Follow along with me as I put together my first army list and take it to my first tournament!
Let me say up front that I am not 100% brand new to MESBG. I have collected the minis since the game was originally released and played a few games over the years, but I have never been invested enough to have a fully painted army. Most recently I played a couple games on Tabletop Simulator, and the last time I played a game on a physical tabletop was in high school, using the rules and minis that came in the Two Towers boxed set. Recently a local gaming acquaintance invited me to join a small, 1 day tournament happening in May. After decades of being casually interested in the game, this is the kick in the pants I need to finally make a dent in my Pile of Opportunity!
The first thing to do was to select a faction. I have not participated in many tournaments, of any kind, so to start with I will not concern myself with chasing any meta. Instead, I want an army that looks cool, feels thematic and has some clear advantages. Let’s take a quick catalog of my minis and what inspires me. For the record, shamefully, almost all these models are currently unpainted, but that is what we are here to solve, at least for one lucky faction! I have the War of the Rohirim box totally unpunched, which gives me Rohan and Hill Tribesmen, but apart from the heroes there are no special units, and most glaringly, no riders for the Rohirim. I have a bunch of Mordor orcs with command and a troll, two Dwarf sprues and an unopened box of Khazad Guard, and a smattering of Gondorians.
I have always loved the aesthetic of the Gondorians, even if they do not match my reading of the books, so let’s take a closer look at them. I have a metal captain and banner, six plastic knights, four spearmen and four swordsmen, these last eight minis representing the last remnants of my ancient Return of the King boxed set. A quick review of the Armies of The Lord of the Rings book shows that this is not a bad start for a Minas Tirith army list. A quick check of the Frontline Gaming Second Hand Shop had some Warriors of Minas Tirith available, so I scooped them up, knowing I would need more foot sloggers. Next, I need to nail down what heroes I will need and do a quick eBay check. Gondor has a lot of great heroes available to it in a number of lists, making this a hard choice. It doesn’t look like this will be as simple as a gut check, I will need to open up a list builder and start counting points.
The point limit for the tournament is 550. It’s not huge, but its enough to get some fun stuff. After doing a lot of reading up on all the different lists and heroes I settled on a Minas Tirith army with Faramir as my general. Boromir is an absolute beast, but Faramir is half the cost of his brother, before any wargear upgrades, and he has good synergy with the knights in this list, giving them +1 fight value on turns in which he and they start within 6″ and charge enemies. Faramir gets a horse and shield, taking him up to 125 points and I put four knights in his warband at 15 points each. Originally I had all six knights in the warband, but after doing A LOT of fiddling I settled on only 4, which I will explain shortly. Faramir could have 11 more models in his warband, but they would all be required to deploy with him, and I want the option of deploying him and the knights farther away from the main battle line.
Speaking of the battle line, it was time to flesh it out and explain my ultimate reasoning behind reducing the number of knights. The afore mentioned fiddling helped me determine that more points were needed to make two more warbands and get my model count up above 30. This was always going to start with my remaining models: a Captain leading a warband with a banner, four swordsmen and four spearmen, leaving space for three more models. I rounded out the warband with another spearman and two more swordsmen, leaving me with 168 points left. I played around with the idea of using a named hero for this warband, but most were too expensive and the rest were liabilities. Denethor is erratic and forces Faramir to charge in all instances, plus I would be required to make him the army general. Irolas is only 65 points, but he is meant to synergize with Denethor, so I took a second Captain. Originally I gave him ten archers to max out my bow limit, but realized this would leave me short on front line troops, so I dropped it down to 8 bows and put in 4 swordsmen.
The final list is:
And there we have it: an even 550 point list! Total model count is 31, with a break point of 16 and quartered at 24. After the minis in my collection I need to acquire 1 Spearman, 6 swordsmen (and 4 more to serve as dismounted knights), 8 archers, Faramir (foot and mounted), and another captain. Alal of the warriors plus several extra are on their way from Frontline Gaming and I sourced a mint Faramir on eBay. The only missing item is a second Captain , but the tournament allows 3D printed proxies and I have a file I want to use. The next article will be a hobby blog showing all the minis and detailing the plan of action to get them tournament ready. In the meantime, pick my list apart in the comments, please!
What issues will I run into with this list? Do I have too few spears? Too many archers? Am I relying to heavily on my knights and Faramir to do the killing? Let me know what you think!
