A Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set Review

Fighting as a guerrilla group in the Riverlands, the Brotherhood Without Banners seeks to protect and serve the poor, downtrodden small folk of Westeros - and now, they’re making their grand appearance in A Song Of Ice And Fire” Tabletop Miniatures Game. We’ve previously covered some great new releases from last Spring, and even further back we’ve looked at the addition of House Bolton with Late 2023 releases. Now let’s dive in and see what the tenacious Brotherhood brings with our review of A Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set!

What’s In The Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set?

The Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set includes everything one player needs to jump into the game.

Box Contents:

• Core Rulebook
• Combat Unit, Attachment, Tactics, Special Rules, Siege, Mission, Objective, Reference, and Non-Combat Unit Cards
• Measuring Stick, Tactics Board, and Cardboard Tokens
• 10 Brotherhood d6 Dice + 1 White d3 Die
• 4 Movement trays
• 54 Miniatures (4 units, 6 heroes)
• Flat Cardboard Terrain Pieces and Castle walls

What Characters Are Included in The Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set?

Characters included in the Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set include six different characters for the army. Those are: Beric Dondarrion (with a card for him as an attachment or as commander), Thoros of Myr (with a card for him as an attachment or as commander), Lem Lemoncloak (attachment), Tom Sevenstrings (attachment), Ghost of High Heart (non-combat unit), and Ravella Smallwood (non-combat unit).

Ravella and Ghost

Let’s start with a quick chat on the NCU’s included in this starter set. With Ravella, while I love to see a miniature based on this crucial but under-the-radar character, her ability to restore 2 wounds to a unit 3 times per game won’t move the needle all the much.

Ghost of High Heart, however, is more interesting, with her ability to influence a unit to give them +1 to morale tests and punish enemy units who destroy ranks of the unit she’s influencing (giving them Vulnerable and Weakened). You could absolutely run her to punish enemies who focus on your rather squishy Peasant Levy units.

Tom and Lem

Tom is an interesting attachment unit with the Order: Taunt ability that punishes an enemy unit that could (but doesn’t) Attack or Charge. 

Lem, one of my all-time favorite characters from the books, has the seriously powerful Battle Scars ability which allows you to give his unit, while attacking, either: Vicious, re-roll any attack dice, or roll at its highest attack die value. As you loose ranks, you gain +1 option.

Thoros and Beric - Non-Commander Units

Thoros and Beric are available to either run as the commander of your army or as a character attachment, let’s take a look at the non-commander options first.

Thoros’s character, as you might expect, embraces his unrelenting, hard-to-kill spirit with the ability to heal 1 wound each time his unit activates (+1 wound to that if you control crown) and has the relentless ability which lets his unit perform an attack action after that unit is attacked. That’s huge!

Beric’s character card, Azor Ahai, gains faith tokens throughout the game which you can spend add attacking dice or get some last licks in before your unit goes down.

Thoros and Beric - Commander Units

For Thoros as commander, you can also gain and spend Faith tokens to make your attacks more powerful and punish panicked foes at long-range by restoring wounds to friendly foes they’re fighting.

For Beric as commander, he can heal as before, gains a free charge or maneuver when friendly units at Long Range are attacked, and ignores dangerous, hindering, and rough terrain keywords.

What Units Are Included in The Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set?

Along with the above-mentioned characters, the Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set also features two units of Peasant Levy, one unit of Brotherhood Archers, and one unit of Men-At-Arms. Let’s take a moment to chat about what each of these units does (or doesn’t) do well.

First up, the humble Peasant Levy, which cost just 4 point per unit to field. They have a fairly unimpressive 5+ attack roll, 6+ defense roll, and 6+ Morale. Not great, for sure, but their two abilities force enemies attacking them to suffer -1 to Hit, and they gain a +1 to Hit and +1 Attack Die when they attack while next to another friendly unit.

For the Men-At-Arms, they’re better provisioned with a 4+ hit, 4+ defense, and 6+ morale. They also hit with Critical Blows, and deal out Panicked and Weakened status effects to enemies they charge from the flank or rear.

And finally, there are the Brotherhood Archers, who might be some of the best ranged fighters in the game! Their Hidden Shot attack is long-range, hits on a 3+, ignores units and terrain when determining line of sight, and gains Precision and Vicious when targeting enemy flanks or rear. Add to this their ability to perform a free 3” maneuver action if no enemies are within short range, and this highly mobile unit is meant to get in and cause chaos.

Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set - Final Thoughts

So putting this all together, what are we really looking at with this Starter Set? I think this is a decent start to the army, but it doesn’t feel quite as cohesive as other recent new armies like the Bolton or Martell armies. But I suppose that’s the point of this army - they’re made up of deserters, small folk, anyone without a voice.

In that sense, I do think there’s a lot of fun flexible list-building to be done here, especially since they have a special ability that allows them to take a unit from Stark or Baratheon without it counting toward its Neutral points total. In other words, you can sneak in a unit from either of those armies, and still fill out your army with more neutral units.

While it doesn’t have a huge personality out of the box, there are two other unit boxes coming out that really do a lot of work rounding out this army. We’ll cover that shortly, but with the focus here on this Starter Set, the flavor is bigger than any larger army synergy.

The copy of Song Of Ice And Fire TMG Brotherhood Without Banners Starter Set used in the creation of this review was provided by Asmodee USA.