I second Mcgarnacle.
Well Easterlings I love dearly, I tried to main them as my main evil army... now I have an Easterling and Harad army as my main evil force.
Easterlings are not a Jack of all trades, they do Jack at all their trades. That said, Easterlings can be reasonably effective up to 400 points. Beyond that and their lack of options and their opponents having enough points to take their elites mean you'll be outfought. Add to that that their gimmick, the phalanx is likely to trap their own men and that only 2 pikes per box and it becomes even worse.
Harad, on the other hand, is amazing. Even an army of their plastics can be rather brutal. Harad plays differently to a lot of armies in that they die like no tomorrow but they dish out the hurt. A good Nazgul to have in a Harad army is the Shadowlord, he offsets your weakness to bowfire and will let you dictate the pace of the game with your archery. The Harad elites like the serpent guard, abrakhan guard and watchers of Karna are all also powerful additions.
Harad and Easterlings both have a 50% bow limit, so you can really bring the hurt to the enemy. Harad is cheap to field in droves, even the elites are comparatively cheap. Have a think how you'd like to play them, as Harad with Umbar (priates and reavers) can be included together but if they are then you will lose the scorpion sting bonus - that's the 50% bow limit.
As a new player I would recommend starting simple and going pure Harad, without Umbar. You can grab a box of Easterlings Kataphracts if you want to include Easterlings as the box comes with a captain option in the kit. For the haradrim I would recommend 1 or 2 boxes of raiders and 1 or two boxes of haradrim warriors. Raiders you might have to go to gw for but no harm checking eBay especially for the basic warriors, who are there in spades. You could get the haradrim command pack if you wanted but a lot of that can be converted pretty easy from the basic warriors.
After That, adding abrakhan guard and the watchers are a great idea. Serpent guard in my opinion are a waste on foot while the serpent riders are godly. A wraith will help you. Easterlings pikes can be useful but they're so hard to get! If you add Easterlings, use them against S3 opponents and consider them as professional not-diers who's main roll is to walk in front of your army as a meat shield.
Task masters are amazing!
|
