My local gw is having an escalation. My fiancé wants to play! She wanted to use a dragon, so Mordor is the force I'm going to start her with and it's 125pts.This is what I'm thinking . I'm wary of orc bows. Any suggestions? I don't play Mordor ie build at lower pts.

Shagrat cpt of CU. with shield.
4 morannon orcs with shield.
4 with spear.

Questions:

Its her dragon fully upgrade to 350pts?

Suggestions I would recommend;

If you get low on models counts to field in big monsters like balrogs and dragons, I do HIGHLY advice you, specially dragon to get numbers and why?

Unlike Balrog who got no might to call heroic moves and makes your oponent feeding 1 warrior at a time to tie him up, the dragon can actually counter it, but the dragon got a major weakness, courage 4.
Although despite he can use will to reshape the courage test rolls keep in mind unlike most models the dragon will eventually test for 2 things..

- everytime he takes a wound and roll on courage to see if it stays
- when your force is broken

and personally losing the dragon cause of broken force isnt something you want...

I would Suggest you Moria since for 125pts you can get more benefits from it...although 125pts still dont give much marging to much stuff really...

If you want mordor plz plz go cheap, evil armies arent renown for having high courage values, every kill they inflict you will hurt you badly for the breaking point games...
Also if youre playing random scenarios most of them end when 1 side ends up broken. I would say its super easy for me for example 475pts of my own force to feed 40/50 pts at a dragon while the others take all those morannon(almost literally in 1 round of shooting)

Your advise is sound and correct. The only thing is the army is 4 my fiancé and she has criteria lol. A. dragon B. A Nazgul later on. Plus she doesn't like to lose. I have explained that a dragon cool in for fun games but its a point sink in a completive game. She's deadest so be it. And I only have 12 goblins 6 wargs and a balrog. Im wondering about the use of orc rabble really. Bows or no bows. Maybe a front line of blackguard or moranons supported by orcs with spear.

With the Orcs (which is recommend over moranons simply because weight of numbers to balance against a Dragon. Definitely take a shaman, channeled fury makes them so irritating for an opponent

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Yeah that's a great plan. Thx 4 both your advice it always appreciated.

why dont he take monsters 2 then?

let her come here and talk to us, we have experience dealing with dragons and such :)

DRagon in most part is just fun as for competitive, unless you get a whole bunch of named nazguls and numbers dragon is just a dream for competitive.. she is gonna lose alot times just the way things are....

Can you be part of her leading warband for that escalation?


id you need warband well go fun

take gundabad moria goblin shaman
dweller in the dark

thats 125 and only thing you have to worry is shaman dying faster than others and then oponent might pick on the dweller... as for forces broken, well enemies have to kill your easy side squishy guys at all cost and the dweller wont flee that easy regardless... hes also able to match dragon in fight prowess and outmatch most of the enemy heroes fight skill value.

if you can be part of her warband go for beast of gorgoroth maybe(still got 9 orcs on her back to shoot bows)

If you wanna prob save time and buy time, well Im gonna give you the most annoying warbands to deal with then...

warband 2
Castellan of dol guldur

warband 3
Castellan with dol guldur

Warband 4
Castellan of dol guldur with morgul blade

total: 125pts

no might at all but the best tarpit unit at low points you could ever field...
12* fate points basically to spend (less per each combat phase you got involved since they get drained 1 point at a time like nazguls)
They have high courage, number of attacks really high defence and high Strength and decent fight value...

On lower point games probably this can be the best meatshield to help her dragon and surely the most annoying thing out there at smaller games...

Id honestly prefer to go with Gorbag/Grishnakh, and 10 Morannons with shields/spear. That way, you have numbers which is evils strength of course.

I dont know if you preferred Shagrats Fight value or strength which are both great, but Id take the first list.



I know shes going to take the dragon. And especially with a nazgul, Id be careful and teach her a lot dude. Id be happy to play with yall next Sunday(I believe Im open). And we can practice with them. But its gonna be a long time before those armies are even viable....what even if we double the points total every week it will be like a month before she can fit a dragon.....

As for goblins, if you'd like to do them the first week, I have some old painted ones. Theyre not done well, but hey, theyre done. I should have enough for you to borrow the first week. I also have a bunch that are partially done/new. Id be more hesitant to give those all away as I have been wanting to paint them, but we can figure something out.

Finally, no bows. Theyre pointless with orcs/gobs because they will not only mostly suck, but the more important part is they will take you out of position with whording your enemy with foot soldiers.

And yeah, a front like of Morannons with a back line of orc spears would be good. Even for 125 you can do:

Grisknakh
6 morannon with shield
5 orcs with spear


Id agree with the idea of taking regular orcs when it comes to using the dragon. Keep the morannons in till then in my opinion tho.

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Go with the dragon, it can do a lot of damage and its fun. It's quite likely she isn't going to win the tournament, but with such a solid unit in the dragon it doesn't mean she is going to lose easily.
She might like to consider taking the breathe fire upgrade to try and burn out a bunch of enemy troops to move things into her favour more and not be at risk as much of breaking.

Regular orcs are good for numbers, but Morannons with D6 and S4 are going to survive a lot better. So i would probably go with the Morannons if you can, they are worth investing in. Having orcs with spears at the back works quite well, but if you can upgrade them to Morannons, you might as well.

As for orc bows, don't bother. Especially not when sinking points into a Dragon and a Nazgul. And don't be concerned about bows either, just get into combat as quickly as you can.

I think having Shagrat captain of CU is a good idea, he's a beast. Yes, it leaves you with fewer troops, but I think it will be ok.

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I'm a big fan of Morgul Knights, to be quite honest - aside from anything else, they (and the Black Numenoreans) are the only models in the Mordor list to get Horns (almost the only Evil models at all, to be honest) and the bonus from the horn would synergise quite nicely with the Dragon's Survival Instinct.
As well as being terror-causing heavy cavalry.