Guest Article: Brotherhood Sworn Knights by Warfactory
Welcome Bannermen,
Today we’ll continue our overview of the Combat Units for the Brotherhood Without Banners. Did we really say units not unit? Yep, we will be talking about units and it’s going to get interesting.
The Brotherhood is a very inclusive group and among their ranks you can find not only smallfolks and common soldiers but also knights.
Brotherhood Sworn Knights have an impressive defensive stat line. At Defence 3+ and Morale 5+, it makes them extremely resilient against most attacks and panic-based strategies. They excel not only in defense though, with 7/5 dice hitting on 3+ with Sundering, they tear through enemy ranks with ease. More importantly, if the enemy does not control Crowns they may re-roll any dice. This makes this unit very reliable, and we are not forced to charge constantly to maximize their offensive output.
Brotherhood Sworn Knights synergizes well with the Peasant Levy which not only increases the number of expected hits (with Gang-up and re-rolls we may be almost sure that we inflict 8 hits with Sundering) but also makes them even harder to kill (thanks to Disrupt). Furthermore, the Brotherhood Sworn Knights' Rally the Smallfolk provides extra healing to friendly Infantry units too.
While they are not as deadly as other cavalry armed with lances, they don’t rely heavily on charges and are far more effective when engaged compared to them. Remember, 8 points is a huge investment and you need to be sure that the Brotherhood Sworn Knights will be effective in your armies!
Ok, so what is the deal with other units?
They represent the men sent with Beric and Thoros to seek out Gregor Clegane in the Riverlands (or at least what remained of them). Or the deserters and broken men that found shelter among the ranks of the Brotherhood without Banners.
We really love this idea. This grants us access to 15 Stark and 15 Baratheon Combat Units, allowing us to choose lance cavalry, light cavalry, archers, heavy armored infantry, hard-hitting infantry, cheap core units, elite units… Madness! It seems that the designers took into account feedback on the Bolton release and found a solution to allow interesting list building options while shoring up their weaknesses.
It’s extremely important to emphasize that this Stark or Baratheon Unit is not included in the neutral limit, allowing for 2-3 non-Brotherhood units as well. It represents the Brotherhood theme very well – they don’t care who you are as long as you swear to protect the Seven Kingdoms and its people.
We are sure you already have an idea what unit to add to your Brotherhood army. To be honest: we cannot decide. And the number of choices will be growing with each release of the Stark and Baratheon units.
That is all for today, but we still have a lot to cover!
Warfactory Team