When the new Battlehost boxes were announced back in August, Centaur wrote an article that evaluated which would win if they were pitted together. On September 7, 2022, we got the free-to-download "Quick Rules" for the main rules and these Battlehosts and I wanted to both comment on these documents and see how these truncated rules change the ranking of the Battlehosts (in my opinion). Let's dig in!
The Downloadable Rules
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
First off, we need to view the main rules supplement - great job, Middle-Earth team, for distilling the bare basics of the rules into 14 pages. :) 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). By drilling down into "just what's in the boxes", you avoid the overwhelming nature of diving straight into the game (where Mumaks, siege weapons, other monsters, the Ring, and countless special rules/magical powers/wargear options abound).
Many of the profiles (as we'll see) got truncated too - this not only makes it so that the main rules content can be reduced to avoid talking about niche rules, but it also makes it so that the rules for each model are streamlined a lot more (and didn't keep rules that are great for theme, but would never be used in battlehost play). The design team didn't skip magic entirely (which I think may have been a good idea - I never teach people how to play with magic in the first game because it changes how the game is played), but rather limited what kinds of spells can be used in this quick-and-dirty version of SBG. And I don't mind that (though some profiles REALLY changed with this truncation - more on that later).
But there was also a rules change (to simplify things) from the normal game: cavalry get their charge bonuses regardless of who they charge (read, you can't turn off someone's cavalry charge bonuses just by counter-charging them with cavalry). Suddenly any cavalry model looks really good (even if all the cavalry in these Battlehost are only F3). I don't think this changed too much for me, but I'm curious to see if this could be implemented in the normal game whenever a rules rewrite happens (comment below about whether you think this is a good idea or not).
But I do have one critique of this: they provided a single scenario for you to play and the game ends when one side is wiped out. In my experience playing MESBG, playing to the last man is actually an UNFUN experience (especially if there's no way your 2 Orcs are going to be able to kill Gandalf and a half dozen Warriors of Minas Tirith). This is easily remedied by the stragglers running away (the Courage stats aren't great in any of these boxes) or a player choosing to quit the game early, but I'd rather that they introduce the concept of a quarter point instead of "killing all the guys." But hey, if that's the only critique, that's not bad.
Okay, let's get into the Battlehost rules!
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
In the Rohan supplement, we get Eomer - and unlike the Witch-King, Gandalf, and Saruman, he has basically no rules on his sheet. Yes, Eomer normally has a rule that makes him go berserk if Theoden or Eowyn die, but since you can't field Theoden or Eowyn in this list, they omitted the rule (awesome job, team, awesome job). They also don't tell you what kind of horse Eomer's riding (more on that in a minute), so he'll be the equivalent of a 120-125pt hero depending on how you choose to build your Eomer. The profile for Eomer in particular is also missing heroic actions (because, as was mentioned above, they are avoiding those and only giving you Might to boost your die rolls).
With access to Riders of Rohan and Warriors of Rohan only, a fully decked Eomer with 18 Warriors of Rohan and 6 Riders of Rohan (saving 6 infantry for dismounts) will give you an army of 351pts that is mostly F3/D5 - which is quite small compared to two of these armies and pretty fragile (what with the not having any spears to support your models). Yes, I see this army struggling a lot (mostly due to Eomer not having access to Heroic Combats).
#3: Mordor
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
For the Mordor supplement, the designers have done new players a favor and given the Witch-King 3M/15W/3F, placed him on a horse, and given you the option to take the Crown of Morgul, a Morgul Blade, and the Flail for free. All told, this puts the Witch-King at 165pts (which is about right for a horse-mounted Witch-King) or a little less if you choose to skip the flail. As with Saruman and Gandalf (spoiler alert), the Witch-King gets a subset of his original spells (only Transfix, Compel, and Black Dart - all with their normal 12" range and cast on a 3+, 4+, and 5+ respectively, per the usual). While this is a good set of spells for him (and some of the most common spells that a Ringwraith player would use), both Gandalf and Saruman (spoiler alert) have 4 spells in their retinue and I think it would have been particularly interesting for the Witch-King to have retained Sap Will or Your Staff is Broken (considering that both Gandalf and Saruman are in the running). Still, it's not a bad load-out for the Witch-King - I'm mostly happy with it.
The Orcs and Warg Riders have basic gear and then you're allowed to give them "one of the following options," which allows you to get the gear they have in the box. This simplification of war gear choices is actually very good and since there aren't any points values associated with these profiles, it makes it easy to "just get going." Once again, good job MESBG team.
But what this also means is that if you run 6 Warg Riders and 18 Orc Warriors (saving 6 guys to be dismounts), you'll be running an army that's 345pts in the normal game. That's . . . really low (and something Centaur hit on in his review). Yep, I think these guys are almost at the bottom of the list, but a bit better than Rohan because the Witch-King has enough Will to keep Eomer from doing anything. I did want to give a shout-out to the MESBG team for what they did with the Witch-King, though - I know when I got started playing the game, figuring out how to kit out a Nazgul was HARD.
#2: Minas Tirith
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
The Minas Tirith rules saw a LOT of changes: Gandalf went down to 4 spells, losing some of his most useful auric abilities and keeping his more generic ones. Pippin can't throw stones, but I guess that's not a big loss? Shadowfax has no profile (so no free Will/Fate on him) and Knights of Minas Tirith don't have shieldwall (so make sure you keep it clear who is who when they get dismounted!). Beyond that, "there are no rules changes."
But let's dig a little deeper into what Gandalf lost: he retained Immobilize/Command (which are both good at dealing with the enemy hero you'll have on the other side of the board) and he retained Terrifying Aura (which is good since all of the warriors in the other battlehosts are C2-3). He retained Sorcerous Blast, which is probably the ONLY way he's going to come close to recouping his cost (though since he costs almost as much as the whole battlehost for Rohan and Mordor, how important/possible is that?). All four of these spells are great, but Gandalf has lost a few really important spells.
First and foremost, he lost Blinding Light, which against a Mordor battlehost you probably won't notice the loss, an Isengard battlehost MIGHT make you feel the loss, but the Rohan battlehost (with all those bows and throwing spears) . . . yeah, you're gonna feel that. Second, he lost Strengthen Will, which is undervalued by most players, but in a game where you're trying to wipe out everyone on the other side of the table, you can turtle up and spend your first turns boosting Gandalf's Will store so he has more juice as the game goes on.
Third, Gandalf lost Fortify Spirit, which won't do anything against the Rohan battlehost, but has HUGE implications for the Isengard and Mordor battlehosts. Since Saruman has more range on Immobilize/Command than Gandalf does, the Witch-King has 15 Will points to spend on casts, and BOTH have rerolls on their casting and resisting rolls, having 2 free Will points to resist their barrages would be really nice. Perhaps that's why it was omitted, I don't know . . .
Fourth, Gandalf lost Your Staff is Broken and Banishment, which would be useful against Saruman and the Witch-King respectively, but both for Gandalf are quite niche (though I stand by what I said earlier about the Witch-King benefitting from the spell immensely). All told, if you were to trim Gandalf's spells down to 4 from the original 9, I think I'd remove Command from his retinue and give him Fortify Spirit instead. I think the idea was to find the lowest-common-denominator spells and avoid too many unique ones, so I can see it (but don't agree with it).
One other thing that this battlehost has going for it is that it can be fielded for ~500pts (assuming that you save 6 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields to be Knight dismounts). This is a good 150pts above the previous two Battlehosts and comes down to not only having a more expensive main guy, but also having Pippin in the same blister (giving you an extra model).
But there was no rules changes that could have put any Battlehost ahead of . . .
#1: Isengard
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| Photo Credit: Warhammer Community |
With all the other boxes capped at 25-26 models (if you want the dismounts for the cavalry - otherwise 31-32) and the Isengard box having unequivocally 46 models, it shouldn't be a surprise that this box has remained dominant in the comparison. Unlike all the other boxes, these guys have no cavalry, but their greater weight of numbers means they're unlikely to have 1 Uruk charged by 1 cavalry model very often. With roughly the same number of bows as everyone else (8 S3 Uruk-Hai bows vs. 4 Orc bows, 8 bows, and 12 bows), more supporting weapons than everyone else (10 pikes), and lots of models who can shield (18), this army's got it all. Oh, and this army is just over 600pts of models . . . almost double the Rohan/Mordor boxes and a good 100pts above Minas Tirith (this helps a lot too).
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). 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). With the Palantir and his Lord of the Istari rules intact, I don't see how this army leader can't dominate against the warriors of the enemy and really pin down most of the enemy army leaders. Grima doesn't have the ability to deploy with your opponent (and so will always be a hostile model) and his Wormtongue rule is specific to the use of Might in general, not heroic actions (which is . . . probably more of a nightmare for your opponent because now he can't boost dueling rolls against a swarm of Uruks without burning through 2 Might points). So yes, raise the White Hand, and dominate with Saruman and his Isengard Battlehost!
Balancing the Battlehosts
If I were to change these battlehost boxes to make them more evenly matched, we'd need to begin with Isengard: Isengard getting Saruman and Grima gives it a huge advantage besides all the Uruks they're getting. While I don't think adding Warg Riders is the right call, I do think that giving them Lurtz and Ugluk (or even an Uruk-Hai command blister) would balance it more. Not only would this lower the points level some, but the strength of your heroes would be dropped, forcing the Isengard player to work on using his Uruks to stall out the big heroes.
Minas Tirith would be an easy change: swap Gandalf for Boromir. This would lower their points level a little too, but would also make it so that there's a F4 army to combat the Uruks (if Boromir is equipped with his banner). Boromir introduces a different set of problems than Gandalf does, but to have a single hero who wants to be amidst his troops to grant maximum benefits means he's not going to be gallivanting across the board. I choose Gandalf over Boromir every time, but in this one case, I think Boromir be a great addition.
For Rohan, I actually think the solution is to drop their points slightly and give them Theoden. Theoden would allow the Riders to keep the "Arise, Riders of Theoden!" rule and make them F4 when they charge. Without the army bonus, they're still S3 (and with no special strikes they'll always be stuck at S3), but they'd hit just that little bit harder - especially if the cavalry charged where Boromir wasn't (or where the pikes aren't if fighting Isengard). I also wouldn't mind if there was a second sprue of Riders (or Theoden AND Eomer), but that's definitely asking for too much.
When it comes to Mordor, I think the box sets for the new edition have it right: you want Morannons. Not only do Morannon Orcs have a more streamlined profile, but getting a bunch of those guys means your opponent has to deal with high-Strength, high-Defense units. And Orc Warriors aren't those - they die far too quickly. 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!), throw in the new Gothmog kit (or the old one, I don't care) and give them 24 Morannon Orcs (to join the 24 Orc Warriors). This would become the biggest battle host (but still right around 500pts, so on-par with the modified Isengard and either version of Minas Tirith) and would give you "just a bunch of Orc infantry" . . . which is very true to how Mordor is run in the films. Of course, the more I think about this, the more I think Rohan needs two heroes instead of one . . .
Conclusion
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). While I don't think pitting these boxes against each other works too well without a points limit, the best thing about these boxes is that if you were going to buy two of the three components anyway, the third component is basically free. That probably says something about the mark-up of the individual boxes, but hey, I'll take "free models."
If you have thoughts on these battlehosts (or if any of this was new to you), let us know in the comments below! Until next time, happy hobbying!
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