I already have an elven army, but would also love an evil army to mix things up a little. I have perused the forum and still cannot decide weather to collect a Fallen Realms army or a Misty mountain army. Anybody play those armies? And what makes you like that army? What makes that army Fun as well as strong?

Obviously I want an army that is strong, but also want an army that's fun to play with.

Thanx everyone

Is this for SBG or WoTR?

It's for WOTR

Well, the misty mountains needs a lot of goblins, so you have to be smart on ebay to buy a collection. The other problem with that you have to proxy a lot, or convert, cause the important formations are in blisters only.
I have a fallen realmy army, I like it, cause its very uniqe. This arabic style is very cool, theres a lot of possibilities for coloring. Their cavlary is also fantastic. And the mumakil..., I dont have to explain it

So I prefer FR, but if you have a lot of time, and you are lucky witch second hand market, you could also build an awsome goblin army.

Misty Mountains and Fallen Realms are both pretty strong in WotR. Both have some seriously underpriced units (such as Gundabads and Arbalesters), excellent Heroes (Druzhag and Nazgul), and very powerful models (Dragon and Mumak). I would consider Fallen Realms to be more diverse than Misty Mountains, but Misty Mountains have better core units (Gundabads and Prowlers). For this reason, I'd rate Misty Mountains as the stronger, but it's pretty close.

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

I like what you say there, so what would you say is an awesome Goblin army?

I would like a good discussion on these 2 armies before I think about starting to collect either army, so anyone feel free to input there views. Thanx

Well, 150-200 painted goblin is pretty amazing look. If you have time and patient to convert them, then that will be better. For example, if you want moria prowlers, then you could get a basic axe, copy it many times somehow, and aplicate to goblin archers hand.
For gundabad blackshield, you take a normal goblin, and make a fur cape from green stuff.
Its enough to buy only once the blister, then you could put the original models on the front line, and the conversions to the backline. The unified painting is also important.
So this is the hard part, to build, make a very huge infantry army. Then the others, like monsters, wargs will be fun and easy

This is my army. I also use a lot of conversions: http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=21667

Wow I bet that would take forever!!! Are the prowlers and gunabads that much better? A fight of 2 still looks real low?

Evil armies in WotR

Mordor - The most powerful of the 5 because of Gothmog and ringwraith cheese but also very common because of that

Isengard - Not a bad army but suffers from being too similar to Mordor. By putting Uruk-Hai and regular orcs in both lists they made them too simlar, and Isegard doesn't get Nazgul, so it is usually only played for fluff reasons.

Misty Mountains - A good army with a distinctive playstyle. Misty Mountains is either a really expensive army to collect or a really cheap one depending on who your group interprets WYSIWYG. If you aren't allowed to use anything but the "official" model for a unit then they are going to be very expensive. If, on the other hand, you can only need to properly represent what a formation has for weapons and gear, then you can do virtually all plastic figs. A somewhat popular choice because it is somewhat powerful and because lots of people have goblin minis from the mines of moria box.

Fallen Realms - The most diverse of the armies. It is really 3-4 different armies that weren't large enough to be treated as separate groups. Reasonably competitive and can be fluffy at the same time because no one can argue that Khamul is not a fluffy choice. Fairly popular as well for the variety and exoticness of the miniatures.

Angmar - The weakest and most difficult to play of the evil armies. If you go with orc heavy then they come across as just a diluted version of Mordor, playable but if that is all you are going to do why not play Mordor or Isengard, if you go heavy with spirits then they can be effective but are very (VERY) hard to play well. May take some time and many games to learn to play well, but once you do they play completely differently to any other army and your opponents may have a hard time countering it.

That is my take on each of the evil armies.


Compared to standard Moria Goblins with shields, Blackshields get +1 S, +1 Def and +1 C for for the same points. Prowlers get poisonous 2-handed weapons both for the same point cost as basic goblins with shields. Fight 2 is 2-3 additional dice that your opponent gets when attacking you, it is basically nothing compared to the benefits those 2 formations get.

ForgottenLore, with Angmar you forgot the Barbarians of Carn Dum, who are very good particulary with the 2 cheaper Angmar wraiths, its a better army than you think, it's still probably the worse but the fact that you neglected to mention Carn Dum suggests you don't want him to use Angmar. Anyway his chhoice is only FR and MM< but Angmar's a very good list (by the ay FL, nonbody uses Angmar with just orcs, barbarians and/or spirits thank you very much)

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

One of my friends from our local club has been collecting Moria (and Dwarves) for years. He has a pretty impressive goblin force with some solid support:



He doesn't proxy in Blackshields and plays it as much for fun as anything else, but in our local games it's pretty competitive. He’s made it pretty solid by the last time I played against it. Three huge blocks of Goblins. Between 2-3 Cave Trolls (more of a distraction than anything else, but they do require you to waste time destroying them before they can cause problems), Spider Queen, several Companies of Giant Spiders. Several Companies of Wild Wargs. A couple Epics, some Goblin Captains and Shamen. And of course the Balrog.

Seeing him set up on our store’s main table, with his army stretching across most of the 8’ edge, while my Elves could be grouped into less than half that distance, really made a nice visual impact. And that was before Druzag started plopping additional Formations of Wargs behind my ranks to nail me with rear charges. And having two Spells of Ruin casters in the force gave a double punch of some of the worse spells (to be targeted by!) in the game.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

True, I did forget them. I have a tendency to think of the Barbarians as more a variation of Orcs than as the men they actually are. Probably because they don't really get developed or shown in the books so they are just a name attached to the forces of evil and when I think "Evil basic troops in middle earth" I think orcs.

I couldn't care less what he uses, I was just trying to give him an evaluation of each army. No one plays Angmar because they want to play orcs, and even playing barbarians is iffy. People play Angmar because they want an army of undead.


Guy in the Forging of Fates 'Ard Boyz tourney this last weekend played an all spirit army, so yeas, some people do.

He got demolished.

@Beowulf - What additional Epics did he use? Did he provide any fluff explanations for those Epics or just allied in what he wanted to play with? And he was summoning Wargs not spiders to charge your rear and flanks?

Beowulf, you watch LotR while you play it?

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

Yeah...we put the films on the 'ol DVD while we play. When we are doing Flames of War then it's usually some good WW2 epic.

The Epics included are only those on the Moria list. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that. He doesn’t even play a Nazgul in there, and neither would most of us in our local group. For the specific game I mention it was just the Beast Caller, but could easily be both him and the Goblin King. They’re cheap enough.

He was summoning Wargs. All his Spider models were already on the table. And the Wargs were bad enough. Against D3, anything rear-charging you with Prowler ability hurts…bad. And they get to strike first to boot.

For myself though, I'm going with Fallen Realms. Mostly the force will be Harad. A couple Formations of Haradrim archers and a couple of Warriors (with Hashirin mixed in). I have about 3 Companies of Serpent Riders and a couple Formations worth of Serpent Raiders. A company of Watchers and three Mumakil.

I will probably draw on a Nazgul for support depending on what kind of opponent I may be facing, but I try to avoid the temptation of pulling in too many and spamming it like Mordor. With the Shadow in the East special rule you can field some without cutting into ally points and it's a slippery slope.

As they are painted and put into the field I'll be adding in some Corsairs for support and theme purposes. I also have some ally/proxy ideas to really help with the visual attraction and thematic expansion.

_________________
Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

I meant to say noone who uses Angmar uses just orcs, they will use barbarians and/or spirits. I would expect an all spiriy=t army to be demolished because the spirits are seriously overcosted. The Barbarians are not overcosted and are VERY GOOD, I don't know why you haven't encountered anyone using such an army. Anyway I agree that spirits are the reason to cjhoose Angmar, I love the sopirirts and that's why I like Angmar, however, you need to also use Brabarians. My prefered Angmar army is a mixture of ORcs, Barbarians and Spirits with all the Angmar heroes an some undercosted allies eg the aforementioned Blackshields to make up for the seriously overcosted spirits.

_________________
"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

Ah, gotcha.

We only have about 10 players in the area. 3 of them play Fallen Realms. Just no body but this one guy wanted to play Angmar, and he had such a bad time at the tournament he probably won't play anymore.

Hi FL, you say that misty mountains has a distinctive playing style? What is that? Iv never played against a Misty mountain force so not sure what you mean? Also would you play No normal goblins? Just prowlers and gunabads?

I personally DO play no normal goblins. Given the point costs I just don't see, well, the point. Also I do use plastic figs for Blackshields and Prowlers and I want to avoid confusion as to what is what in my army (which is all the rules actually say you have to do).

I say they have a distinctive play style because of their cavalry; wild wargs, giant spiders and the like don't "feel" the same as warg riders or haradrim raiders, even if, mechanically, they are the same. Also, MM have 3 of the 4 Extremely Hard to Kill monsters that are in the game (counting a Mumak as EHtK). The ability to take such huge beaters changes the way you play and think about armies.

Also, MMs have the only hero in the game that can summon additional forces beyond your original army, which changes the dynamic of how you want to position troops and where Druzhag goes.

Plus, not many armies can and possibly want to put down a block of 9 companies in one formation. Yeah, you can do that with a few other types of formations, but IME, goblins WANT to do it. I seem to be the one guy in my area who doesn't mind Khamul all that much because I have so many guys who are all so cheap. As long as I keep my dragon away from him I can usually come out ahead.

Granted, I have never played as Mordor or Isengard or any of the other armies that can pull off hordes, so maybe I am exaggerating the effect, but from my point of view my MM army seems to be very different from everyone else's army.

More cheap troops you have more money you would have to spent especially if you need metal...