A Noobs Perspective: Angmar

One of the things I love most about war games is list writing. I love trying to find undiscovered synergies and putting together killer combos. I find myself writing army lists constantly so I thought since I’m doing them anyway I might as well blog about it! There are lots of faction reviews out there so I’m not going to be looking at what individual units are good or bad at, rather I’m going to write a list or 2 for each faction and explain why I’ve put it together. Now I have very little experience with the game, even with Minas Tirith I’ve only really played Boromir, hence the name of this series. I’m going to end up missing some things due to lack of experience, but maybe I can bring a fresh perspective to some armies too!

To kick this series off, I’m going to start with Angmar. This is mostly because they are completely different from the Minas Tirith lists I’ve been playing. While MT is fairly grindy with its high Defence but low Strength, Angmar is all about control. There basic troops are nothing to write home about but they have a load of tricks to make them better or the enemy worse. I also wanted to think about Magic and Monsters as I haven’t used either of those yet! So the list I’ve come up with is:

The Witch King (3/15/3) Armoured Horse, Crown of Morgul

7 Orcs, shields

7 Orcs, spears

4 Orcs, bows

1 Orc, Banner

Shade

4 Orcs, shields

4 Orcs, spears

2 Warg Riders, shields

Gulavhar 

2 Dead Marsh Spectres

700 Points

Control, Magic, Monsters. I’ve tried to hit all 3 of these in a big way. Control comes from having 3 spirit heroes (so I’ll have a tonne of terror causing orcs), 2 Spectres combined with 2 Harbinger of Evil models for those courage tests, and a Shade to blunt the enemy’s offence. Magic comes from the Witch King. He’s got loads of spells to chose from (many of which also provide good control) and the Crown for the casting rerolls. I have him 15 Will too so that he doesn’t have to be stingy about throwing spells around. The Monster element obviously comes form Gulavhar! This guy has got to be the ultimate glass cannon. F7 S8 and (hopefully) 5 attacks on the charge but only D5! He’s got to be used carefully but if done well he seems like a beast! 

The rest of the list is filled in with standard Orcs with a variety of weapons and a couple of Warg Riders for objectives. This is not the most interesting set of troops on the world but after spending 460 points on heroes I just needed some bodies! Luckily Orcs are delightfully cheap and will hopeful be causing Terror most of the time. 

I really wanted to include a Barrow Wight for Paralyse as this is even more Control and Magic, but I just can’t justify a 4th hero when my other 3 are so expensive and pretty non-negotiable. 

Angmar can go pretty heavy into any one of the 3 themes I’ve aimed for (Triple Ringwraith, Bhurdur and Trolls, Wight spam) but I wanted to try to keep the list balanced too so hopefully what I’ve come up with can be semi-competitive! I’m actually working my way towards completing this very army as my Evil force so hopefully I will be Abel to let you know how it does some time in the future! What do you think of my list? Any improvements or comments would be greatly received! Next time, fellow noob Dave is going to dive into The Defenders of The Shire! Thanks for reading!