The New Age Is Begun: The Besiegers of the Hornburg Army List

Good morning gamers,

In last week's article, we looked at the Usurpers of Edoras. Today, we're continuing "Dunland" month and looking at the Besiegers of the Hornburg. This list has a lot of familiar faces from the last list, but it's missing a lot of its previous identity. In trade . . . it gets one of the most interesting and fun profiles in the game! Let's see what this list has to offer (and whether it's any good).

The Besiegers of the Hornburg: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

We have fewer options, but surprisingly the same number of profiles in this list as we had in the Usurpers of Edoras last week. We still have Wulf, Target, Hill Tribes Chieftains, Hill Tribesmen, and Crebain, but we've lost Freca, Lord Thorne, and Rohirrim Traitors. In trade, we gain, Shank, Wrot, and their Snow Troll "pet". The list feels like it has a lot less going for it - the Rohirrim Traitors were the only means of getting a banner and war horn (also throwing weapons) into an Usurpers of Edoras list, so our Hill Tribesmen are going to be patently worse than before (oh, and there's no Freca to make them F4). Yep, our bench is thin, but hopefully we have some slick special rules to equal things out?

The New Age Is Begun: The Usurpers of Edoras Army List

Good morning gamers,

This July, we'll be digging into the wild men of Dunland - we've already looked at the Army of the White Hand (which is really mercenary Dunland to Isengard), but this month, we'll be pivoting to Dunland as a primary faction and mostly focusing on the armies from the War of the Rohirrim. These guys are really fun to run and the new sculpts that they have are gorgeous! Let's dig in and see the first of these lists (and one that has been very strong in the international meta): the Usurpers of Edoras.

Editor's Note: this article has been updated for the 2026 July FAQ. I have not updated the lists at the bottom, but you could easily move the banner and war horn to other models if you want to.

The Usurpers of Edoras: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Before the July FAQ, this list only had five hero profiles and three warrior profiles. The good news is that these profiles, generally speaking, are just fine for what we need. We have Freca and Thorne who provide tactical bonuses, we have Targg for some tactical and some combat bonuses (more on him throughout), Hill Tribes Chieftains for Marching your army around, and Wulf for hammering through the enemy.

From a warrior profile perspective, we have fast strategic units with Crebain and we have two very flexible unit options for our grunts with Rohirrim Traitors (max of 12) and Hill Tribesmen. With the changes that have been made this edition to the old Wild Man of Dunland profile, these two unit options give us basically everything we'd want except mounted warriors (and heavy infantry - that was never going to be on the table). The bench was light, until the FAQ provided the option for a Mumaks and up to six Haradrim (all of whom can have bows if you take at least ten melee troops) if you don't have Freca. This means there are slightly more profiles than before, but still not many.

Stupidly Fun Lists, Part I

Good morning gamers,

Recently, we had a "longtime reader" send us the following comment:

I have 2 rather stupid but fun list ideas. This is already a suggestion for a category for you guys ;) "Just dumb fun lists" or so.

Anyway: List 1: All artillery gondor (3 Trebuchet,, 3 avenger bolt throwers, flesh out with whatever.

List 2: All fellbeast mounted nazgul, air superiority fighters. Welcome to the black dart missile age.

I always wanted to run this with allied dol guldur nazguls or castellans if somehow possible, but well.

Alternatively: Troll-only Barad dur squad. I still have to paint my trolls though

I began writing a reply when I decided that the "comments section" of an old post wasn't the right place to do it. This got me thinking as well about what lists would be "stupidly fun" to run - and maybe these thoughts will give you things to think about as well. With that, let's kick off a new series on "stupidly fun" lists to run - and how to make them viable (if not competitive). For the sake of starting somewhere, our lists today will all be 650pts - this should mean that you're probably 100-150pts off of whatever game you're playing, since many events are still run at the 500-800pt level.

The New Age Is Begun: The Rise of the Necromancer Army List

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we looked at the Pits of Dol Guldur army list, which has a pretty limited number of profiles. Today, we're tackling the Rise of the Necromancer army list, which basically took over the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur army roster and added some of the special rules/list building options from the Rise of the Necromancer Legendary Legion. As a fan of the Legion last edition, I viewed this as a direct upgrade - we can take normal troops if we want and we get almost all of the buffs to the Necromancer/others that we had before. Great move, GW, great move.

With a decent glow-up this edition, this list doesn't seem to be catching the eye of too many people, but it's certainly seeing play (at the time of writing this, TTA tells me that there are 288 recorded games with the Rise of the Necromancer army list and it sits at 141 wins, 137 losses, and 10 draws for a 49.0% win-rate - and there were 4 players at the 2026 Adepticon tournament that took it, which puts it at the higher end of the army-lists-used spectrum . . . though it's not as popular as Men of the West, Battle of Fornost, Reclamation of Osgiliath, or Grand Army of the South and as-popular as the Beornings, the Shadows of Angmar, and the Defenders of the Pelennor - good company those lists are). Let's see what all the fuss is on the other side of Dol Guldur, shall we?

The New Age Is Begun: The Pits of Dol Guldur Army List

Good morning gamers,

Ages ago, Centaur, Rythbyrt, and I did a podcast episode where we talked about the Fall of the Necromancer Legendary Legions and that built into a bigger discussion about all-hero lists (and hero-heavy lists) and what makes them good. The episode has aged a bit, but the general consensus we had at the time was that of the four Legendary Legions released in that supplement, the least interesting was the Pits of Dol Guldur.

After the toning down of the Vanquishers of the Necromancer Legendary Legion, the premiere Legion from that book became the Pits of Dol Guldur Legion. Championed by excellent players like Evan Iverson, a free-Heroic-Combat-each-turn from Azog, paired with a you-win-priority-and-no-enemies-can-call-Heroic-Moves rule that superceded rules like the Palantir of Saruman, made the list an incredibly hard-hitting, glass-cannon style list that some players who enjoyed their big smashy heroes paired with small-but-smashy infantry really liked. Today, we're looking at the heir of this Legendary Legion - the Pits of Dol Guldur army list - and seeing how the new version of the list compares to the old . . . and yes, it's both gained some things and lost some things. Let's see how it shapes up in the new edition, shall we?

The Pits of Dol Guldur: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list has all of the previous profiles and added a few more (really one more). Like last edition, you have Azog, the Keeper of the Dungeons, and Thrain the Broken as your named heroes and you have Gundabad Orc Captains and Hunter Orc Captains as your generic heroes. While you still have the three previous warrior profiles (Hunter Orcs, Gundabad Orcs, and Fell Wargs), you also have access to both Mirkwood Giant Spiders (good ones) and Mirkwood Hunting Spiders (bad ones), which gives you more strategic options for dealing with enemy heroes. 

The list has a mix of cavalry models (Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs got broken out into their own profile now), fast infantry beasts, light infantry (who can be archers, but probably shouldn't be in this list), and heavy infantry. The list doesn't look like it has much in it, but you're covering a lot of bases with a limited number of profiles. Let's see what we've been given as army list special rules in order to incentivize taking this list over other Hobbit-era lists . . .