Brindley is back with another article on why you should play Varangur!
Why Play Varangur?
Beat Face!
Varangur are a faction that notably excels at one thing, smashing face.
There are several other armies known for this kind of style, notably: Basilea, Elves, Northern Alliance, Ogres, Undead, and Herd. What sets Varangur apart from the others is their variety of hard-hitting, resilient hammers backed up by elite hero options and decent chaff.
For a quick intro to a few of the terms you may see in Kings of War, hammers represent your units that massacre whatever they come into contact with, anvils are your resilient tanks to take hits, and chaff are your throwaway units that can buy you the turn you need to get charges lined up.
The main hammer options, in order of decreasing mobility, are: Fallen, Mounted Sons, Direfangs, Reavers, and Huscarls. If you want the hardest-hitting units relative to cost, simply take that list in reverse order! While pricey, our lord option when mounted on a Chimera or Frostfang can devastate entire units.
As a theme list for Northern Alliance, you lose out on some of the NA infantry and large infantry options but retain everything that hits fast and hard. On top of this, you gain additional mobile units and hammers to play around with. If that suits how you would like to play, then this is the army for you! If you ever want to try both factions, you absolutely can since there is so much crossover between the two factions.
Terrain in Your Way, Just Knock It Down!
One of the things Varangur really excel at is their abundance of Strider and Pathfinder options, with 5 and 2 units respectively. Between these units and the ability to take magic items for Pathfinder or one-use Strider, we can easily get as many units as you could ever need to take advantage of terrain-heavy tables.
This is crucial for the army because our hammers rely on removing units in one hit, and being hindered makes that far more difficult to accomplish. By utilizing terrain, I’ve been able to force elite armies, who may otherwise outrange me, to take bad charges, after which I could begin removing their core units the following turn.
Unique Rules and Abilities
Several of the Varangur units have abilities that really stand out as fun, thematic options. Magnilde, our legendary hero, can fly once per game, which means until used your opponent has to always factor in her 20″ threat range!
The Magus has a Transfusion ability allowing him to transfer D2 wounds from a nearby Bloodbound keyword unit to a Draugr unit in the ranged phase.
The Jabberwock is a dragon that has been tortured and broken, resulting in the Feeding Frenzy ability giving it bonus attacks depending on how wounded its target is. We also can take Marks of Korgaan upgrades on some units to give them abilities based on one of the 3 aspects Korgaan appears as: Warrior, Reaper, and Deceiver.
Modelling and Thematic Freedom
Varangur as a whole not only have great potential for modeling opportunities (though typically you can expect GW’s Chaos models) but also have a badass background to their lore with the release of 3rd Edition (I covered this in my initial faction review).
Whether you want to follow a theme of Celtic historicals with a dash of fantasy, Viking raiders, or glorified followers of Korgaan, the choice is yours!
Personally I’ve taken the opportunity to continue what I’ve always done in Kings of War, and just keep adding models that I love to my army and figuring out what I can use them as. You can build whatever type of army you want with Varangur as well, whether that be elite, balanced, horde (thanks to Draugr), or even shooting heavy! Any of these options could win tournaments with practice and a bit of luck.
The Problem with Being Awesome
While the faction has a great variety of elite hammers, strong heroes, and fast chaff options, this also results in these units being relatively expensive. Assuming you play the army with a bag of hammers approach as I do, then you’re probably not going to have too many units in your list.
This means that deployment can be difficult if you are matching your opponent’s drops, and each loss of a big unit is keenly felt. A hidden aspect of elite armies that people don’t always take into account is that it also makes you more dependent on the luck of the dice.
Nothing turns a game around faster than when your 300 point hammer bounces off your opponent’s unit with snake eyes and proceeds to get flanked. Even more so when this happens multiple times in a turn! This can be mitigated in a few ways, however, such as building unit redundancy into your list (aka 2+ of each unit), adding in cheap drops such as Snow Foxes or Draugr, and a backup plan for that eventual snake eyes roll.
