Good morning gamers,
If Ardacon is any indication, then the Army of the White Hand is a good list - all three people who podiumed in the Invitational Masters event were running the list and that probably says more about the view of this list that the highest competitive minds have rather than how good the list is at your local tournament scene. That being said, everyone's talking about "the White Hand" list and whether Crebain are broken because of it. The list is more than just about Crebain - but Crebain are also very important to it working well. Let's see what's up with this list and some thoughts for running it, shall we (and as always in this series, anything related to Legacies will be highlighted in red for whatever players or tournaments don't allow Legacy models)?
Army of the White Hand: Changes for 2025
Profile Selection
This list is the closest thing to a "normal Isengard list" from the last edition. You have access to Saruman and Grima, most of the Uruk-Hai profiles, most of the Orc profiles, and all of the Dunland profiles from the last edition (especially if you include the models that moved to Legacies). The primary profiles that you're missing are Lurtz, Ugluk, Mauhur, and Uruk-Hai Drummers from the Uruk-Hai hero side of the house, Uruk-Hai Warriors and Berserkers for the Uruk-Hai warriors, and the ballistas and bombs (which are oddballs, but still Uruk-Hai). You're also missing Snaga and Sharku from the Orc contingent - but that's literally it. Everyone else and their brother shows up in this list - and that means there are a LOT of options.
The list also doesn't have required heroes, so you can technically run whatever you want in it - Centaur used it for the first scenario of our custom Osgiliath campaign because it is LITERALLY the only list where you can get just Orc Captains and Orc Warriors in your army! Now, all the army list bonuses are all tied to Saruman, so you should probably run him, but you don't have to - and that's great. There's also a wide variety of subfactions that are represented in this list - Dunland, Uruk-Hai, Orcs, and of course Saruman and Grima - so depending on the theme you want to run, this list provides a nice canvas for your play (if you have a competitive bent, the options are probably less, but there's still some variety).
