yet. He has featured in a pre-released chapter of The Winds of Winter which opens a floodgate of possibilities for characters CMON can utilise. Tybald is scared, he is with the Karstarks when they try to betray Stannis’s forces and makes a map of their position that was sent to Roose. He is then imprisoned. There is one NCU in this box and it must be Tybald, I imagine he will be 4pts and rules about knowing enemy plans. We can see the model with a Maesters chain in the image.
Damon Dance-for-me is another Bastard’s Boys member. He is known to use a long-greased whip, and that is it. He was present at the Dreadfort for some things and nothing more. We can see the model with a whip so safe to say it is him, he cannot be more than just an Attachment.
Seventh mystery character is not mentioned in the description for this box. It could be Grunt or two of the mysteriously murdered men-at-arms Luton or Yellow Dick. There are no clues or insights where we can correctly guess who is here.
Future
Things are looking bright for the game now post patch, an update to some old models with a release update kind of to the Neutral Units. It sets a possibility of Neutrals being updated in the future slowly due to how much they will need to do, allowing the players to have attention to their dwindling force. It does make me wonder if this same style will be done to Riverlands and The Reach some day.
This has sparked some ideas in me over the next few weeks so do stick around for some interesting discussions. In the meantime, we just saw a restock of the Bolton Flayed Men so grab them fast to start your new Bolton Army.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
