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I grabbed a Balrog at the recent Bazaar, and it looks like our group will be getting into WotR, so I was wondering how to build up an army around him.

I like the looks of the Easterling and Uruk-Hai infantry models, and would be satisfied to use either as my army basis, but wondered if anybody had any advice as to how to proceed. Obviously, the Balrog would be Allied to a Fallen or Isengard army, but how to make this work is a mystery to me.

If it matters, I'm guessing we'll be playing 1000 pts, maybe 1500 pts, as we're all relatively new to LotR / WotR.

Thanks in advance, any advice would be much appreciated!

Welcome to the Dark Side.

Both Easterlings and Uruks are good troops. So look at the rules- infantry companies are eight models strong. Now look at the boxes- Easterlings come 20 to a box, while Uruks come 24 to a box. (Unless you buy scouts, so don't buy scouts.) Actually, I tell a lie- Uruks are 20 to a box too. Hmm. Why did I never notice that before? I've been painting too many goblins.

Cavalry are two to a company. Easterling Kataphracts are $12 each, while plastic Warg riders are six for$25.

Easterlings have about 2 Epic heroes, one of which does not even have a model yet. Isengard has several (4!), including one of the best casters (Saruman) and one of the best combat monsters (Lurtz).

If we're talkin' pure lists here, Isengard is the better army, with more choices. Artillery. Crossbows (these are pure evil! Say what you like about elven bow-skill, three stands of Vrashku's Talons wiped out a company of elves every time it fired). Cheap Isengard orcs. Battering ram teams. Trolls!

A pure Easterling army will be very bland, just cohorts, archers, and heavy cavalry.

But! The Easterlings are part of the Fallen Realms. A Fallen Realms army would use Easterlings as its solid core and fill in the edges with Haradrim, Corsairs, Black Numenoreans, and a Mumak or two. And they can take certain Ringwraiths as core, rather than allies.



We've been playing games in the 1600 to 1800 point range. It's a good range. Above 1600, we just tend to use more Epic heroes or legendary units.

Thanks very much!

Given that I'm already burning 500 pts on the Allied Balrog, I think I'd prefer to keep the base army more cohesive.

The Easterling army sounds like more of a patchwork, while the Isengard army sounds more uniform.

Thanks, again!

If you're playing with an allied balrog, you'll need to play very high point games. 2000 points at least.

Indeed. You can only spend up to 25% of your points on allies, and the Balrog costs 500 points.

It's off to the Misty Mountains for you, my lad. I hope you like painting goblins.

Crap.

Oh, well, he'll still look good for painting, which is why I originally got him.

yheea,and goblins has a greeeat tactical value to...just kidding....JUST RAM THEM WHIT TROLLS AND A BALROG AND TAKE GOBLINS TO CLEAN!!!!!MOHAHA!!!!

I cringe at the thought of using the Balrog in anything other than a Misty Mountain force, even though it'd be suspect to say the Balrog and those forces were working together. The Balrog does what the Balrog wants and he certainly doesn't orders from anyone.

But, i'm a stickler for the fluff when it comes to LotR.

Well, I'm getting some Uruk-Hai, so we'll see where this goes...

YEAH!!!!!!!!!FOR THE FIGHTING URUK-HAI!!!!!

Remember though, the Easterlings have 1 thing that no Uruk-Hai can replicate.



Mumakil. Unless that's Harad....

All true, however, I own a Balrog for the big monster model...

Right then.

But, as they say, the more the merrier!

Hold on. I have a first edition LOTR book collection. I am pretty sure that easterlings would group up with Mordor orcs. You could do a giant army of easterlings and mordorians or junk like that. Can you do that? I only paint LOTR.

In WotR:
- Easterlings group with Harad and the Nine,
- the Balrog is in Moria with Goblins,
- Uruk-Hai are with Saruman

3 separate sub-lists of Evil.

FYI, I'm up to 4 boxes of Uruks (80 models), plus I got a bunch more Uruks coming in, with Saruman and Lurtz, so that Balrog is just big allied monster.

I got the Uruks, and just bought a Witch King on Fell Beast on clearance price.

Now I'm thinking I should swap the Uruks for Easterlings, as the Fell Beast and Ringwraiths are more my playstyle, and Easterlings are easier to personalize in color...

-sigh-

JohnHwangDD wrote:I got the Uruks, and just bought a Witch King on Fell Beast on clearance price.

Now I'm thinking I should swap the Uruks for Easterlings, as the Fell Beast and Ringwraiths are more my playstyle, and Easterlings are easier to personalize in color...

-sigh-

Fellbeast mounted Ringwraith / Witch King is only Hard to Kill to my knowledge, which greatly limits its useability. A focused round of shooting from 1-2 shooting units worth their designation will drop him even with the Darkness spell off. You're going to want to be very careful with it.

Ringwraiths are easily worth their cost for what they can do. Giving a regiment the strength of a nearby Ent, or the Fight of the nearby Aragorn? How about blocking all long-range shooting? No Heroes can use their Courage and a unit's being Sunder Spirited / Vision of Woe-combo'd? Yes to all of them! Heck, Khamul isn't even limited to passing off the wounds he 'blocks' to allies: Pass them onto the unit that caused them if in Hand-to-Hand!

Uruk's are slightly better than Easterlings for their stats (at least those I can recall from memory). However, Easterlings have access to some better power-house units (Half-Trolls can be pure evil if you stuff the right heroes in them: Wounding on 3's, re-rolling failed to wound rolls of 1's or 2's, and getting to attack again for every kill they make. In other words, "Never ending attacks.") and can be pretty good at shooting. With your mention of "playstyle", I take it shooting is one of those things you like your units to do?

My default fantasy tabletop gaming playstyle revolves around big models, the bigger and flashier, the better. So for me, taking the Fell Beast native, plus Ringwraiths for magic, plus the Balrog = WIN.

I'm similar to you JohnHwang, except I also love teeming hordes of orcs and goblins with my big scary demons and sorceror kings.
I really love WOTR, even if you divorced me completely from my enjoyment of Tolkien, it is just an excellent fantasy wargame.

I don't like the looks of the Orc & Goblin models as much, hence my initial thought to go with Uruks or Easterlings.

It's too bad Isengard doesn't have Ringwraiths.

I back uruk-hai because there more the darker side of evil therefore suit the balrog
and also its cheaper models for the uruk hai and get quite a bit of converage too as pretty much the main evil army.

I hope to see your army somewhere on here


S

Don't hold your breath - we've switched gears to SH, so WotR will be on hold for a while.

aha okay
well another thourght is
Instead of a balrog buy a dragon they fit with easterlings perfectly.

Regards
S

I already own the Balrog - it's the first LotR model I bought.

Edit: Oh gods, threadmance. Me so sorry.

Meh, no biggie.

well both could be used if you want your army to be fluffy shall we say but i prefer easterlings as they are kind of mysterious. Although isengard has a pretty good army i cant really deside, but id probally go with easterlings