The White Council: Forty-Man Lists

Good morning gamers,

Today, we're continuing our discussion on the White Council and its utility to add valuable heroes to conventional army lists. While in our last White Council post we added two members of the White Council to various Free People's Lists, in this one we're going to add a single member of the White Council to four thematic lists. Note that with these army lists, you will not be able to capitalize on the army special rule that increases your rolls to resist magic spells, as you need at least two units from the White Council list in order to do that.

As with the last post, I'll only be posting lists that follow the warband creation rules for the new sourcebooks (and mostly be working out of the Free People's sourcebook), but I will be the first to say that an LOME list (following the constraints we place on our tournaments) will probably be more powerful than these, since you can upgrade your units/heroes pretty far by dropping one hero from each list.

Isengard, Part II: Warriors

Hey Reader!

Greetings again from the How!  It's our pleasure to continue this week with another post on Isengard strategy and tactics.  Last week we did a post on the heroes available to Isengard, and in this post we will continue with a discussion of the warriors available to Isengard commanders.  Next week we will complete our discussion with general thoughts on tactics and pairings, as well as some thoughts on what to expect when playing with/against an Isengard army.  My teammate for the upcoming THRO 2014 Tournament will be using Isengard, and I'm excited to see how he fares in the tournament (as we will be testing some new things with his army).

Before discussing the warriors for Isengard, it is helpful to realize upfront that some of their units are "niche" units: I don't expect demolition teams to be standard in anyone's army (though who knows: once this post is over people might begin looking at some of the more unusual unit choices).  Also, there are substantially more unit choices for Isengard than there have been for the other civs I've reviewed (Shire, Rohan, and Grey Company), so realize upfront that this post will look different purely because there is more variety to be seen among Isengard model choices.

The White Council: Allies Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a post on how you can use the White Council as an ally for a different list, focusing on Gondor lists that could be augmented by the various skills of the White Council. In today's post (and as yet another build-up write-up to the THRO 2014), we're going to pair up all twelve members of the White Council and ally them with six lists that you could reasonably expect to have found in Middle-Earth. Conveniently, you can find all of these lists in the Free Peoples sourcebook.

Isengard, Part I - Hero Summary

Hey Reader!

So, my teammate for the upcoming Hunter's Red October Tournament 2014 is running an Isengard force for the tournament, so in preparation for the THRO Tournament, I'm going to do a short series of tactical posts on Isengard.  Now Tiberius has done a fantastic write-up on Uruk Captains on our blog (and I'll be borrowing heavily from those when we talk about Uruk Captains below) as well as some amazing commentary on Saruman (which I'll be highlighting under his entry), but I want to spend another three-part series (coming out every Thursday for the next three weeks) looking into some of the things you can do with Isengard as we gear up for the tournament.

In this post, we will be focusing on the purpose of the various heroes available to Isengard, and next week we'll be looking at the warrior selection options.  In the third post we'll talk a little bit about tactics, using 600-point lists as a guide when looking at the tactical element of this list.

Announcing The Hunter's Red October 2014 Tournament!

Good morning gamers,

It is my great pleasure to announce the third annual THRO tournament! The purpose of this tournament, like previous THROs, is to try new things and to bring fun armies (very little, if any, prestige attached). The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on October 25, 2014. For this year's tournament, we're experimenting with a few new things: doubles play within brackets, scenarios not commonly found in other TMAT tournaments, and non-board-specific scenario play (more on what this is later). Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

Domination: Isengard vs. Angmar (and Weathertop, Pt 3)

Today's post all but completes the Weathertop terrain project I've been working on. In order to provide a bit more detail into the work that's been going on, I decided to call up my good buddy Glenstorm and have him help me try it out in a batrep. Here are the forces: