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First is the army of the dead any good and are they competitive.

Second the elephant riding guys how are they.

Looking into the game and they interest me so dose the balrog and fell beasts

Drahazar1 wrote:
First is the army of the dead any good and are they competitive.

If you want to strictly stick to the actual Army of the Dead, they are very limited. One infantry choice, one cavalry choice, and one (1) hero (the King of the Dead). This basically means you can't take more than 12 AoD warriors in an army (you need at least one Hero for every 12 Warriors). They are part of the larger Fiefdoms list from the Kingdoms of Men book, so you could take heroes from the other sub-factions (Dol Amroth, Lossarch, etc.) to lead a warband of Undead, although to me at least that seems rather at odds with the source material. Although not official I would consider using pre-King of Gondor Aragorn to lead an Undead Warband entirely reasonable.

Second the elephant riding guys how are they.

The Mumak (the elephant with howdah) is part of the Harad and Umbar list from the Fallen Realms book, which has a lot of choices. Several choice of both Infantry and Cavalry, melee and missile troops. Its certainly a very viable list.

Looking into the game and they interest me so dose the balrog and fell beasts

There are two named Righwraiths in the Harad and Umbar list, which can both lead your warbands and ride fell beasts. You could also take one of the other named Ringwraiths (or an un-named Rightwraith) on fell beast, but they could not lead your warbands. You could also include the Balrog (you can combine any "evil" army with any other) although the generally consensus is that the Balrog isn't really worth his points.

Not sure how familiar you are with the rules, but as far as building armies, you can mix any "good" units together, or any "evil" units together (the only limit is not good/evil mixes). You do need to field one "hero" (a named character or a generic captain) for each 12 warriors and they all need to come from the same list. For example 12 Army of the Dead warriors plus the King of the Dead is one "warband". They can be fielded with (for example) 12 Rohan warriors plus a Captain of Rohan for a second warband.

is the Army of the dead good or are they all out done by other armies and groups. I did not see them on the GW website as well.

How do they play and how dose the Harad and Umbar play.

Drahazar1 wrote:
is the Army of the dead good or are they all out done by other armies and groups. I did not see them on the GW website as well.

The Warriors of the Dead box set, the individual Riders of the Dead and the King of the Dead miniatures are all still available from GW. Look under Armies/Fiefdoms in the Hobbit section of the store. The only Army of the Dead figure that is OOP is the Banner Carrier, which you can still find on places like eBay occasionally.

As far as how they compare to other armies, a pure Army of the Dead is very limited as I said. Just two choices (Warriors and Riders) and one Hero. Most of the other factions have more powerful heroes which is generally important in the game. They also lack any kind of missile troops which are useful. They can be fun taken as a part of a larger Rohan or Minas Tirith force (remember, despite being undead, the Army of the Dead are a "good" army), but I don't think they are really good enough to take on their own in points match games.

How do they play and how dose the Harad and Umbar play.

How Harad and Umbar play comes down to if you field the Mumak or not. The Mumak is obviously your heavy hitter and I would probably take some lighter units to support him, plus maybe the Betrayer or Knight of Umbar (named Ringwraiths) on horseback. Rely on the Mumak to break up your opponents heavier units, backed up by the Ringwraith's special abilities, with your lighter troops deal with what's left.

If you don't take the Mumak I would probably take one of the named Ringwraits on a Fellbeast to build the rest of my army as sort of a horde of infantry and cavalry. Use the Righwraith's special abilities to help control the battle and overwhelm your opponents warbands one by one.

Of your two choices, I think the Harad and Umbar are the more competitive choice.

Hope that helps!

Thanks it dose I'll probably do both but me get start with the elephant guys first it's a nice looking pice time to activate search fu for a list

Drahazar1 wrote:
Thanks it dose I'll probably do both but me get start with the elephant guys first it's a nice looking pice time to activate search fu for a list

If you are going to go Harad, I would recommend starting out kind of simple with a variety of core troops to see how you like them.

Haradrim Commanders box set (Captain, Banner, Musician, and taskmaster)
A cool hero with foot/mounted option (Suladan the Serpent Lord , or The Betrayer)
Haradrim Warriors (12 foot guys)
Haradrim Raiders (6 cavalry guys)
Mumakil (which includes 12 foot guys as riders, plus a champion)


This way you have a couple heroes and can field, in a smaller game, a warband of cavalry and two warbands of infantry, with some upgrades; or in a bigger game, add on the Mumakil.

Thanks for that. That helps me get a good Idea of what I should buy and be a good start for me to get into the game.

Drahazar1 wrote:
Thanks for that. That helps me get a good Idea of what I should buy and be a good start for me to get into the game.

An easy expansion from that point would be the Golden King with some Abrakhan Guard. The Abrakhan Guard hit really hard (they have two handed weapons, and don't suffer the penalty for using the two handed weapons) adding a bit of punch to your force. They could be the front line guys with the spear-armed Haradrim behind them supporting them.