Faction Strategy Preview: Khand news - The Fourth Age: Total War mod for Rome: Total War

CountMRVHS wrote:
Almost nothing is known of Khand in canonical Tolkien sources, apart from its location and the phrase "Variags of Khand", so the dev team had a difficult task in creating a faction that would fit within Middle-earth.
Fortunately, geography and nomenclature can be used to great effect in inferring reasonable details, especially from a writer so deliberate as Tolkien.

In Dominion of Men, the Chiefdom of Khand lies to the south of the Chiefdom of Rhun, and northeast of the easternmost holdings of the Empire of Harad. Farther south is the Principality of Far Harad, and farther west is Mordor and the towns of Adunabar.
This is a region of few hills and fewer forests, where open plains of grass, scrub, and sandare the only dominant features. In a place where the towns of the settled Variag headmen are so far apart, and where herding and raiding are more lucrative than toiling in a field, it seems obvious that horsesplay a major role in peace as well as in war.

Players of TNS will know Khand as a region from which the Chiefdom of Rhun can draw some specialized horse-archer units, so it will come as no surprise that Khand is "the horse-archer faction" of DoM.
And indeed a "cav-only" approach - where field armies are composed almost entirely of horse archers, plus some melee cavalry - can be incredibly effective, especially against the low-tier units of factions like Harad and Rhun. (Though in a quick test of a Khand campaign tonight, I saw two units of HAs shredded by a unit of Mumakil the Haradrim had brought along - I seriously underestimated the speed and tenacity of those monsters! I had to send half my HAs off to cautiously encircle the beasts while trying to stay out of trampling range before they were eventually brought
down.)

The Mongol/Eastern appearance of Khand is reinforced not only by inferences from Middle-earth's geography, but also by the fact that Middle-earth can be viewed as an analog of our own world.
You may have seen the images that superimpose a map of Middle-earth over a map of Europe, placing the Shire in England and Gondor at roughly the latitude of Italy or Greece. In such a view, Khand could correspond to Turkey, or west Central Asia.

But Khand is not simply a faction of steppe nomads. The term "Variag" is of interest here. It seems related to the word "Varangian", which refers to the Scandinavian mercenaries and traders who followed the river routes south through Russia and ultimately into the service of the Byzantine army.
In DoM, this real-world correspondence suggested to the devs the idea of a group of mercenary outlanders who, through the vicissitudes of fate and fortune, found themselves sworn into the employ of the Khandian lords. These men are imagined as the descendants of Northmen, no doubt kin of the men of Rhovanion who threw in their lot with the Easterlings in the distant past but maintained their own separate identity down through the years.
As such, a chief of Khand may recruit some units of these warriors, who fight and arm themselves in ways reminiscent of the Northmen, though influenced by the long centuries of service to Eastern warlords. There is a "Russian" vibe to these units that strikes me as very cool, especially when paired with the unruly horse archers and exotic Dragonshield Guard.

So Khand has some flexibility on the battlefield - some staying power to complement the range and punch of the steppe outriders.

Strategically, the East is a much more active place in DoM. It's certain that Rhun and Adunabar will come to blows over the settlements of eastern Mordor, and likely that Rhun will expand westward both north and south of the Sea of Rhun, bringing them into conflict with many factions.
That conflict - and an initial alliance between Rhun and Khand- will likely leave a Khandian chief free to consolidate his borders in the south and southwest.

The big rival in the early going, then, is likely to be the Empire of Harad, which is eager to expand its power eastward. Alliances with Far Harad and Harondor - both, like you, minor factions who are likely to find themselves at war with the Empire - would be prudent. But don't expect them to last. Some initial success against the Empire will leave you sharing a long border with Far Harad, which may prove too much of a temptation for them to resist.
A more aggressive player who is confident of holding off the Empire for a few years may feel more comfortable eliminating the Principality of Far Harad before making further gains in the west.

On the other hand, a strike north against an already-occupied Rhun may spell a quick death for that faction, and offers the benefit of a shared culture to more easily build your legitimacy upon the smoldering ruins of defeated Easterling towns.
With Rhun knocked out of the picture, factions like Adunabar, Rhovanion, and North Rhun might have more of a chance to grow powerful in the early years.

Despite having its eastern border secure against the edge of the map, Khand is actually in the middle of some rough-and-tumble action. Squeezed between two major factions and capable of influencing the fortunes of several lesser powers, Khand in some ways is at the fulcrum of power in the East.
With no nearby terrain obstacles such as rivers, mountains, or heavily forested regions to serve as a check upon expansion, Khand is both vulnerable to invasion and able to scramble its armies of horsemen to swiftly take advantage of any opportunity. On the strategic map as on the battlefield, "holding the line" is not nearly as important for Khand as it is for factions like the Reunited Kingdom.

And that's the thing I'm so eager to explore with Khand once DoM is finished & released: the opportunities.
Will I stable my horses in the palace of the Emperor at Umbar? Or will I push north over the swollen hordes of Rhun? Will a Khandian chief hold court in the haunted Black Land of Mordor, or will the thunder of his army's hooves beat upon the plains of Rohan?
Middle-earth has many lands, but none so far away as to be truly out of reach for a cunning and bold warleader.