So If you are wondering what a warband is, why it is and how it is built read on...
First off Your army needs at least one model.
This model has to be a hero.(Each army needs a leader)
Tht's right you need to decide who your leader will be before the game starts
There are 2 types of hero, those who can Lead and those who cannot, the later being independent heroes these have a crossed out flag symbol above their profile.
There are 2) types of units:
Heroes (these should have M/W/F in their profile)
Warriors (Do not have M/W/F)
Every hero counts as a warband, If the Hero can Lead, it may select up to 12 followers of the same faction.
These followers have to be Warriors, except in EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES*
Warriors can be monsters, cavalry, spiders, bats, infantry etc...as long as they don't have M/W/F!
That means they count as (1) unit of a possible 12 allowed, that's right you could have 12 eagles following Beorn if you want, or even Theoden leading 12 riders of Rohan into battle.
*EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES:
There the odd warbands out there which do not conform to some of the rules stated above, these are:
Murin & Drar (must be in the same warband, ellect one as the leader of the warband, the other becomes a follower, ie 1 in 12)
Eladan & Elrohir(see Murin and Drar)
King's Champion (3 models, as such the King's champion has a maximum of 10 followers)
The Fellowship of the Ring (can be 1 warband in their own right, in addition, bill the pony can be added if Sam is part of the warband, OR if it's just Frodo and Sam, then smeagol can be added)
Thorin's Company (This warband can be all of the 13 dwarves + Bilbo + Gandalf the grey)
The White Council (can contain up to 12 of the following heroes Saruman the white, Gandalf the grey, Radagast the brown, Galadriel, Celeborn, Thranduil, Legolas, Elrond, Arwen, Erestor, Glorfindel, Cirdan)
Mirkwood spiders and Fell wargs (in the Mirkwood list)do not need to be lead by a hero, meaning you could have more than 12 of them unlead (but you still need a hero in your force, if you have a spider queen from
moria, she can lead them)
Warbands Are there for 2 helpful reasons:
1)to re-balance the game after legions of middle earth, where you could field enormous amounts of troops, and as such up the amount of might in armies, for greater tactical options.
2)For deployment in games, it simplifies deployment, by deploying up to 13 models in one go it saves on time rolling for individual models to arrive, in certain scenarios that is.
NOTE: once you have deployed your warband there are NO rules that state that your models may not act independently or go walk about wherever you choose them to, that means they don't need to stick together.
The hero effectively leads his troops to the battle, then they do there own thing from there.
^^Could we please make this one sticky ringwraiths^^
