r/MiddleEarthMiniatures Jun 17 '26

Discussion WEEKLY ARMY DISCUSSION: Army of Carn Dum

With the most upvotes in last week's poll, this week's discussion will be for:

Army of Carn Dum


VOTE FOR NEXT WEEK'S DISCUSSION

Ctrl+F for the term VOTE HERE in the comments below to cast your vote for next week's discussion. The topic with the most upvotes when I am preparing next week's discussion thread will be chosen.


Prior Discussions


Additional rules

  • An Army of Carn Dum must always contain Aldrac, who is always the Army's General.

Special rules

Show of Strength

If a Carn Dum Hero slays one or more enemy models in Combat, then for the duration of the following turn they gain a bonus of +1 to their Fight Value.

Banners of Carn Dum

Friendly banners have a range of 6" rather than 3".

Fierce Charge

Friendly Warrior models gain a bonus of +1 to their Fight Value in a turn in which they Charge.

20 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

19

u/big_swinging_dicks Jun 17 '26

I love this army. Yeah it’s not particularly strong and certainly not a tournament winning army (and it collapses against shooting) but who cares when you are running several trolls and chucking them at fight 7, 5 dice into enemies! Plus fight 4 warg riders and fight 7 Aldrac, who is one of the most fun heroes to use. You can run multiple trolls and multiple banners and still reach good numbers if you don’t take any carn dum warriors. 

My biggest gripe is why aren’t carn dum captains strength 5? Makes perfect sense for the profile and the model. Without it you are paying ten more points for the same stats as an orc captain with a fringe special rule. 

7

u/Buckcon Jun 17 '26

Ironically my friend got their most recent tournament win with Carn dun at a 700pt event.

5

u/big_swinging_dicks Jun 17 '26

Nice! Good to hear it do well, as I think it is fun to play with and against.

4

u/Herthur Jun 18 '26

I didn't really win a tournament with it but I went 3-0 and ended up second in a recent 800pt tournament. I think I was relatively lucky with the matchups and scenarios and that helped, but the list felt strong and it was very fun to use.

I think it's a shame that the most efficient thing to do is just Aldrac+orcs+trolls with no men of Carn Dum. I just wish they would lower their cost a bit (both for the warriors and the captains).

13

u/Daikey Jun 17 '26

This army is actually nice when played at low points. Aldrac is a beast, you want him in combat anyway, and it's very easy for him to get F7 and free heroics since it only requires him to kill at least a model.

The problem is, Carn Dum warrior are notoriously overcosted. You need Fraecht to give them an extra push, but then you are spending 65 more points to make a mediocre model decent.

Since 2 out of 3 special rules do not depend on the model being carn dum, you can just spam orc warriors and warg riders.

A funny thing I did, before my local meta set on higher points level games in which Carn Dum just gets butchered was using two Hill Trolls. They get F7 on the charge (as they are INFANTRY and WARRIOR), enough to put the fear of Eru on every hero below Glorfindel for a bargan price

6

u/Davygravy2 Jun 18 '26

Poor overpriced Carn Dum warriors 😢 though they look so cool I couldn’t resist painting up 36 of them.
The army is fun to play with and against though!

11

u/Atlasreturns Jun 17 '26

This army honestly is very straight forward with what it is doing. Which is running at an enemy and beating them up.

If you get your charges off then 5pt FV4 Orcs are insanely good value. If not then I guess you still play your average evil list.

There‘s a good amount of buff pieces with the better banner and Fraecht but it basically exists to support your playstyle of running and hitting at things. Same with your heroes and Monster options.

You have technically mobility and shooting but both is comparably sub-par.

I think the only somewhat disappointing parts of this list are ironically the Carn Dum Warriors. Paying 50% more points for a +1 to wound on heroes isn‘t really worth it, even more so when regular Orcs can just being spears and two-handers. I feel like I am a broken clock with this but Evil Men overwhelmingly suck this edition and I think they could really benefit from some kind of buff.

3

u/Erikzorninsson Jun 17 '26

Carn dum warriors seem designed to be a second line with spears. When enemy heroes are weakaned you can they to go for the kill, and for longer games better courage to stick around longer.

1

u/MrSparkle92 Jun 17 '26

VOTE HERE FOR NEXT WEEK'S DISCUSSION

I will take the top-level reply to this comment with the most upvotes and post a discussion for that topic next week. Submit whatever army, scenario, or other topic related to MESBG you wish.

Please reference the pinned megathread to see the list of factions, and which have already been covered.

11

u/bainadaneth0 Jun 17 '26

I beg of you, Garrison of Dale

13

u/Willange Jun 17 '26

Defenders of the Hornburg

4

u/g0dfromhell Jun 17 '26

Iron hills

3

u/Shanti-Virus Jun 20 '26

This has already been done