But there is an exception and it's the Knights of Morgul Battlehost:

Epic:
1 Dark Marshal
1 Mouth of Sauron (for Battlehost purposes)
1 Betrayer
1 Knight of Umbar
1 Gothmog
1 Morgul Champion (Thrydan Wolfsbane Profile)

Common:
1 Orcs
Battlehost
4 Morgul Knights
4 Morgul Knights
4 Morgul Knights
4 Morgul Knights
4 Morgul Knights

Fate: Palantir on Gothmog or "Death, Death, Death"

Total 1500, 5 formations, 6 Heroes, Magic level 11

An alternative version has 4 formations of 4 companies, but each has a banner to make use of Gothmog's Army Banner rule (although given that the first has Palantir and usually all you need is 1 Heroic Charge, Overlord should be sufficient and an extra formation might be more useful).

Key thing about this army is to win outright in turn 1 and if that's not the case, cause enough damage for enemy to have a hard time recovering from the initial charge.

The Battlehost gives us the free heroic combats on 5+ (earthshaking charge upgrade) and most imortantly Onset of Dismay on 1-2 instead of just 1. On turn 1, except for the obvious multiple Pall of Nights and/or Strength from Corruption, each Nazgul, Thrydan and Gothmog turn on Epic Strike to give themselves around 6 attacks extra. With free at the double the army can position itself perfectly if it moves 2nd in turn 1 and then again in subsequent turns (hence why we want to have Palantir - it gives us effectively 65% of choosing who goes first).

1x Orcs are there for the 1 company non-battlehost minimum requirement.

Mathematically speaking: If 3 companies get into combat with Minas Tirith Warriors (or any D6 or 7 models), we get 3x9+1+7=35 attacks [it's actually 3x8+6 if the formation is F4, so 30] (I would also think about Strength from corruption which can kill off one of your companies and take away 1 attack but add +2 or 4 strength which helps a lot in combat). That would mean around 10-12 dead on average (with Betrayer in the formation that's 20 dead) and 17 or so attacks back kill 2 of ours. (If we cast SfC, we are S5, so frontal charge will kill an average of 17 or 25 with Betrayer - that's usually half of the formation if it's 3-4 companies strong so Onset of Dismay bonus already comes into play). Hopefully we can get 5+ for earthshaking (having 5 formations in combat 1 or 2 of these should work) and get another round of attacks making a total of 25+ casualties, this time with no casualties on our side. 2nd time Onset of Dismay bonus might work. If we're worried about not getting Earthshaking charge when we need it, we can use Overlord to call 3 Heroics (or make Nazgul duel enemy Heroes).

Weakness: Pikes. But I haven't seen any armies that would use more than 1-2 small 2 company formations with them plus there are ways around it with magic. The army is a bit more risky than Morannon Orcs based multi-wraith Mordor, but it is a viable list (mirror match would be interesting, although probably the Morannons would win it).

I think it's not bad and most of all would look awesome on the table Having now finished my Moria list I'm considering this as my next WotR army (after finishing some other things for SBG GT in february). Total of 35 Morgul Knights required (Epics cover the other slots) = 7 boxes = a few drinks less every time I go to a pub and in a few months it's done

What do you think?

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

well first thing, are you trying to hide this from ppl in TLA??

anyway, the first and biggest thing that will wreak this army is not getting priority and going first, cause then they will be able to move out of charge range, get on your flanks, hide their trolls ect from your nazgul, pall of night....
second big weakness is enemy monsters, two mordor trolls is enough to ruin a formation
third is not getting the charge, if sure you can call heroic charges, but they can too will could be the end of your army at turn 1...
4th is any clever positioning from them, they could hide in terrain, have some 1c stuff out in from to block your charges
5th is ranged stuff. if they have a 4c archer formation then they could severly weaken a formation (and combined with all the other stuff they could do (magic ect) you could almost lose an entire formation before you charge). even worse would be artillery, siege bows in particular
6th is that you will die to any large formations as you simply wont be able kill enough (look at your last list, 3f of 6c of blackshields....), if they have nazgul or some kind of str buff then you'll die easily

overall i think that too much is left up to the dice, if you fail heroic charge then your going to have an uphill battle (hence why most all mounted lists dont do that well)... thats not to say that theres no potential.
if you do get the key dice rolls (or a stupid player) then you could easily win turn 1 as you pointed out...

so there are alot of pros and cons to the army, personally I would go with a more reliable list (i would like to see a non-mordor army cause there are so many around... although you are being creative with it)
i strongly encourage exploring ideas like you are, most ppl tend to look at the obvious stuff (nazgul and morranons...)

Im also spending less nowdays to save up for 4c spiders and 6c blackshields
i would say more but i have to get to sleep

I'm not hiding from TLA, it's just that the TLA forum has over 30 GT threads on 1st 2 pages, so nobody cares for WotR there at the moment

The reason I thought about building this (apart from cool looks) is in summer when I was playtesting my Moria I spent a lot of time playing my best friend and his all-cav Gondor force, which every other game was wiping the floor with my goblins.

I don't think monsters are a problem. First because cheap ones (like a Troll) can't resist Pall of Night and die easily to SfC. Hero monsters get Black Breathed and die in a duel (except the Dragon, but there are ways of dealing with that with just Magic combinations).
Hiding in terrain is also not a problem - I can stay outside and cast multiple strength from corruption and visions of woe if my opponent really wants to hide all game.

Yes, Priority is a problem. But, given the PoN is 24", I can cast 4 of those and stay back with the army until I'm sure that things can't charge. It's difficult, sometimes it might work. It's just a thing you gotta live with with an all-cav force.
Yes, Artillery is a problem. But if there is no hill in the deployment zone, I can use my opponent's units as cover.
Yes, SfC on mass units is a problem too... there's always Enfeeble for that, although it might not work.
But the biggest problem I think is mass enemy magic - I don't have enough Might to stop it and I can't afford losing models because there are so few :/

Certainly the army is weaker than my Moria list, but it would be quite challenging to use it and work out how to make it work. My Goblins didn't work at the start either (it was my 2nd WotR army, first I used competitively was 2 Winged Nazgul, Stone Giant, 3 Troll Chieftains and 5 companies of warg riders. There's even a report in my blog if you wanna see how that worked ).

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

how did your goblins lose so easlily? you had a ton of cavalry so even if they charge its not such a big loss (unless there were lances). but please explain this

I can see how monsters can be deal with
priority will be tricky if you lose it but i guess its do-able
magic is your weakness for sure...

from what i see, your answer to everything is magic.... if you roll a few 1s for focus then you'll be left in a bad spot..

I have seen your blog, and even posted a question on that particular part. not really sure how competitive it is as just 2 PoN stops half of your combat units getting into combat (although against small armies it would wipe the floor, large ones like gobs are a problem from what i see)

(i got 5mins untill i leave for work, so ill comment later)

What do I think? I wouldn't especially enjoy having to take that on with a 1500pt Gondor army. If I was running it, Pikes wouldn't be my biggest fear, wouldn't these be more worrying?:

Crossbow gunline: Corsairs are only 25pts and Isengard get theirs as a core choice. Every three coys should be killing at least a coy of cav a round. Heroic moves and shoots can make this pretty hard to mitigate and the might involved is totally worth it vs an army like yours.

Almost any Evil melee unit containing Wraiths making use of WOD and PON: If you go second, they can always move up to you. Sure, it will be a bloody battle of attrition, since not all of the Spells are going to go off. However, I think the infantry based army will probably come out of that messy exercise in better shape than the cavalry one.

Ruin Casters: Shatter Shields and Dark Fury on deep units of 2HW orcs.

A nice line of Mordor Siege bows: They won't take up much of that 1500pts, after all.

Epic Tranquility bunkers: Since it has to be said.

I really want Morgul Knight models too. I like the new plastic heavy cav sets but SKODA are just too expensive for what they do, IMO.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

My opponent fields Aragorn, Faramir, Eomer, Imrahil, Isildur and I think Erkenbrand and then 5 formations of Minas Tirith Knights of 5-6 companies each. So my Epics were getting eaten in combat (just sheer amount of Might was enough to bring them down). Then he also had Palantir, so nobody had an advantage in priority. Yes I was also getting about 30 attacks back in each combat, so he was losing companies at a steady rate too, but once my heroes went away and my formations couldn't get back from being disordered due to low courage, there wasn't much that could be done. Plus the opponent is a very skilled player with his army, he's been playing all-cav through his whole WotR career.


Oh wow, that's a 3rd ever comment there, so didn't expect that, thanks I replied there.

Ok Shadowswarm and Xelee, overall I'm convinced, this army wouldn't work. But the look of the 5 formations of Morgul Knights...

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

before you totally drop the idea you should try it, proxy for morgul knights and try it out. this way you will really know how it works. I can say all i want, but thats just on paper, untill you try it you wont know just how it works.

also, take a look at the standard armies and see how it goes against that, sure a corsair gunline would be deadly, but how many of them do you see in a tourny?

that minas tirith force seems quite deadly having so many ES heros, you'd really have to kill them off before they reached you. and since they have a ridiculous amount of might they can always call heroics to charge ect (and they really exploited the gobs low courage), although you said that they wiped the floor half the time, so what happened in the other half (and was it your GT list?)

I think the standard armies for the GT were generally the unimaginative Wraith heavy Mordor lists, which are on that list of things that I'd hate to fight if I was running that all-cav army. Still and all, forget the Corsair arbalests, I'd totally be taking crossbow heavy Isengard (with Shatter Shields/marker light ) if I was going to the (European?) GT. Either that or better yet all of Thrydan's powered up 25pt Dunlendings with supporting Wraiths and just a couple of backup xbow formations for a 1500pt list.

Blackmist, I defintely see the apeal of the all heavy-cav army, I am considering it myself in lieu of the over-pointed SKODA. I think I might go also go the route of massed Gondor (fiefdoms) lancers using the 11 coy I have already plus Conquest Normans without Shields. You can get a lot of 25pt lancers and the right heroes in even a 1000pt list, let alone a 1500pt one. However, the one posted above just doesn't have the numbers to go it vs even some lists I see that aren't especcially 'hard', let alone what I saw described in GT forces.

I'd be keen to know what your mate ended up with as all Cav tactics, I could never really get them to work consistently vs a serious army without a proper screen.

In fact, instead of taking an Evil army to the GT, why not a Good one this time?

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

It wasn't entirely my GT list - I didn't have the Mumak but had Dark Marshal and Undying (those two I was planning to take to GT, so even though my opponent had no magic, it was fair that I play with Undying). It was first dependent a lot on priority rolls, and whether the two Pall of Nights could be resisted or not. If they went off, then sometimes I was able to charge him and cause big damage, it was generally a very balanced game as long as everything on average worked. My opponent is also quite smart with his positioning, ie. he would almost never play with formations more than 1 company wide because that meant I could only charge it with 2 of my companies, while other supported, so I was losing attacks there. Also, the formations on flanks were positioned in such a way that if I charged, either only 1 of my companies could get into touch (because of the board edge) or I couldn't charge at all due to the rules saying that if I can't position a legal company configuration then the charge fails (if for example you have the edge on your right and you position your knights facing at an angle slightly skewed towards the board edge and have impassable terrain or another unit on their left side, then 6 companies of goblins just can't create a legal configuration, so according to the rules they can't charge - I know, stupid rules, but hey, good for the player to know that ).


UK. There will be a doubles GT-style tournament in Poland in April in case you're interested (Poland is fanatical about LotR SBG - the national league includes 7 50+ player tourneys per year and dozens of smaller ones. This year's world's biggest LotR tournament was held in Warsaw on 13-14 November with 144 players attending - so we get some really solid players for WotR there too)


I don't like Skoda. They're not much better than KoMT and you can get a lot more KoMT for the same price (both points and money wise).

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League