Good morning gamers,
It's October, and as we lead up to Halloween, we'll be covering some of the spookier lists involving Nazgul that we haven't covered to date. Our first list appears to be one of the front-runners for most competitive lists featuring the Witch-King: the Host of the Witch King army list. This list has a strong array of both hero and warrior options and gives you basically everything you could want in an Angmar list (except monsters). Let's see what you can do with this list! As we've been doing, anything tied to the Legacies will be highlighted in red.
The Host of the Witch-King: Changes for 2025
Profile Selection
This list has to take the Witch-King, which comes in his 3A/3M/18W/3F form, but only has the options for horse and Morgul Blade. These are perfectly good options and help to keep the Witch-King's cost down (usually at 170pts after you've taken a horse - not bad for a Hero of Legend). Your Heroes of Valour are the Dwimmerlaik and the Tainted if you're playing with Legacies, as well as the Shadow of Rhudaur and Aldrac, Warlord of Carn Dum. Your Fortitude heroes include generic March Captains (Angmar Orc Captains and Captains of Carn Dum), Fraecht, Nazthak, and Shades. Finally, you can get Angmar Orc Shamans and Barrow-wights as Minor Heroes, which limits how many models you can bring with your Barrow-wights, but they're still terrifying heroes to have to fight.
The warrior list looks pretty lean - and it is - with Angmar Orc Warriors, Angmar Warg Riders, Spectres, Warriors of Carn Dum, and Werewolves. While this isn't a wide array of options, you have basically everything you'd want in a list except cheap fast troops (Wild Wargs for most Angmar lists) and decent archers (Orc Trackers, for example). Still, you have efficient infantry, efficient cavalry, and whatever Werewolves count as (not quite monstrous infantry, but they're close to it).
Army List Bonuses
Besides needing to take the Witch-King, you aren't allowed to take more than 50% of your army as Carn Dum models . . . I can think of only one or two people in the world who are probably sad about this, but whatever - there's another army that allows you to spam the "moose men" if you want them. Beyond this minor constraint, there are three bonuses that you get for playing this list: first, as Angmar has long had as its defining trait, your Orcs gain Terror while within 3" of a friendly Spirit Hero (so that would be the Witch-King, the other named Ringwraiths, the Shadow of Rhudaur, Shades, and Barrow-wights.
Second, the Witch-King only loses Will Points if he loses a combat in the Fight Phase (instead of all the time). This rule as written seems to indicate that if the Witch-King calls a Heroic Combat, wins, kills his opponent(s), charges into at least one enemy model, and then loses the follow-up combat, he'll lose 1 Will at the end of the Fight Phase per normal (even though he won his first fight). Finally, to help the Witch-King have a better chance of not losing (some) fights, he gets +1 Fight Value while Engaged in combat with an enemy Man model. In an era where Eowyn has the "Man" keyword (unlike the first few years of the previous edition), this feels like a bit of a missed thematic opportunity, but I digress. If you find yourself fighting "men" a lot, the Witch-King will be a F7 menace who will probably not be losing Will points for fighting if he's running through warriors for 170pts mounted. This is a good list to run the Witch-King in (which is good, since he's required and all).
