Games Workshop - Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game: The Lord Of The Rings - Isengard Battlehost

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Suddenly any cavalry model looks really good (even if all the cavalry in these Battlehost are only F3). Saruman lost very little with the rules "dumb down" - he lost Flameburst (which has its uses, but is usually worse to cast than Sorcerous Blast) and he can't Heroic Channel (which is just fine). Theoden, two packs of Royal Guard and the Rohan Commanders blister give you the necessary characters and elite infantry for the force. For these types of items we have to use a courier service and in this case the cost will vary depending on size and weight etc. But more than that, the Isengard rules showed very little change from the normal Isengard rules (in part because Uruk-Hai don't have a lot of rules - they just pay for stats).

There’s also a strong argument to take a Dunland Chieftain over one of the named heroes too, just to have access to Heroic March - happily, these come included with the Warriors box, which is one of the few nice things that can be said about it. Miniatures are supplied unassembled and unpainted €œ we recommend Citadel Plastic Glue and Citadel Colour paints. All of these contain Mordor Orcs (though no Warg Riders for Gothmog I’m afraid) and you can use this battleforce as the basis for those legendary legions. We’ll need both Lurtz and Mauhur in the list, as Mauhur allows you to upgrade your entire army to an 8” move, which is pretty much the main reason to take this list.These rules don't have everything in them, but instead focus on what's relevant to the Battlehosts themselves (a subset of the magical powers, no specialized heroic actions, a subset of the war gear, and a very short list of special rules). The Legendary Legions pivot out of this core quite nicely but tend to be more purchase-heavy, so it’s really a case of picking your poison – or just keep accumulating enough models that you can run them all!

This is a great opportunity for experienced players to expand their army, or for new collectors to get into the game. As we can see pretty clearly in the flowchart, it’s possible to get 800pts or higher of Isengard on the table with really very few purchases. And I don't mind that (though some profiles REALLY changed with this truncation - more on that later). Perhaps this was a bit uninspired - and before anyone asks, I'm planning to get both a Minas Tirith battlehost and a Rohan battlehost in the coming year (I need the Gandalf blister for Pippin - and an updated Gandalf model - for Fantasy Fellowships, I need another blister of Knights for scenario/conversion work, I need the new Eomer to handle weapon restrictions for both the Men of the West LL and every other time I'd use Eomer, and since my additional Battle for Pelennor Fields box set wasn't purchased in time, I need more Rohan guys for Fantasy Fellowship missions too).Overall Isengard has a strong list in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book, but suffers a little from no Legendary Legions that include Saruman, or mix up everything they have available.

I get that there's a Warg Rider pack in there, so we NEED to have Orcs, but I think the better option might be to drop the Warg Riders (gasp) and the Witch-King (GASP! If we were to optimise this list you'd want to hit your bow limit - but that's not something we've done here as we're limited by the number of bows in the battlehost. Given that these make up the backbone of your Dunland troops, this is frankly a terrible value that I would not advise purchasing - it's right up there with Easterling warriors for troop packs that make no sense.

It is definitely a good idea to treat them as optional sidegrades, and after some time with the vanilla Isengard list you’ll get a handle on the style of play that suits you.