SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
Damian will probably give you the best advice because his Isengard list is incredible
Oh you
Right, time to give some awful advice...
It's a good list James, you've picked the best parts of the army. In the first instance all I'd do (and this will surprise no-one) would be to swap the 10 shield uruks for 7 Ferals and a Beserker. This'll mean you have to drop a crossbowman but you can replace him with another Feral for 499 points.
7 Ferlas + 1 Beserkers > 10 uruks with shields EVERY day of the week.
The key thing to winning with the Feral/Beserker list is to go all out. You've only got 10 two attack models and you can be damn sure they'll be top of your opponents missile targets - by the time the lines clash the enemy will be able to overpower your shield Uruks easily. If you make your whole army (bar the crossbows) 2 Attacks then your opponent won't be able to stop you getting to his lines.
I must admit Isengard suffer slightly at this points level, the Feral heavy list is devastating at 400 points or less and at 700 points and above but they don't have a decent middle level character to lead an army of 500 points. That said you've made the right choice with what you've got available, a D7 Uruk Captain is absolutely the right choice at this level, well worth the loss of a Might point.
The other choice you have available to you which you rarely see but I've found to be very effective is Sharky and Worm. You don't get a lot of spell casters at 500 points and 4 shots at a 2+ Immobilise (for my money the best spell in the game) is very good indeed. Most heroes you'll face won't have much Will (hence why Marsbar loves the Chieftain) and you'll be able to drain their Will supply and get some Immobilises without too much trouble. If you read my 'Dr Grant's Adventures in Preston' thread you'll see that the 4 games I won (with a 500 point Uruk force) were all significantly helped by Sharky Immobilising leaders at the right time. Also, the models are hella cool and you don't see them on the table a lot which is always fun.
As for the endless Feral VS Beserker debate, it utterly depends who you're playing, if you're fighting elves (S3 shooting and fighting) then yes, of course you'd go Beserker heavy. However, if you don't know who you're fighting (i.e. at tournaments) then there's so much S2 shooting and S4 fighting that a Feral's D5 is just as good as the Beserker's D6. There's also a rather counter-intuititve argument that channelled Fury is more effective with D5 Ferals than D6 Beserkers as you'll take more wounds and so will save more across the game, getting more worth out of your shaman! I don't rate two-handed weapons in this context either, you use two-handers when you outnumber the enemy and know someone else will win the fight for you, that rarely happens with this list so you'll probably not use them. The courage 7 is the biggest draw of the Beserkers for me, it means they really don't tend to run. However, my play style involves having channelled Fury in play so courage tests rarely come up, if you get broken and your shaman's dead then you probably have bigger issues than your Ferals legging it and even then C5 is certainly not to be sniffed at (I never hear elves complaining about low courage).
Ultimately, using this kind of elite army is about shredding them with crossbows and then running in and cutting them apart, it won't win in a protracted fight (with either Ferals or Beserkers) as you'll just get overwhelmed by numbers so the defence doesn't often come into it. The best way to not die is not to have a high defence, it's to win fights and in that case the more numbers you have the better. You get 5 Ferals for every 4 Beserkers and, as you scale that up to 20 or so models the extra bodies will easily make up for their low defence.
Them's my thoughts, hold them close, they are tender.
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