Update 2:
Here is a great battle report of the Others vs. Greyjoys from our friend Teemu over at 25 Years of Minis.
I'm still working on over 10 new scenarios featuring the Others faction, including the Fight at the Fist, Hardhome, the Wight Hunt, and the Battle of Winterfell. The first few should be posted in the next few weeks. As I playtest these scenarios I'm continuing to tinker with the faction, including changing the Undead Giant from 8 points to 7, as he's quite similar to the updated Savage Giants.
Finally, though I was initially hesitant to add them due to lore reasons (they're only a myth as far as we know as they don't show up in the main timeline), several people requested it and I'm a man of the people, so here they are:
The Ice Spiders are a traditional 4 model, 12 wound cavalry unit. They bring some much needed speed to the faction, but it comes at a high 8-point cost. Unlike most monster units, the Ice Spiders morale is pretty average. I've imagined them as sentient beings that prefer striking from the shadows, and they will run to save their own life (unlike the undead).
Update 1:
Added 2 attachments to help round out list building.
I’m also working on several custom scenarios featuring the Others, so I made some minor statistical changes to a few units to help with internal balance.
Decayed Wights: brought a little too much value over their 5-point counterparts, so I lowered their speed to 4 and removed the +1 wound from the Consumed by Fear ability. Their morale was also brought down to 6 from 7, which makes it a bit harder for them trigger Rise Again and feed more expensive units.
Berserker Wights: lowered their speed to 5, -1 dice on each rank, moved from 5+ armor to 6+. They were already an obvious choice for their offensive ability that they didn’t need to other stat boosts to stand out.
Cold Shadow: changed armor from 2+ to 3+. Having such a strong armor save changed their role too much, as they could be used as a roadblock rather than a true support piece. Their Unseen Terror ability was bumped up to Long Range to compensate.
Undead Giant: changed armor from 3+ to 4+, changed to Hit from 4+ to 3+. He was a little bit too tanky before, so this brings him back to being a more offensive minded unit.
Original Post:
A few months ago, the YouTube channel Le Bar à Théo started posting some amazing battle reports involving the Others and the Army of the Dead. Utilizing an updated version of the original custom Others faction created by Yannic Burr (which you can read about here on Teemu’s 25 Years of Minis blog), it inspired me to start seriously considering creating an up-to-date Board Man Others faction. As I said in my Plans for 2024 post after the A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics crowdfunding campaign:
“The other thing I talked about was the Others themselves, and once again CMON ignored them entirely. There are a lot of discussions online about how to incorporate them into the game, or if they should be in the game at all, but the discussion from CMON's point of view should be pretty simple: Firstly, do we have permission from GRRM to add them to the game? They've said in the past that if it's in the books, it could be in the game. Secondly, will this sell a lot of boxes? I think the answer is clearly yes. You then have the design team be creative and do their best to fit them into the game.”
The lack of any form of the Others in Tactics and the generally slow release schedule throughout 2024 had me thinking for the first time that a lot of stuff I hope to see in the game may never actually be released. While the Others are not my number one wish list item (that would be more characters from the main series, especially Edmure, Wyman, Willas, Garlan, and Aegon VI), I still think it’s something CMON should eventually release and something that could inspire a lot of new players to start playing (or at least buy boxes of undead minis for other systems). Now I’m not so sure we'll ever see them in the official game.
As mentioned, there have been a lot of interesting discussions online about whether or not the Others factions should even exist. The key points being:
They’re hardly in the book
No named characters for NCUs/commanders/attachments
The undead have no fear and would not work with current morale rules
The rest of this post will discuss how I designed the Others faction in a way that still embraces the core mechanics of ASOIAF:TMG while remaining true to the book lore, as well as differentiating this faction from the other 10 factions (as well as Yannic’s original).
DECAYED WIGHTS: A central aspect of the Army of the Dead is that they’re a horde. Their strength is in their ever-growing numbers rather than martial skill, military strategy, or politicking. One thing I didn’t want to do was just copy Endless Horde or Balon Greyjoy NCU and spam unit resurrection across the faction, as those effects are sometimes considered NPEs and I don’t think I could’ve balanced it properly with limited playtesting. This led to the Rise Again ability. The undead take morale and panic tests, and that unit may lose models this way, but those models will then be transferred to another unit (if able). Think of it not so much as running away as rearranging the troops. Sometimes this leads to a net loss and sometimes a net gain depending on the D3 roll.
The Rise Again ability opens up a lot of interesting strategies when playing the Others. Their opponent may not even want them to fail their panic tests (especially the 7-point Wight Horde unit), so you probably don’t want to be stacking vicious and a lot of other panic modifiers in your list. Corpse piles may make them stronger, while weirwood trees may negatively affect their strategy. It also takes skill and strategy to utilize this ability effectively, positioning your units so you can move wounds from a cheaper unit to more valuable ones. Being a horde army also meant that there needed to be a 4-point Infantry unit that allowed players to get 8 – 11 activations in their list (more on that later). Since this unit is so cheap it is horrible offensively. The best use of the Decayed Wights is to sit on objectives in the back or feed healing to a Wight Horde in the middle of the battlefield. Another risky option is to attack a unit with poor morale and attempt to hit them with a potent double Panic Test.
SENTRY WIGHTS: One of my favorite passages in ASOIAF is the wight attack against Bran, Meera, and Jojen outside the Three-Eyed Crow’s cave. The idea of the dead sitting beneath the snow, waiting to attack, was something I wanted to capture in a combat unit. When thinking of the larger picture of the faction, I also considered another issue they face: no traditional long range attacks. Instead of designing some kind of supernatural long range thing, I thought it would be more interesting to create a unit that was immune to ranged attacks. This subverts some of the traditional gameplay, but allows for a lot of different ways for opponents of the Others to counteract and plan against. As with the Decayed Wights, the unit itself is very weak offensively. As you’ll see, these cheaper infantry units really need to be boosted by NCUs, Tactics Cards, and attachments to effectively battle the enemy.
PROWLER WIGHTS: While the Sentry Wights are anti-range tech, the Prowlers are the anti-cav option. Cavalry is quite dominant in the game overall, so even having these guys as an option in list building makes any opponent second guess spamming cavalry units to run circles around the dead.
BERSERKER WIGHTS: While the 4- and 5-point units are tech pieces, the 6-point Berserkers bring some much-needed heavy hitting. Though they throw a lot of dice, they are still only a 4+ to Hit, as that is one of the major weak points of the army. Buffing them with the Bringer of Death NCU is a good idea if you are looking for offense.
WIGHT HORDE: The Horde is the non-beating heart of the Army of the Dead. Unlike the other 4 infantry units and their Rise Again ability, with the No Fear ability the Wight Horde heals itself from failing panic tests. Though it is an expensive 7-points, you can use all your healing effects and the Resilience order to make this unit nigh unkillable. This unit, coupled with 1 of your attachments, can make for a very formidable center. The downside is that it is slow. Wights are described as being slow and clumsy in the books, and this is reflected in the 4 movement here and their poor to Hit values across all infantry units. The best strategy overall for the Others is to stay bunched together and focus more on scoring VPs from objectives than killing enemy units, using your superior activation count to your advantage.
COLD SHADOW: This is a cav solo unit, a White Walker atop a decomposed horse. I didn’t want to use any art that looked different from the White Walker art I already used, so I went for a more abstract look of just having the horse on the card. While I don’t love the compromise I made with the card art, I thought this unit was an important part of the faction to negate some of those speed weaknesses we mentioned previously.
UNDEAD SNOW BEAR & UNDEAD GIANT: These two units are the heavy hitters. Have your infantry fodder hold up the enemy and then have these two come over and start whooping. While the units are strong offensively, like other solo units they’re easily defeated by auto-wound effects. Deployment and matchups are very important with the Army of the Dead. They also don’t interact with as many cards as the infantry units, so you likely don’t want to run two giants and two bears because you’d miss out on a lot of effects.
NCUs: As you’ll start to see with the rest of the army, the White Walkers are not considered characters but are limited by their role (NCU, commander, free attachment). And yes, I know White Walker is the term more popularly used in the show, but it’s also used in the book and naming the card ‘The Other’ seemed pretty awkward. As many people have discussed, the Others do not involve themselves in the politics of Westeros or Essos. Still, the abilities on the Tactics Board are not exactly analogous to any specific political action, so the healing and crown zapping can be viewed as utilizing magic to terrorize their foes. The other thing I did was make all the Others’ NCU choices a little more expensive than usual to show that tactics are not their focus (also because of the Element NCUs). The other limitation for these NCUs is that Craster and Nella have a pretty major restriction of not being able to claim the swords zone. I thought this was another interesting way to demonstrate the relationship between the Others and Craster who makes human sacrifices to please them, as well as highlighting that their relationship with the Tactics Board is different than other armies.
ELEMENTS: The other major difference between the Others and the rest of the armies in the game is that they not only have characters that can claim zones on the Tactics Boards, but also Elements. Elements are basically one-time use NCUs that also boost the power of the Others' Tactics cards. They can also be used to pass, which is another way for the Others to act more like a horde faction in a unique way. While they are very cheap activations, I thought it was balanced by the fact that they are one-time use replacement effects and its quite a difficult strategic choice on when you should utilize the ability. As for what the physical models would like, I imagine they would be either White Walkers or something that looks like a DnD spell marker (like an icicle or something natural). I currently use tokens with the images on them.
COMMANDERS: Similar to the arguments about a lack of characters for NCUs, many people have stated that the Others shouldn’t be a faction because they don’t have characters to act as commanders. My work around was to think of this more like a mini-faction with only a few commanders and to think of those commanders as part of a hive mind rather than their own individual. That is why each commander comes with a free attachment version of themselves that has the exact same abilities. These 2 attachments will go a long way to offsetting the offensive weakness of the infantry units. The attachment versions are considered separate from the commander version and do not work like the vassal ability. Some tactics cards specifically call out having an Ice Wight or Wight Walker in the unit, so either the regular attachment version or the commander version will do. On the other hand, Issue Commands can only be used by the commander version of the White Walker. The lack of costed attachments came down to a few reasons, mostly due to a lack of adequate artwork of wights and there being enough variety with combat units/NCUs as is. I may add a 1-point attachment in the future just to help with list building, maybe something like an alpha wight or an undead direwolf. I also want to mention that I absolutely love this depiction of the Others by artist Astor Alexander, and this artwork was another one of the major motivating factors to create this army.
TACTICS CARDS: The Others tactics cards emphasize the fear the opposing armies will fear when they face off against an undead horde. They also help boost the damage potential of the army since they have relatively weak infantry units and don’t have access to many attack keywords.
House Arryn has been an amazingly popular addition to the site, and it’s been very rewarding to hear from people around the world that they’ve played and enjoyed the faction. As I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t seem like the Others are going to be released any time in the next few years, so I though this might be a fun stand-in for people like me who enjoy thematic scenarios and want to explore all corners of GRRM’s universe.
Every card seen above is available in the 17-page PDF linked below and at the top of this post. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or notice any mistakes.
Enjoy! 💀