The Stuff of Legends: The Wolves of Isengard

Good morning gamers,

Today we're continuing our review of evil armies from War in Rohan and covering the Wolves of Isengard. There are five Isengard/Dunland Legendary Legions - Ugluk's Scouts and Lurtz's Scouts have several named heroes who provide good synergies for their armies (though they're all mid-tier heroes at best), paired with 1-2 generic heroes to fill out your list (March is a bit unnecessary in both lists, as the named Uruk-Hai heroes have it if you need it). 

Last time, we covered the Assault Upon Helm's Deep LL, which has no named heroes at all, but its generic heroes provide some added punch to an already nasty list. We'll cover the Army of Dunland in a few weeks, but today we turn our attention to the Wolves of Isengard. In my mind, this is the hardest Isengard LL to use - and yet, there are aspects of it that make dealing with certain armies (terror armies and cavalry armies) easier than any Isengard Legendary Legion we've looked at so far! Centaur takes us through this Legion today (with my usual uninvited commentaries added) - take it away, buddy!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 60-65pts

The only required model is Sharku, and even with a shield, he's only 65pts. Effectively, though, you need to take every profile in this list: you need at least one Orc Captain to call March (because we need Sharku to save his Might for fighting), Orc Shamans to deal with Courage issues, Warg Riders for killing power/banner support/ranged options, and Wild Wargs for fleshing out numbers, holding objectives, disabling siege weapons, and digging up heirlooms as appropriate. So while yes, you technically only need Sharku, you effectively need some of everything.

Part 2: Why Take This Legion Over "Normal" Allied Forces?

So this list is extremely different from the standard Isengard list. Basically take everything except for five profiles (none of which are the first profiles you think of when you think "Isengard") and throw them away. As someone who has played a lot of Angmar, I feel like I'm using my Angmar mindset more than my Isengard mindset when playing this Legendary Legion, and that makes it very different. 

Weakness #1: Average Defense

Wolves of Isengard Bonuses

The weaknesses in this list are, well, legion. Defense is a serious issue: your "biggest hero" is your army leader who is sitting at D5 with 2 Wounds and a Fate point, which is very fragile. You can get up to D6 on your Orc Captains, but once again, this is very fragile. Your baseline troops are D4 or D5, so nothing better on that front.

Strength #1: Speed

There are a few strengths to this Legendary Legion. Mobility is, of course, the first one: everyone is moving at 10" in this list, as you are required to take either wargs or warg mounts for everyone. You also have March on your Captains.

Weakness #2: No Power Heroes

The fact that none of your heroes have Heroic Strike means that you will struggle against power heroes. You really don't have a good option for taking on an Aragorn/Dain/Thorin, and while you can chaff up an army decently well with this force, if they close they are going to kill whatever they are up against.

Strength #2: Good Offensive Options

Your offense is decent in this list as you have S4 all around (standard for Isengard), and all of your models save the wild wargs get a charge bonus. You have ranged options (more on that later), so you also have the ability to skirmish if you want to/find that fun.

Weakness #3: Terrain Constraints

Difficult terrain is going to be an issue: you will not gain cavalry bonuses (including the extra attack on the charge and the knockdown) and most of your army will drop to quartered movement if you so much as touch difficult terrain, so getting to archers and siege weapons that are tucked away behind difficult terrain will be hard (and costly, as you could lose a lot of cavalry to archery in the process).

Strength #3: Pretty Cheap Models

Your units are relatively cheap, especially for an "all-mounted force," as your warriors will only run you 7-13ish points per model. And while your access to troops is relatively limited, you still get access to a banner, so you can make up for the relatively low Fight Value of the army through rerolls in duels.

Weakness #4: Limited Fight and Courage

You also have a low Fight Value (F3, F4 on some heroes), which means your defense in melee will show a lot more often and could cost you a lot of troops in a single round if you cannot win fights. Courage will also be an issue. While yes, you have Orc Shamans with Fury (which is really nice), your whole force is passing a Courage test on less than 60% odds (including your Army Leader), and while you do gain the Isengard keyword, you don't gain the "We Don't Test for Break Until 66%" rule that the Isengard vanilla faction gets. So if your army starts to break, you are going to lose a lot of guys. And if you have to charge a Terror army, you're going to have trouble if your troops are not near your Shaman.

Strength #4: Deployment Versatility

You gain added versatility in deployment, including the ability to charge on the first turn of a maelstrom deployment. The Scouts special rule also ensures that you can get greater deployment versatility in matches that are not maelstrom deployments.

Weakness #5: Large Bases

So, this is one of the things in the game that can be a strength or a weakness, but in this case it's a weakness. Your whole army has 40mm bases, which on the one hand makes it easy to cage a target as you have a very large control zone, keeping people from getting past your front lines to your softer support units (like banners and shamans). The issue with this army, though, is that since you have a low Fight Value you need to be able to swarm, and since your bases are so large this can complicate getting large groups of troops into a given space, as the bases will block movement for your troops. If you had trolls or heavy horse on those 40mm bases it's not so much of an issue, but lightly armored orcs and even more lightly armored wargs? Not so much. So be careful: you may find yourself outnumbered in a fight purely because of base size, and you don't the advantage of a good Fight Value to help you carry the day.

Part 3: Legendary Legion Improvements

So, I'll start by saying that this is one of those legions that fills a very small niche in the movies, doesn't really appear in the books, so there's not a lot of material to work with. I also think that, for the legion as a legion, the Middle Earth team did a great job in building it (even if it's not my cup of tea for various reasons). There's no glaring holes in this legion that need to be fixed, though I do have a few ideas for ways they could improve it.

First, I'd add the Wild Warg Chieftain from Angmar as a hero that you can take, gaining the Isengard keyword. This gives you a hero that can command your wargs, gives you access to a F5 hero (which is better than nothing), and access to another killing piece for relatively cheap. Thematically it also works: someone in the doghouses of Orthanc has to be the alpha, and this is it.

Second, I'd give Wild Wargs the Mountain Dweller special ability. It doesn't make sense to give them Woodland Creature (as Rohan has woods, but not many), but giving them a way to get past some of the difficult terrain issues will help this army do what it does (mobility) without overpowering it (which I don't think it would). And since they are losing access to Saruman, siege weapons, Uruk-Hai, Dunlendings, and even the crebain, the only way this army lives is through superior deployment, and right now if the enemy camps in difficult terrain they win. So at least this helps a little and in ways that make sense (per how they sneak up on Hama and Gamling).

Third, I love the idea of a Howl special ability, probably as a once per game ability, that would give all wargs (including warg mounts) the Terror special rule. Since this is a low Courage army that doesn't have the numbers of a spam army, this would at least give them a single turn where they are a bit more resilient to spams, while not being too overpowered against heavily infantry-based forces (Rangers, Dwarves, most elven factions, etc.).

Tiberius: honestly, I don't know how to help this Legion without changing it drastically. The best thing I think that would help this Legion is if all of the heroes in this Legion had Horselord (or some other way to protect their mounts). Like the Black Riders LL, this army lives and dies by keeping their mounts alive, but currently has no way of doing it. Without their mounts, the heroes in this list are super vulnerable.

Part 4: Army Strategies

Centaur: I confess, I'm not a huge fan of this list to start with, and that's in part due to how obvious (and thus predictable for planning counterattacks) the play is with this army. You start by skirmishing, using your throwing weapons and/or bows to winnow down enemy forces before you close with them from all sides, your cavalry charging into models that you can kill, and your unridden wild wargs tagging and holding down dangerous enemies to buy you time.

The issue is that there are a lot of places to go wrong with this strategy. First, you have orcs, so your Shoot Value for skirmishing is a 5+ (6+ if you move), so that's not a great place to start. Add onto this that you have D4 (D5 if you use throwing spears instead of bows) as your Defense, so the return fire against your army is going to be painful - probably more painful than the archery you're putting out, so the skirmishing side of things really only works if you are against a non-archery army (like Goblin Town, Azog's Legion, Army of Thror, etc.).

Second, tagging and hold down opponents can be hard as you are relying on Courage 2 models to do all the charging. All it takes is a terror bubble (with or without Harbinger of Evil), a few magic spells or special abilities that force Courage Tests, and you could find yourself without an answer to the big heroes that can tear your force apart.

So realize that you have a devastating charge when you win a fight, and you have some ability to soften a target before they close. But managing your troops, properly planning the skirmish fire, and then committing to the charge at the right time is going to be tricky. And that's where the practice and experience come into play.

Part 5: Army Showcase

The upside of our first 500-pt army: 35 models that move 10" every turn, plus Fury protection to cover our Courage issues, plus 16 throwing spears to give some skirmish options. Problem: I feel like this is not a lot of Might (6 Might) for an army that has low Fight Value, and it currently does not include a banner either (because I didn't want to drop 2-4 guys to make that happen). But if you can get charges in with this army, you'll hit like a truck, as you're sporting almost 20 cavalry at 500 pts with over 15 "chaff" models that you can throw away to screen your cavalry, which is really sweet.

• Sharku on Warg with shield [AL]
• 6 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 8 Wild Wargs
• Orc Captain on Warg with shield
• 6 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 6 Wild Wargs
• Orc Shaman on Warg
• 4 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 2 Wild Wargs

Moving up to 700 points, I feel like an army with troops as cheap as this should have more Might, but maybe the Might level is low because you only have one 3 Might hero in this list? I'm not sure. The big thing is we squeezed the banner in this time, and we added another contingent with even more riders so that we are now up to almost 50 models (30ish of which are cavalry). So now we have a lot of skirmishers (almost 20), still have the Fury bonus where we need it, and haven't sacrificed our chaff yet so that we can get our cavalry into fights we like and not have to chase down people we don't want to fight. I'm not much of an "all cavalry" person, but if I had infinite money to spend on the hobby and wanted to play this army, this is how I'd do it.

• Sharku on Warg with shield
• 6 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 1 Warg Rider with shield, throwing spears, and banner
• 7 Wild Wargs
• Orc Captain on Warg with shield
• 6 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 6 Wild Wargs
• Orc Captain on Warg with shield
• 5 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 2 Warg Rider with shields
• 5 Wild Wargs
• Orc Shaman on Warg
• 4 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 2 Wild Wargs

Tiberius: I think Centaur is right - you start with one of each hero (Sharku with a shield, a Captain with a shield, and an Orc Shaman) and then start adding warriors to flesh out their warbands. While Centaur has avoided taking any Orc bows, I'm of the opinion that when you have limited warrior choices (and hero choices), you need to maximize your use of wargear - and that includes crappy bows with crappy shoot values. When I run Numenor, I run 50% spears, 33% bows, and a banner - all the time, no matter the points level. I've done something similar here, getting 33% Orc bows, and a nearly even split for the rest of the army between throwing-spears (6), no-throwing-spears (5), and Wild Wargs (7). We only have 29 models (which we could boost if we ran more Wild Wargs), but still a pretty good number for 500 points:

• Sharku on Warg with shield
• 5 Warg Riders with shields and throwing spears
• 1 Warg Rider with shield, throwing spears, and banner
• 3 Warg Riders with Orc bows
• 1 Wild Warg
• Orc Captain on Warg with shield
• 6 Warg Riders with Orc bows
• 6 Wild Wargs
• Orc Shaman on Warg
• 5 Warg Riders with shields

Army Summary

That's it for the Wolves of Isengard! If you've used this army, let us know what you do in the comments - we'd love to hear your tale! Our next post takes us to the Black Gate, where Rythbyrt will be probing the depths of a very popular Legendary Legion: the Black Gate Opens. While it has only one named hero (and a unique generic hero), this Legion provides you with a TON of numbers and good core troops. How many trolls are too many? Tune in next time to find out. See you then - happy hobbying!