War of the Ring: Mordor and Alliance armies for Kings of War

[darkPrince010]

So, I love the epic style of LOTR, and the beautiful work Peter Jackson did with them, but I was fairly disappointed in how GW executed their interpretation (ie, great for skirmishes, worthless for larger battles). So, I decided I'd try my hand at whipping up a pair of army lists for the forces of Mordor and the alliance of the men and elves.

A couple of notes:
---I'm not as familiar with KoW's points system, so some stuff may be over/undercosted (Mainly the Rohirrim, Orcs, and Def 7+ units)
---I think I covered all the broad bases for major heroes/villains and army unit types, but please let me know if I missed any major points!

(Before you ask, the Fellowship comes out to 1070 pts at the current point costs )

As always, comments and criticisms welcome!

Alliance: v3.0 updated as of 6/15/13
Mordor: v3.0 updated as of 6/15/13

[lord marcus]

This Is interesting and I think its a great idea.

Gondor soldiers is loose. In the books there are several types.

Warriors of minas tirith (the guys pete made to look like heavily armorded foot soldiers)

Then you have the different fiefs, such as the clansmen of lamedon.

[darkPrince010]

I know. I was just going directly off of what you see in the movies, although there are tons of other sources for soldiers. I made them basically the same as the basic Minas Tirith defender guy, since you only see (iirc) foot soldiers from Gondor in the movies. That's also why they only come in up-to regiment size, since you never see hordes of them in the film.

I also just realised I completely derped and forgot to include Shelob and/or large spider regiments. Do you think those would be worthwhile to include?

I know the army list is kinda a smidge bloated, but I wanted to give someone the ability to play a skirmish-size KoW game of LOTR, like Weathertop, but also enable big fights like Helmsdeep or the big war of the Elf/human alliance vs Sauron from the beginning of the movie.

[lord marcus]

It might be. First what I'd do (and if I knew more about text formatting than I do image formatting I would do) would be to take the basically two factions you have:

servants of the eye

Alliance of the free peoples

And use those as allignments, then subdivide the lists into smaller army lists that are more thematic, I.E. goblins of moria, haldirs Elves, etc.

[darkPrince010]

I guess the only problem I see with those is each mini-list would have one, maybe two infantry choices and heroes, and maybe one additional unit choice, and would feel really limited (Moria Goblins and Mordor Orcs would be the largest evil factions, and Men of Gondor would be the largest good faction. Each other army would have one infantry choice and one or two heroes and that's it.

I'd rather make the general armies a bit more mixed then sacrifice diversity in the army lists. However, do you think having restricted army compositions based on those mini lists would be acceptable? Ie, Alliance of Free People can pick infinite Gondor units, and every "solid" unit also lets you pick a unit of Elves or Riders of Rohan in addition to a Gondor War Machine/Hero, and each solid unit of those lets you buy a War Machine/Hero from that sub-race?

[lord marcus]

elves would have several infantry choices (spears, swords, bows) and then cav, etc.

[stewartgibbs]

I'd rather make the general armies a bit more mixed then sacrifice diversity in the army lists. However, do you think having restricted army compositions based on those mini lists would be acceptable? Ie, Alliance of Free People can pick infinite Gondor units, and every "solid" unit also lets you pick a unit of Elves or Riders of Rohan in addition to a Gondor War Machine/Hero, and each solid unit of those lets you buy a War Machine/Hero from that sub-race?

That won't work for a lot of players. My preferred armies in LotR tend to be Rohan, Moria, Erebor, and Khand, none of which contain any Mordor or Gondor figures at all. Your suggestion is far too restrictive on themed armies.

If you have the War of the Ring rulebook, you will see that every army has a decent number of troop types, more than enough to make it an army in its own right. Rohan has 7, Elves 9, Moria 7, Angmar 7. These are further diversified with weapon choices.

Let me know if you want a hand with anything.

[darkPrince010]

I guess I'm making a game from the viewpoint of a light reader of the books and fan of the movies. I'm not familiar at all with stuff not shown in the movies, and I know I wouldn't be able to do justice to proper portrayal of the other armies.

Do you guys have suggestions for major army list divisions (ie, Moria, Mordor, Isengard, Gondor, Rohan, etc, along with what you have mentioned like Angmar, Erebor, and Khand) and units that each should contain?

[stewartgibbs]

I was going to write this in my post, but it would be a few miles long, so see the attached document. All of these are third age armies, I haven't included the historical ones.

I'll have a think about a few lists. Elves are easiest as they pretty much exist already - they just need some tweaking for the heroes.

[darkPrince010]

Yeah. I was really tempted to just make a hero set for good/evil, but there are some monsters and units that aren't properly represented imo (Like Trolls, Rohirrim, and Oliphants don't really have a good unit equivalent already). I'm glad you're more familiar with the available army options, but it seems like some of the units are fairly universal for their good/evil faction. Do you think a good army list could have those condensed into a common unit list, or have a little thing saying "Can only be taken by army X" or something under the statline?

[Gerry Lee]

Hello DarkPrince010,
I don't play enough to have a feel for point costs. I was very pleased to see you add Easterlings and Southrons to your list. Perhaps you would be interested in this sale?

http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/...rsian-infantry

While I still would like to support Mantic whenever possible, since they do not make humans as of yet, you might find these very affordable for Harad or some other humans of darkness? Gosh, 75 cents for 2 models, a spearman and an archer...I know I got some

Be well, be blessed!
Gerry

[darkPrince010]

@Gerry: I'd be very tempted by that if I didn't already have an assembled Persian army using bulked-up 1/72 scale Zvezda models

As for the rules, do you guys think it would be viable to have "generic" units (ie, archers, soldiers, cavalry, catapults, etc) and then require the player to purchase a race for the faction?

So Rohan would give units Nimble, Elves would give them Elite, Mordor would be +5/10/20 attacks, Gondor/Isenguard would be +1 Def, Easterlings would be +1 Ra, something like that?

Plus, maybe allow players buying a hero with a solid unit to only buy it from whatever that solid unit was upgraded to: So buying a solid unit of generic knights and upgrading them to Rohirrim would allow you to pick Theoden, Eowyn, or Eomer; Picking a unit of generic infantry and upgrading them to Mordor Orcs would allow you to pick Sauron, a Ringwraith, or Shelob, etc.

[darkPrince010]

Updated the army lists. I decided to make a generic soldier and cav unit for each army, and allow the player to select a Faction to flavor the unit (So Rohan/Misty Mountain units have Nimble, Aangmar has +Nerve, Gondor/Isengard have +1 Def, etc).

I also changed some of the heroes to be "Faction Required" so the army would at least retain a bit of flavor (No Balrog leading an army of Easterlings, or Hero of Dwarves leading an army of Rivendell Elves, etc).

Pleas, please, PLEASE let me know of any other factions I should include. I am woefully ignorant as to most of the non-mainstream groups of men and evil men/orcs, so any feedback on them (Like what they did, or what they were renowned for, etc) would be greatly appreciated!

[darkPrince010]

Okay, updated the lists to put them in line with the v2 rules.

Additional notes:
---Added a bunch more Good factions, and tried to differentiate as best as I could figure from wikipediaing the factions you suggested. The Evil forces didn't get as many changes to their factions, but if you have additional faction suggestions I'd be happy to include them.
---Tweaked the Valorous/Cowardly rules a bit too since Nerve has changed, and instead made it so a lucky Good unit can heal a bit of damage until they start to Waver, while an Evil unit starts to fall apart faster if they get Wavered.

C&C?

[darkPrince010]

Updated points values to correspond with new rules for 3e KoW.

[darkPrince010]

Updated army lists to take into account cost for large unit and hero unit costs.