Overly Pedantic Stats: Improving Isengard

 Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! In our local tournament meta Isengard has been having a bear of a time with it, struggling to win at tournaments for the past several years. Whether this is because of poor rolling, difficult scenarios, or list building is unknown to me, but I figured there's only one of those that I can fix, and that is the list building element for tournmaent goers.

So I cracked out my overly pedantic stats spreadsheet and gave myself an afternoon to just look at what they had and how the models stacked up to see if people are making suboptimal choices when building out an army, and what I found astounded me.

As a quick reminder, we're looking at models and how they rank in five categories: offensive capability, defensive capability, support options, mobility, and cost (with low scores indicating a high cost, and a high score indicating a low cost).

I.  Best Statistical Heroes for Isengard

Not surprisingly, the best hero in the Isengard list is Saruman (3.4), who sports a horse for good mobility (and actually decent melee prowess on the charge, as you get F5, a two-handed staff, and access to magic before the fight begins) accompanied by a wide range of supporting and debilitating magic. What does surprise me is how many Isengard armies I see that don't use Saruman. Naturally if you are running a legendary legion you will not be taking Saruman, but I've also seen vanilla Isengard armies that run only uruk heroes (mostly to save points and build out numbers, all while taking advantage of that F5 S5 combo), and while they are good, Saruman is far better than all of them.

The next two heroes are also not necessarily surprises: Lurtz and Thrydan Wolfsbane (tied at 3.0). This also explains why these legendary legions perform well: both have good heroes that are very good at killing things for a relatively low cost. Naturally I think these guys bring less to the table than Saruman, but on their own they will make good contenders as your army leader. Naturally Thrydan is best in the legendary legion, though backing him up with F4 uruks is also very competitive, so don't shy away from bringing this guy.

What is interesting about the rankings is who comes next. I expected it to be Mauhur (because 3 Attacks with F5 S5 with an 8" move is just beastly), but it's not: it's actually Vrasku (2.8), who sports a very deadly 2 Attacks at S4 with his crossbow, but gets even more dangerous up close with 2 Attacks at F5 S5 when engaged in combat. So from a killing perspective you actually have a really good killer both at range and in melee; it's a shame though that you can only take this guy in the standard Isengard list. You can't take him in a legendary legion.

Next is a three-way tie between Ugluk, Mauhur, and Sharku (at 2.6), with Sharku getting in mostly off of his mobility, while the others sport that "High Five" of Attacks + Might (2 and 3, and 3 and 2 respectively). These guys are used pretty commonly, though it's worth noting that most people tend to shy away from Sharku if you're not using his legendary legion. I think this is because they want one of the top three, then they add Mauhur or Vrasku, and then are looking around at points and realize that they might want another of the top five heroes or a captain for calling March, so they overlook him. But it might be worth looking into taking him if you're struggling with Isengard and playing a standard Isengard list, because you get 10" of movement with 2-3 Attacks (depending on whether you are charging infantry) with 3 Might, so there's a decent chance that you'll win and slaughter whoever you run into just as easily (if not more easily) than an uruk would.

The rest of the heroes are decent (2.4 or lower scores, bottoming out at a 2 with the Uruk Shaman), but I wanted to highlight something here about the Uruk Captain and the Uruk Scout Captain: they both have the same score (2.4). I mention this here because it will come up again later, but just know for now that this plays into what I think is the reason why some Isengard armies struggle.

II.  Best Statistical Warriors for Isengard

The best three profiles for Isengard are a tie at a 2.8 (which is very high on the scoring metric for warriors) between three very different models, all of which you should consider taking for your force if your list building restrictions allow it: the Uruk-Hai Berserker, the Isengard Troll, and the Demolition Team. The berserker is a mainstay: I think I'm the only guy I know of that never takes these guys (though I own a few), and I'll explain why later. I don't think armies are not performing as competitively as they could because they take these guys: I think it's because they don't take the troll and the demolition team alongside these guys.

The Isengard Troll is not commonly seen in Isengard forces, but he's the optimal character to accompany Saruman or any of your big heroes. He's got the Strength and Defense to hold his own against most heroes, even without access to Might Points and heroic actions. And if Saruman can Immobilise the target he is fighting, he is not afraid of anything. He will tear through enemy lines (even those with Shieldwall), and while yes, he is expensive, he is arguably more effective than his cost in uruk-hai (more on that later).

Demo teams (very briefly) are very effective, and far more effective in the legendary legion. Jasmine Tetley recommends you alternate purchasing ballistas and demo teams, and I think that's probably right (the ballista only comes in at a 2.4, but that's primarily due to cost and mobility: it's very good at killing things, especially in the legendary legion). But it's probably a good idea to consider adding one of these if you find you're having trouble killing things in your games, as automatic wounds will almost always do the trick.

What I had not expected (but it makes sense the more I look at it) is that the next highest ranked profile is the Uruk Scout (2.6), and this brings me to my big hot take for improving Isengard: stop running uruk-hai warriors with shields (if you are not running the Assault on Helm's Deep legendary legion, because obvs you have to take them there to have an army). Pikes are fine if you want them (as you get all the killing power without the danger of losing a warrior) though more on that in a bit, but you should run uruk scouts over and against Uruk Warriors for your frontline fighters.

Uruk Scouts are good: they have the same offensive capability as a standard uruk, and while their Defense is D5 compared to D6, the truth is there are a decent number of matches where that difference will not matter. When fighting against an army with S2 archery (which is a lot of armies), S4 melee attacks (which is a surprisingly high number of opponents), and armies that are below F4 (which is also a surprisingly high number of armies, assuming your local tournament meta isn't dominated by elves and dwarves like ours is), you will find that there is no difference in your survivability by saving 1pt/model and dropping to D5.

This allows you to take more guys, but not much more. So the way we make up for that (because could this take get any hotter?) is to also stop taking uruk pikes. Now this used to be more true under the pre-Hobbit rules where spear supports added +1 Attack to the front model's Attack stat, but it's still true for me today: run orc spearmen instead. There is a difference in scoring between orc spearmen (2) and uruk pikemen (2.4), but you also save 2-3pts/model (depending on whether you give them shields, which I would always do) which means you can take 3 orc spearmen for every 2 uruk pikemen.

Now, I don't know how often you guys actually get to go three ranks deep with pikes, but I never do. Maybe on 1-2 heroes, but that also left whole sections of my battle line exposed at only 1 rank deep, which meant heroic combats broke through and engaged my pikes anyway. But consider an uruk backed up by an orc spearman, one of them being S3 (to work down those odd numbered Defense models) and one being S4 (to work down those even numbered Defense models): you're never "cheating" your opponent out of easier kills, you're saving 3-4pts per pair from what you'd pay for heavy armored uruks, and you're fleshing out your numbers quite nicely. And if you run the Ugluk's Scouts, you can do this pairing effectively as you get access to both in the legendary legion.

So if you find you are struggling to field numbers, or just want to see if more numbers (and thus more attacks) will help you win, consider wholesale switching to scouts and orcs instead of heavily armored troops. I up the anti on this by also running Feral Uruk-Hai instead of berserkers to save me points, and I'll be honest: these guys don't score particularly well. This is just a flavor thing for me that I like, and I find that they kill a lot of guys while still giving me room to purchase banners, ballistas, and other things I like. So I don't necessarily recommend them, though I'll note that a 2 Attack warrior at F4 S4 for only 13pts is hard to match in this game.

III.  Sample Army Lists

So for the army lists this is going to be a bit trickier than it was for Minas Tirith, as we have a lot of legendary legions. I'm going to keep this review to the standard Isengard list (as it gives the most options, thus allows you more opportunity to switch out models for higher scoring models), but I'll try to build them in such a way that you could theoretically run something similar in one of the legendary legions, allowing you to make minimal changes to get it to work with your restrictions.

Our 500pt list sports an army that it built purely to kill:

Lurtz's Boys (498 pts)

Warband 1

Lurtz with Shield (Army Leader): 90pts

3 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 45pts

3 Orc Warriors with Shields and Spears: 35pts

5 Uruk Scouts with Uruk-Hai Bows: 45pts

2 Uruk-Hai Berserkers: 30pts

1 Uruk Scout with Shield and Banner: 34pts

Warband 2

Uruk Scout Captain with Two-Handed Weapon: 60pts

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 45pts

5 Orc Warriors with Shields and Spears: 35pts

Warband 3

Uruk Shaman: 55pts

2 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 18pts

2 Orc Warriors with Shields and Spears: 14pts

2 Warg Riders with Shields: 24pts

TOTAL: 498pts, 31 models, 6 Might

This is an odd list, right? It's completely D5 (except for Lurtz and the Captain who are D6), but look at the number of attacks: at 500pts you have over 35 attacks in melee (and almost all fights sporting F4+ and S4+), plenty of spear support for both heroes and warriors, a massive frontline, a few cavalry for quickly getting to objectives, almost 10 archers for providing cover fire, access to Fury to deal with charging models that cause Terror, and a really heavy hitting hero with Lurtz. So while it seems odd, this is actually a crew built to kill with lots of answers to lots of problems. All at 500pts. It's not a D6 army, but if you can hit the boards with enough attacks, you might be okay without it. Defense Values only come up if you lose fights or get shot at, and all of that you can plan around.

At 750pts, we can improve this by adding new heroes, adding new siege weapons, and putting more multi-attack people in the list. I'm going to also switch over from Lurtz to Saruman (which is going to hurt our numbers, but we have to take the big man himself - it wouldn't be an Isengard post if we only ran his minions), and run this as a pure Isengard list:

Centaur's Crazy Isengard List (750pts)

Warband 1

Saruman the Colorful (Army Leader): 180pts

1 Isengard Troll with Shield: 110pts

1 Uruk Scout with Shield and Banner: 34pts

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 45pts

5 Orc Warriors with Spears and Shields: 35pts

2 Feral Uruk-Hai: 26pts

Warband 2

Mauhur: 60pts

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 45pts

5 Orc Warriors with Spears and Shields: 35pts

2 Feral Uruk-Hai: 26pts

Warband 3

Uruk-Hai Shaman with Armor: 55pts

3 Uruk Scouts with Shields: 27pts

1 Orc Warrior with Spear and Shield: 7pts

Warband 4

Isengard Assault Ballista: 65pts

TOTAL: 750pts, 36 models, 7 Might

Now this is a small army (only a few models more than the last one), but look at the power curve we've added to it. We've got Saruman and the ballista to soften up targets as they approach, so the opponent is thinking twice about forming thick ranks and is being very cautious of how close they bring in cavalry. To protect our vulnerable people we have 17 uruks supported by 12 spears (if you include the shaman), plus a troll on top of that, and crippling magic to keep heroes from getting too comfy as they get in close. More than that, the frontline also includes Mauhur, giving us a second 3 Attack guy in the front, so lots of mauling going on in the front rank (as those 19 models are contributing almost 30 attacks, and reaching 40 attacks when you factor in spear supports). And other than Mauhur and the ferals (who should always have a spearman on their sixes), everyone can shield, so if you need to just hold the line in some places while the troll, Mauhur, the ferals, and Saruman crack their way through the enemy army, you can do that too.

It's not a lot of ranged shooting (as we dropped a bunch of the uruk bowmen for the ballista and Saruman's magic), and we have no cavalry, so mobility may be a bit of an issue, but even then it's not that bad. With Saruman effectively having a 24" threat range, an 8" move on Mauhur, and a ballista headhunting groups of cavalry (with those lusciously large bases), you can effectively force the opponent to attack you. And that's where this list shines.

Oh, and you get Fury. And if you're crazy like me, another option for Transfix. So you have a lot of bases covered, even if you have gaps in your inventory (which is going to happen when over half your points are tied up in a wizard, a siege weapon, and a troll).

Conclusion

As the meta changes and new armies are released, Isengard needs to adapt. When the game was first released Isengard was (at least in our gaming group) the standard: good Fight, good Strength, good Defense, good shooting. But that also meant that a lot of people learned how to fight Isengard, so we saw them deteriorate over time in their performance at the table. But with a few tweaks, taking advantage of lighter units, and having a cohesive strategy of optimizing stats instead of just taking the "safe" unit choices that we've always taken, you might be able to pull out a few more wins. We'll see what the future holds.

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"We watch the skies for the great tides of evil or change that are sometimes marked there." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix