hey i have a rohan army right now and its solid cavalry. . . so as you can guess its been getting whomped all over the place. there is nothing you can do against large infantry formations. anyway i am getting a little sick of knowing that im gonna lose halfway into deployment. so i was hoping that you guys could help me out by sharing what you find to be the most competitve army for around 1250pts in wotr. i could care less if its cheap and overpowered. so enlighten me. what army could a monkey play with and win. even if he rolled snake eyes 90 percent of the time. lol okay exclude the last part.

thanks, westfold

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Not all those who wander are lost.

You might find this thread useful: viewtopic.php?f=88&t=19278. We've been voting on the best and worst armies for WotR.

Mordor is accepted by the vast majority of players as the most competitive army (it won the poll really quickly), due to two main units: Morannon Orcs and Nazgul. On the second tier, I'd put Misty Mountains, Gondor & Arnor, Dwarves, and Fallen Realms. On the third tier Isengard, Rohan, and Angmar. And finally, Elves sit far and away at the bottom of the list, due to their expensive and fragile formations.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

thanks

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Not all those who wander are lost.

My best friend used to play Rohan all-cav competitively in WotR, he now switched to Gondor all-cav, but the following things you should know about any all-cav army:
- Get as many lances as possible (In Rohan's case that means get as many Royal Knights as possible - they are common and only 5 points more expensive than Riders of Rohan, but they are basically the Rohan equivalent of Mordor's Morannon Orcs)
- Get as many formations, while keeping a balanced store of Might and having at least 1 Epic hero per formation (in 1500 points I'd say get 5-6 formations of 4-5 companies, each with an epic hero - they are sooooo cheap in Rohan, you can afford to have at least 5)
- Banners... lol? Pointless to take them, because 1 Banner = 1 company and if you want 5 formations, that's a free extra formation you could have. Add that to the fact that if you know what you're doing with an all-cav army, you should never be in a situation where you need more than 3+ to charge your enemy (usually 2+ is preferable) so you might aswell use your Epic's Might to boost that 1 result (and if you don't roll 1, you still have plenty of Might for other things).
- Musicians... same thing - pointless because you move far enough every turn and the table is small proportionally (at the double obviously is enough - therefore again epic Heroes)
- Captains... yay 50 points for a Captain or 75 for Erkenbrand - you know the answer.
- Fortunes: Palantir (if you're ever taking a fate/fortune with an all-cav army, it should always be either Palantir, because it allows you priority choice of going last when you need to position yourself far enough from enemy to always ensure charging without counter-charge, or going 1st when you're both low on Might or you don't have space to reposition; or another good fate is Desperate Heroics, because you'll be using so many Epic Heroes)
- Did I say that Riders of Rohan are sooooooooooo much worse than Royal Knights? Unfortunately that leads into a very expensive army, unless you're good with converting GW did a pretty good job in ensuring that a Riders of Rohan force is weak competitively, while for 5 points more per company Royal Knights rock and are equivalent money wise 1 into 6 Riders :/

Tactics-wise everything depends on priority, but:
- Ensure you charge and don't get countercharged
- Epic Heroes = Duels and use of Epic actions (especially Epic Charge).

Army selection:
Theoden
Eomer
Erkenbrand
Theodred
Allied Boromir

(590 in heroes)

4x Royal Knights (140)
4x Royal Knights (140)
4x Royal Knights (140)
4x Royal Knights (140)

(560 in Units), so you still have 100 points free for the 1250 list - spend it on either Palantir, or Deorwine (for Epic Sacrifice, see later) with Desperate Heroics.

18 Might, Eomer and Boromir are meant to take out enemy Epics with Epic Strike + Duels.
- In case a formation will potentially be in trouble (ie. you know you're getting charged and probably killed) - Theodred and Theoden with Epic Sacrfice, so you shouldn't worry.
- Theoden's Touched by Destiny ensures you get F7 formation whenever you charge (against Morannons or Orcs if you get 4 companies in, that's 48 attacks, meaning average of 24 Orcs or 16 morannons dead before they get to strike - and if your opponent had 4 companies of Morannons total, that leaves him with 16 strikes back which will kill on average 2-3 Knights).
- Eomer's Epic Rage means that if you're positive that your million S6 +1 attacks will kill the formation, it's a no-brainer to call

I know it's still going to be tough playing against most forces, but at the point when you master useage of Epic Heroes, the games should be going quite smoothly for you. You will however be taking a long and difficult path.

I hope that helps and I accept that not everything might be entirely correct, depending on playtesting and certain situations, but generally that's what I've found after many battles against all-cav forces.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

Hmm... I agree with most of that but I disagree with the ammount of epic heroes you advise to take. Might is good but it won't help you much against a 9 company formation of orcs. You need a lot more formations with cavalry other wise you will be shot down quickly and you can easily be out-maneuvered.

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"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russel

Royal Knights aren't Rare? That's strange.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

It's probably to encourage all the rich players to field very expensive but competitive armies.

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"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russel

He won't be rich for long...

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

Pretty standard GW policy and a really unfair one too :/ If only Royals were plastic I'd be playing Rohan all the time in WotR, but then Riders would be bought pretty rarely by anyone.


Problem I see with all-cav is that you can't afford to have more formations (maybe in the list I gave Boromir was an overkill, another 4x Knights could be better), but if you're moving correctly and making use of all your Epics, then essentially game can become similar to playing all-hero in SBG and that can be competitive if player knows what he's doing. The 9x Orcs is quite immobile, even with a Nazgul because of terrain difficulties, so you can often out-maneuver it yourself. And in terms of companies per formation - I don't think it's any good to invest in the 5th company because of artillery bonus against it - though I always encourage taking as many formations as possible, yet in the list I gave above I just couldn't work out anymore without Dropping Boromir

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

me i would stick with 2 herose 3 max and the rest of the points in calvalry because the more calvary you have the more companys you have and the harder it is to get shot because you have so many companies spaning the battle field also if their is a hero near bye then you will still get their bonus.

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sauraman xD

I'd encourage any Rohan player, that has the choice, to at least consider just running them all as 'counts as' Royal Knights - save perhaps Elfhelm's boys.

As long as you are in most of the environments where there aren't going to be really artificial restrictions (ie no cares as long as they can tell what is what), then you might as well get a cav army that has an actual chance of doing what they do in the movies. Bows seem to be something they shoot only incidentaly in the movies, so losing bowfire in-game seems a resonable abstraction, and one a number of wargames would make. You still get your javelins.

They don't have to all be actual Royal Knights, just perform as lancers in game. I've seen a couple of Rohan players go to Gondor or ally in Knights of Minas Tirith for their charging Cav fix, which is a little perverse. Even as lancers, you still need to play Cav carefully vs troop heavy armies, and they are 35pts a pop. So nothing unreasonable or unbalancing about it.

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