My last article covered getting started in the game of Conquest with the human faction in the Hundred Kingdoms, and this week I will be covering another amazing faction Para Bellum created for their world of Ea. The Old Dominion are a faction made up of undead soldiers and constructs reanimated from the power of the original god that men worshiped on Ea. The Hundred Kingdoms faction are all refugees of the lands that are now inhabited by the undead Old Dominion after the Hundred Kingdom’s ancestors fled their god going mad to make everyone very undead. While their god going mad wasn’t great for the Hundred Kingdoms, it did create the undead faction of the Old Dominion which is my favorite in the game of Conquest.
The Old Dominion starter set comes with a complete warband that includes one character and four regiments and it is is a great way to start, or even just add to, an Old Dominion army. The character included in this starter set is the Strategos who, as his name kind of implies, is the more strategic of the melee characters. While the Xhiliarch’s warlord ability can let regiments in his warband perform two attack actions per activation (an amazing ability in a game that limits you to one of the same action per activation), the Strategos gives the once per game ability to perform a free Reform or Combat Reform action with all of your regiments. This may seem like the weaker of the two once per game abilities, but in practice getting free reforms can be a huge deal in a rank and flank game like Conquest. The first time you are able to free reform and charge your opponent from a direction they thought they were safe from will prove how powerful this once per game ability truly is. The Strategos also has an added bonus to his supremacy ability that once per game you can treat the Dark Power level for your army as one higher. The Strategos also allows your army to get to the fourth tier in the Dark Power pool. This is the faction ability of the Old Dominion, and taking a Strategos or Xhiliarch as your warlord is the only way to get to the most powerful tier of Dark Power. There are a couple different ways to get Dark Power, but the main way is to lose stands of your regiments. After losing a certain number of stands your army gets access to increasingly powerful buffs, so the Strategos letting you jump one whole tier for a round is a big deal!
The first of the regiments that come in the one player starter set are three stands of Legionnaries. These are the most basic melee regiment for the Old Dominion, so their stats aren’t anything to get excited about. That isn’t to say they do not have a purpose when added to an army list. Just the minimum points investment into this regiment gets you a decent chaff unit that can move up the board to harass your opponent while getting you Dark Power points from their sacrifice. However, these guys don’t need to be only a sacrificial lamb regiment. The starter set comes with enough bits to build 6 stands of this regiment (assuming you don’t build any of the Praetorians which we will talk about next), and 6 stands of Legionnaires with an Aura of Death upgrade can be extremely annoying for an opponent to deal with.
The Praetorians are the more elite infantry that can be built from this set. While their offensive output is nothing to get excited about, their defensive stats can get to some of the highest in the game. This box can build a minimum unit of 3 stands of Praetorians, or you can choose to skip the Legionnaires to build all 6 stands as the more elite infantry. However, before going all in on the Praetorians, it should be noted they are a restricted choice for the Strategos. This means that you must take one mainstay choice for every restricted unit you include, and this box set already comes with 1 restricted choice for the Strategos. If you are adding to a current Old Dominion army this isn’t a huge deal, but if this is the army you will be starting out with it is probably best to build the Legionnaries and Praetorians both to get a feel for each regiment’s strengths and weaknesses.
The second mainstay choice for the Strategos is the Athanatoi. These are elite bodyguards that get a huge number of attacks. A typical infantry stand comes in at 4 attacks generally, but these guys pack a whooping 6 attacks per stand. They even have the counter attack rule to get hits back on your opponent when they roll 1’s to hit. Unfortunately, that is the only defense built into this elite unit. With a low Defense of 2, and no way to get it higher, Old Dominion players will need to position this unit carefully on the tabletop to ensure they get the first hits off.
Last, this box comes with some absolutely amazing cavalry models in the Khataphraktoi. These elite cavalry are all about making devastating charges into the enemy to deal huge amounts of damage from their Impact Attacks. This unit requires some finesse to play correctly just like the Athanatoi. These guys absolutely need to be charging enemy regiments to be worth bringing along in your army list. Getting them charged, even by your opponents chaff, can be one of the worst things to happen to the Khataphraktoi. As all of their damage potential is focused on getting the charge off they might be stuck for a very long time if charged themselves. If you do get the charge off with this unit though they will absolutely crush your opponent’s regiments with their Shock and +1 Impact attacks from their Memories of Old action.
This box set is the perfect way to get started with the Old Dominion faction in Conquest. For just over one hundred bucks you will have a fully functioning Conquest warband coming in at 735pts without any upgrades. This is the perfect amount to start learning this amazing game before building up to full games at 2000pts. If you want to see if Conquest could be the rank and flank game is for you Para Bellum has the full rules and army builder available for free on their website and FLG has plenty of awesome Conquest models for sale (at an awesome discount!) in their webstore!