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For anyone who knows me even slightly, they will probably know I'm a big-time Dwarf player and fan. In fact, I haven't been to a competitive event since the start of the latest edition without using one of the dwarf factions. So to say the release of some new dwarf models and profiles is exciting is an understatement. It also leaves me in a good position to look at these new profiles and evaluate their balance and worth on the tabletop.
Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain
Right off the bat with Dain, we can see he has a stat line most would expect from a Dwarf lord. He has lost a point of strength and 2 points of fate than his younger counterpart but remains the same otherwise. I would have like to see him retain defence 9 of the first incarnation of the 'old Dain' profile (from back before the Hobbit films) to make him stand out and bring something different, but defence 8 isn't the end of the world.
Dain has also now swapped his hammer for his famous red axe Barazantathul; the in-game benefit is probably equal, so no big loss or gains here (check out my thoughts on the special strikes here). An interesting little thing to point out is it can be used single-handed as well as with both hands, It may seem a bit silly not to go for the +1 to wound as you have no downside, but sometimes you don't actually want to kill your opponent so that can help in those situations.
A loss from Young Dain to this profile comes in the Heroic Actions. He still retains Strike but has lost March. This is big for dwarf armies, where Heroic March is essential to any list. I had expected this loss but was hoping he may get Heroic Defence in exchange, sadly this is not the case, and Dain is left with 3 fairly pointless Heroics and 1 useful one in Strike.
Dain still has fearless and now also gains the King Under the Mountain special rules. This essentially means that when your army is broken, and you get to move first, no one is running away as long as they have a line of sight to him. This is pretty much the same as Thrain, although it only affects Erebor Dwarf Models, not all Dwarf keyword models.
The Last special rule is Venerable, making it harder for him to jump and climb but really shouldn't have a huge impact on the game but worth remembering just in case.
As an overall look at the profile, I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with his rules and stats; it's pretty much what you would expect but nothing groundbreaking either.
Dain Vs Dain?
This new Dain profile will inevitably be compared to his old one. I will only be comparing the models on foot here as that is the only way this new one can be fielded.
Straight off the bat for 10 points cheaper, you lose a lot compared to his younger profile. If we follow the convention of 5 points per increase per stat for heroes, this latest profile does not look great. Losing 2 points of Fate and 1 point of Strength already places him 5 points over costed comparatively.
Next, we go onto special rules; Both Dain's have the fearless special rule, although the new Dain has lost the Headbutt rule. Not a major issue, but it was nice to have, and nothing has replaced it. One major difference here is the Standfast Benefit in exchange for the 12" fearless bubble. Both are good, and both affect heroes, but I would go for the fearless bubble if I had to choose one. It's going to be more useful more often, and realistically the board-wide stand fast will rarely make a difference over just-auto passing courage within 12".
The last exchange is the Venerable rule for the necessity of Charging once combat has started. Both realistically aren't that detrimental, but Vulnerable is maybe slightly less so.
Overall I would still give the Dain, Lord of the Iron Hills profile the edge in special rules compared to the new Dain, King Under the Mountain profile. Combined with the stat decreases, the 10 points reduction does not seem enough to justify it.
Note - This is not even considering the 4+ Master of Battle army bonus he gets as part of the Iron Hills list instead of Erebor Reclaimed.
Dain VS the other Dwarf-lords
I will be the first to admit though I believe that the Dain Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills profile is maybe not the best comparison as it is probably one of the strongest in the game. For this reason, let's compare him to some other dwarf lords briefly.
Thrain is the most comparable to this new Dain. Both have an almost identical special rule, stat line and equipment. The key differences here are that Thrain has +2 fate, Heroic Defence, no negative special rules, and a couple of situational positive rules. In exchange, Dain gets Fearless, +1 Courage, Hero of Legend over Valour and the Venerable special rule. I actually believe Thrain is the superior profile and yet comes in 10 points cheaper than Dain does!
Thror, the original King Under the mountain. With almost an identical stat line, however, there are some differences between the two models. Thor gets a shield to boost to defence 9, gets to re-roll priority once per game and has the Arkenstone. In exchange, Dain gets Fearless, +1 Courage, the Standfast rule and the ability to fight two-handed without the minus 1 to win combat. Both also only have Heroic Strike as a Heroic Action of note. Arguably these two are fairly well matched, with Thor the more resilient and Dain the harder hitting. The 10 points increase for Dain is just about OK on the face of it. Thror, however, isn't great value himself until you consider the ability to make Grim hammers strength 4 and his 6" banner effect. Taking these into account, Dain looks again to be a weaker option.
Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, is the main man of the Erebor Reclaimed list the new Dain Profile finds himself trying to replace. Again they both have almost identical stat lines, with the only difference being the +1 courage for Dain. Both have the same Heroic Actions. The main difference is Thorin gets to call free Heroic Combats every turn but gets no +1 to wound. It's an interesting trade-off, but I still rate the free Heroic Combat more here. Again we are in a situation where you have two models that feel roughly equal in ability, but Dain costs 15 points more.
Summary
To sum up the new Dain profile, it is what I expected, both stats and rules, with no surprises. This isn't a bad thing, though, but it doesn't present anything new for us Dwarf players. The biggest let down at the moment is his points cost. At 130 points, he is often too expensive or inferior to profiles competing against in similar armies.
Not all is lost though, these are only the experimental rules, and things are set up so that I imagine in the book we find this profile in he will gain additional rules to increase his value. My personal money is on him taking Thorin's place as the focus of the Du Bekar! Special rules and therefore become a 6" banner for the models in the army. If this is the case, I believe him to be of an accurate cost and well-rounded as a profile. But until then, your better off with one of the other Dwarf-lords.
Thorin Stonehelm
Adding to the pantheon of models named Thorin, we now have the son of Dain, Thorin Stonehelm (seriously, I think they may be more unique 'Thorin' named profiles than any other in the game now). Let's have a look at him then.
A Hero of Valour Thorin has a solid mid-tier dwarf hero profile. Fight value 6, strength 4, 3 attacks, 2 wounds, and courage 6 is very nice and suitable for a dwarf with his background. He does beat out some of his mid-tier contemporaries because he has 3 might, will, and fate on pure stats.
Equipment-wise he is armed with a hand-and-a-half pick (no master-crafted or burly though), shield and rather bizarrely heavy amour, not heavy dwarf amour. For me, this is where the first crack in the profile appears, not because it makes him more ineffective in any way, but it seems an arbitrary way of making his defence 8 instead of 9. Not only is it silly to suggest the dwarfs outsource their amour production for the son of the king, but it's unnecessary as well. Other Dwarf heroes are wildly inconsistent in the defence value benefit of dwarf amour anyway, so it's not for consistency. I personally think a 2 wound defence 9 model would have been something cool and different in the game; without it, this leaves the profile very standard.
Thorin does possess a nice selection of Heroic Actions. He sadly doesn't have Heroic March, so you will have to bring a Captain in this dwarf list. Luckily he does have Heroic Strike and Defence, the two next most useful actions.
Special Rules wise Thorin only has one, but it is a fascinating rule, Cool-Headed. This rule can be split up into two parts. Part one anytime Thorin calls a Heroic Action on a 5+, the action was for free. This is nice if somewhat not to be relied upon bonus. Because it only works on Heroic Actions, though, you will want to be making sure you spend your might only on these. This can be somewhat impractical as it is common to bump a combat roll or fate roll with might, especially on a 2 wound hero.
Part 2 of the rule is that Thorin can change what Heroic Action he called is after an enemy model has declared an action. This seems like a great little rule at first but is somewhat underwhelming the more I think about it. There are very few situations where you want to change what action you are calling. The most common occurrence with this is when multiple heroes are interacting with each other. Even in these cases, an experienced player will know what to call or what not to, it can help recover from a mistake if you catch it straight away, but I remain unconvinced it will be relevant in all but the most extreme cases.
Thorin Stonehelm VS Mid-Tier Dwarf heroes
Like Dain, it's worth comparing Thorin to his contemporaries to see how he fairs in my Dwarf Hiarachy of Heroes.
Gloin, Champion of Erebor, possibly the optimal mid-tier hero choice to be found in the Erebor Reclaimed list and will directly compete with Thorin for a place in your army. With a stats line almost identical to his, Thorin seems like a good place to start the comparisons. The first obvious difference between the 2 is that Thorin has +2 Will and Fate. When combined with Heroic Defence and the ability to shield, this is handy, making Thorin much more survivable. Gloin, however, has a much better damage output with Weapon master and a two-handed axe, plus he gets to re-roll 1's to wound means he has much greater damage output. Apart from those things, Thorin gets to lead 3 extra warriors handy but not make or break either.
When comparing these, I see two sides of the same coin. One is the ultimate mid-tier defensive hero, the other aggressive. Thorin's free heroic actions special rule and Hero of Valour could give him the edge, but it comes for 30 extra points! This completely knocks Thorin out of the running as far as I am concerned and makes Gloin the better pick.
Dwalin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor, is much closer in points to Stonehelm coming in at 5 points less. The biggest difference in profiles here is +1 strength for Dwalin and +1 Will and Fate for Thorin. That seems to be a fair trade-off for the 5 extra points at first. Things start to go downhill for Thorin again because Dwalin gets +1 to wound with 3 attacks or 4 attacks with no bonus to wound. Both options are much better than the 3 lower strength attacks that Thorin can put out. Thorin is more resilient with the shield and Heroic Defence, but a model like Dwalin will take some effort to bring down. You left with the potential free heroic being the saving grace, but I don't think that come anywhere near making the gap on Dwalin, certainly not to justify the increased price.
Things aren't exactly looking good for Thorin Stonehelm here, in all honesty, and I can't promise it will get better. Going outside of the Erebor Reclaimed list, now we have his namesake, Young Thorin. The two Thorins have the same stats (assuming taking the Oakenshield), but Young Thorin gets an extra wound; this is a big stat increase and makes his survivability much better. Both can shield, both have Heroic Defence and Strike, but Young Thorin can inflict a strength 4 hit if he does shield. Young Thorin can boost his strength and friendly Erebor Dwarfs within 3" by 1 for a turn. This is where I feel Thorin Stonehelm really starts to struggle to justify his cost. For 15 points more, he is less survivable with only a slight edge in his special rule (if that). I can't think of a way to justify this point cost against a good profile but not considered overpowered by any measure. Summary
If you hadn't gathered already, I am struggling to see a way of justifying the cost of Thorin Stonehelm. His profile and special rules don't do enough to make his including worthwhile, especially as there are better profiles in his own list than him. Although I didn't compare him to them, he is the same as some of you big Dwarf-lords I mentioned in the Dain section, but he can't compete with them. In fact, he is only 10 points cheaper than his father, who, even with his own cost issues, is miles better value.
To even more of an extent than the new Dain profile, we rely on any extra rules for Thorin to come out in a new book or Legendary Legion. Even then, I struggle to see if his profile and cost remain the same what realistically would bring him to a level to justify the cost. You're going to need something like a free Heroic Action a turn to make me consider him on the same level competitively as the other choices in the list.
Impact on the meta?
While I don't think either of these new profiles will impact the competitive meta as it stands, Erebor Reclaimed is a better list sticking with its normal form if going pure. The biggest impact this release has is opening up the option of Erebor Reclaimed as yellow allies for your War of the Ring era Armies.
These new allies present many new potential options to players who enjoy that kind of list building. One combo I can already see is teaming up with Minas Tirith to boost numbers and maintain that shield wall synergy between the 2 forces. If going down this route, I can't see any reason to take Thorin as the hero instead of Dain, though, but it will be interesting to see what people come up with.
It does raise the question, though, are these models purposefully over-pointed to compensate for these potential alliances? If so, is that a good way to balance the game? As it stands, the only way I can consider these new profiles as competitive is to do that exact thing and use them in an alliance. Going pure and theme with them is clearly sub-optimal for their cost. This may change when a book is released, and they get their own army bonus's, but at the moment, it's only encouraged non-themed play.
Conclusion
I have to say. For a release that got me excited, I am significantly underwhelmed to wrap things up. Whilst I believe these profiles will get better when the book's eventual release happens, both are below par as it stands from a competitive point of view. I am fairly confident whatever list or legion presents itself will make Dain good value. Thorin also needs a big boost and is currently suffering as maybe one of the worse value dwarf heroes in the game. Even other poorly costed Dwarf Heroes like Balin from the Kingdom of Moria list have redeeming qualities such as Heroic March. I am less confident he will get that boost he needs, but I am holding out hope. So for myself, Thorin Stonehelm gets a solid thumbs down unless something spectacular changes in the future.
There are other things that this release indicates that are good things to looks forward to. Dale is clearly going to get some love with some new heroes and hopefully become a fully-fledged force, and it's surely only a matter of time where we get them united in a Legendary Legion with the Dwarfs.
For anyone who is interested I have still pre-ordered the new models though despite the underwhelming profiles at the moment