The Nature of Evil

 

'The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he comes from, and if he really was evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home, or he would not rather have stayed there... in peace? War will make corpses of us all.'

Middle Earth SBG is a game of 2 sides; on the one side you have the noble defenders of the Free Peoples of Good, and on the other side are the countless hordes of Evil trying to subjugate Middle Earth. Now in my recent playing career I have heavily favoured the forces of Good. They are the Heroes of the story, with fleshed out back stories and motives that extend beyond simply killing for the sake of killing. In comparison, the forces of Sauron are reduced to faceless foes to be killed by the good guys. Too little are their motives explored beyond the fact that they are the bad guys and therefore do bad things. No character development, no background, no chance of redemption. As a result of this I've always found it easier to connect with (and hence preferred to play as) the Good guys.

However, as Faramir reminds us in The Two Towers quote I started with, even the lowliest foot soldier serving Sauron has a back story, has motivations, has hopes and dreams beyond just killing the enemy. Another fascinating exchange between Gorbag and Shagrat from the books perhaps emphasizes this point even better (if maybe a little less famously):

Gorbag and Shagrat by Alan Lee

'Grr! Those Nazgûl give me the creeps. And they skin the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side. But He likes 'em; they're His favourites nowadays, so it's no use grumbling. I tell you, it's no game serving down in the city.'

'You should try being up here with Shelob for company,' said Shagrat.

'I'd like to try somewhere where there's none of 'em. But the war's on now, and when that's over things may be easier.'

'It's going well, they say.'

'They would.' grunted Gorbag. 'We'll see. But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d'you say? - if we get a chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.'

'Ah!' said Shagrat. 'Like old times.''

So that shows that even Orcs have their own personalities and hopes and fears. They are not just the mindless serfs of Sauron I had always taken them for, bent only on destruction. It humanised them. It made them interesting to me again.

And that led me again to reconsider my shunning of the forces of Evil. So for much of the last year I have debated exactly what Evil army I really wanted to create. I wanted to avoid the evil human factions as men represent my most played armies already (outside of Thorin's Company) and I wanted to avoid most of the Hobbit era armies (both for a cost and aesthetic reasons). In the end I decided I wanted to build an Orcish based force with the opportunity to build a story around away from the 'Big Bosses' as Gorbag and Shagrat discussed. I wanted this to feel like more of a rag tag band out in the Wilderland, although not without the possibility of Wargs, Trolls and other evil beings as allies, to keep things interesting.

After many months and many, many half written army lists that didn't quite hit the spot, Games Workshop answered my prayers with the release of Razgûsh. Here was my solution, a Mordor Orc who provides access to the beasts of Mirkwood within his army list as well as opening up the potential alliance options thanks to being a Hero of Valor, freeing up the list building options and hence creating the opportunity to craft my own narrative around the army

The fact that he also hates Elves is just the cherry on top. NEVER trust an Elf.

Razgûsh - Forge World

So, I quickly ordered him on release day, gathered up every Orc in my backlog, planned my future purchases of beasties and am ready to get cracking on with my 2022 army project.