In the Free Folk starter box, you’ll find the tools that serve as an introduction to the faction and this article will walk you through the options contained in the box. In the end, you’ll find a few recommended purchases after the starter so you can go forth with what you’ve learned here and show those southerners what real strength looks like.

Combat Units

Free Folk Raiders

You get two units of Free Folk Raiders in the starter and for good reason, the Raid Party special rule dictates that Free Folk Raider have to be taken in groups of two units. At first glance, this seems like a harsh restriction but at 3pts each you have a small investment for two activations and your future lists will likely contain many of these units. Free Folk Raiders don’t have the greatest stats but taking them in pairs means you’ll have an easier time getting the rule Gang Up to come into effect and you don’t have to worry about giving up a lot of Victory Points in most scenarios with this unit having the Insignificant rule; they may be easy to kill but your opponent isn’t getting much for their time investment. Taking several units of Free Folk Raiders also means you will have an easier time getting most of your tactics cards like Surrounded and Exposed, There’s Too Many, and Group Assault to trigger. One unit of these won’t take down an opposing unit all on their own, it is up to you to get them into good positions to launch double charges/engagements or to use them to bait out a charge from your opponent only watch them fall right into your trap.

Free Folk Trappers

The starter also contains one unit of Free Folk Trappers. Much like the Raiders, the trappers don’t have the greatest stats and do come with the insignificant rule but the similarities stop there. At one point more than the Raiders, Trappers shoot better than they fight and with a Short shooting range you would expect to see them running up on the front lines right with Raiders but they have a very powerful order in Hidden Traps that will make you want to run them a bit behind those raiders. Hidden Traps is truly powerful for the Free Folk, often times our units aren’t resilient and want to be tying up our opponents’ units for as long as they can for us to chip away at them; Hidden Traps allows us to do that. Defensively, we take the chance of Disordering an opponent’s charge from 16% to 33% and the D3 wounds either makes less work for us to do and/or will take out a rank from a damaged unit to help soften that initial blow. Offensively, we put the opponent in a hard place by dangling a unit of raiders that’s tempting them to charge but they know there’s an increased chance of that charge doing less than it normally would. Hidden Traps can make our opponent reconsider launching that charge thus giving us the ability to charge before they do. Insignificant can’t be overlooked here, it is the ability that allows us to bring so many fragile units and laugh as our opponent gets nowhere on the Victory Point total while we keep burying them in bodies, watching them stumble on traps, all while we set the charge up for our more scary units.

Savage Giants

That’s right, we have Giants. Savage Giants come in at a whopping 7pts, which is a lot by Free Folk standards, but bring a lot of punch to the Free Folk army. At first glance, they look pretty terrible; one attack, at least it hits on 2+, and only 5 wounds but once we turn our attention to their special rules we see they are quite effective and survivable. In the Giant special rule, you’ll see that this model only suffers one wound for every two unblocked hits and with a 4+ defense save these things could be staying around for a long time. Additionally, you are unlikely to lose wounds from Panic Tests with their Moral of 3+. Their attack, Mighty Swing, states that if you generate any hits you do d3+1 wounds plus an additional wound for each wound the Giant has taken. That means auto-blocking hits won’t save units from this attack and 2+ to hit makes this very reliable. If you take hits from an opponent’s unit you are also likely to survive so those extra wounds from Mighty Swing can start adding up to where a Savage Giant is deleting rank after rank of infantry or crunching horses left and right. There is a lot of strategy to Giants though, anything with great combat rules like Sundering can take a lot of the Giants survivability away and you need to be mindful of effects that cause them to lose abilities since Mighty Swing will do nothing under those circumstances. You also have to pay close attention to the rest of the table and opponents potential output when it comes to healing GiantsIs it safe to keep those few wounds on them so they do d3+3 wounds from Mighty Swing or do you have to heal them in order to make sure they tie up the unit they are stuck in with? Giants, while survivable, should not be the vanguard of your Free Folk Force; use those Insignificant units and Hidden Traps to make the job easier for Giants so they don’t have to play the game uphill.