Building Battlehosts - Good

The new Battlehost boxes available for preorders from today offer an excellent way to either start playing the game or, for existing players, starting a brand new faction. They each provide a really strong starting point especially with the new beginner rules avaliable on Warhammer Community. However, they will also require some additional support as you dive further into the factions. 

Over the next few days I'm going to offer up some options on further purchases to add to each of the Battlehosts and again I decided to ask some fellow members of the Irish SBG community to help me out. Each of them was given the same brief, take one Battlehost and you have an additional £50-60 to spend at Games Workshop to build an army. All prices are correct at time of publishing and yes, I am aware that these models could be got cheaper at other stores but I wanted to keep it consistent. 

Joining me this time are Micheal Bunting, who will be taking a look at the White City of Minas Tirith, and Dave Murphy, riding out with the Horselords of Rohan.

Minas Tirith 

Michael Bunting

So firstly I want to say thanks Rob for tagging me in on this one. It was really exciting to look more closely at the battle hosts and appreciate them for what they offer to newer players. 

The Minas Tirith battlehost captures the feel of the great defence of that city in the Return of the King. It's a great theme for your army with plenty of Warriors and Knights led by the white wizard, a very expensive and magically powerful Hero in game. 

For next steps I would recommend that players lean into the strengths of Minas Tirith as a faction. 

Firstly, Minas Tirith has relatively cheap warriors, this allows you to get a lot of bodies on the table which will help with many scenarios. Let's head to Games Workshop and pick up a box of warriors for £27.50 (current price). With the battlehost, this gives us 48 warriors and 6 knights. This is as much as you'll ever need and will give you some dismounts incase your knights get unhorsed. I'll give a quick shout to Guards of the Fountain court. A more elite troop option that will compliment the battlehost well. But they are pricey and you could quickly go over budget considering this next point. 

Now, we are going to need more heroes to lead these troops and this is another strength of this faction. Minas Tirith has so many hero options that it's easy to tailor for theme or competition. I'll recommend a few choices here.

1) Theme - Forgeworlds: Denethor and Irolas. (£24 current price)

Super Themey for the defence of the white city and 3 heroes will let you get almost all of your warriors on the table. 

2) Middle of the road - Forgeworlds: Wardens of Gondor (£32 current price).

Still themed for that defence but with stronger heroes. Irolas will hold the line while Hurin leads those knights on the charge. 

3) Competitive - Games Workshop's Boromir captain of the white tower (£24 current price)

Theme goes out the window here as Boromir never met Gandalf the white. In game though the captain of the white tower is a power house. Supported by Gandalf there are few things that can slow him down. At higher point games Boromir can bring a 6 inch banner to the board inspiring all of his warriors to fight harder. 

So for £60 you'll bulk out your battleforce with more warriors and some effective heroes to lead them. Here's an example of what a list might look like. 

Minas Tirith 

Gandalf the white on Shadowfax (leader)

4 Warriors with shield

4 Warriors with shield and spear

4 Warriors with bow

3 knights with shield

Hurin the tall on horse

4 Warriors with shield

4 Warriors with shield and spear

4 Warriors with bow

3 knights with shield

Ingold

4 Warriors with shield

4 Warriors with shield and spear

4 Warriors with bow

774 points 

That's 45 models (plus some spares for dismounts) and 3 great heroes to bolster your force with magic, offence and defence. You're covering all your bases with a solid shield wall, a sprinkling of shooting and some knights to punch back against your enemy. 

You can scale this force down by losing knights and horses. If you instead add a banner it will take you up to a neat 800 points. 

These choices will boost your battlehost and from there it's just a case of swapping for some elite units down the line or changing heroes as you like (there are loads to choose from).

Rob

For my suggestion for expanding on the Minas Tirith battlehost I wanted to really emphasise theme, as is my usual style. Looking at the contents of the box we have Gandalf the White and Pippin, Guard of the Citadel with a host of Warriors of Minas Tirith and a smattering of knights. Gandalf, Pippin and the Warriors would really fit well with a Siege of Minas theme, although the Knights are maybe slightly separated from that theme (although it's still very possible to create a really thematic list based around them, see my current Knights of Gondor project for my take on it). So we can start forming the list based around Gandalf the White leading a full Warband of 15 Warriors of Minas Tirith, making great use out of the models in the Battlehost and really evoking the defence of the White City. 

Now we need some extra heroes to build out this army. While I could have doubled down on the defenders of Minas Tirith, one of the most iconic scenes during the Siege of doesn't take place on the white walls but instead in Rath Dínen, the Hallows of Minas Tirith with the Madness of Denethor. To build an army around this theme obviously we'd need Denethor (who also comes with a useful third hero in Iorlas). As the Steward it only makes sense that he'd have the elite troops available to him, so we'll add a pack of Fountain Court Guards and a pack of Citadel Guard, giving us plenty of F4, Bodyguard troops and some S3 shooting as well (admittedly this does push me slightly over budget by a couple of pounds, but my blog, my rules). We shall burn, like the heathen kings of old. Bring wood and oil.

This provides us with a 600 point army list that looks like this:

Denethor 

Pippin, Guard of the Citadel 

4 Fountain Court Guards 

Irolas

3 Citadel Guard 

3 Citadel Guard with Longbow 

Gandalf the White on Shadowfax 

4 Minas Tirith Warriors with bow

8 Minas Tirith Warriors with shield and spear 

3 Minas Tirith Warriors with shield 

599 points 

Rohan

Dave Murphy 

So, despite being really bad at this game*, somehow, I got asked to write an article for this pish……sorry high-quality blog (cheers Rob). Well, I can only promise to try my best Roberto.

So anyway, I was asked to write out what advice I would give to a new player on how to expand on one of the new Battlehosts for Middle-Earth Games Workshop recently announced. In this case, the Rohan Battlehost, which contains Eomer (foot and mounted), 6 Riders of Rohan and 24 Warriors of Rohan. (Not exactly what I’d call a host but sure look it we’ll make do).

So, our goal is to expand on this force and turn it into a viable and legal points match list for a Middle-Earth event within a budget of £50-60/€70-75.

First off, some qualifiers. Middle-Earth events around the world, from what I’ve seen, have ranged from 350 points to 1,500 points. However, most of them tend to fall within the 500-800 points range. 

Within the IHL (Irish Hobbit League), the preferred points for 1-day events is 450 points, and for 2-day events 800-850 points. I’m going to give suggestions on what to buy to give us a legal 450+ points army that we could bring.

The 32 models in the Rohan Battlehost altogether give us just under 400 points worth. However, this would not be legal as Eomer can only lead up to 15 Warriors in his Warband. Additionally, we need to keep 6 of our Rohan Warriors to the side as dismounts. Putting the dismounts to the side we’re left with 350 points worth of models. Now what we need next is another Hero to lead our excess of Warriors. 

And where better to start than the man himself King Theoden. Theoden is a linchpin of Rohan armies – giving bonuses to both Rohan Heroes and Warriors, a rallying Hero leading to a faltering army, and he can lead another 18 Warriors in his warband to solve our excess Warriors issue. Theoden brings our army up to 450 points and gives us a legal list that we could bring to a 1-day IHL event (happy times like).

But wait, we still have £39/€50 of our budget to use up! Which means more toys! Since we’re building an army of the Horselords, and this box set is sorely lack in horses, lets add a box of Riders of Rohan (for £26/€34) to bring our total number of them up to 12. 

This will mean having to put another 6 of Warriors of Rohan off to the side as dismounts, but the strength of a Rohan army is its cavalry, so the overall power of our army is significantly improved. And we’re also bringing our list up to just under 500 points.

Finally, although this will go above our budget, we’re going to add Gamling and Hama to our army. Now just to be clear, it’s Gamling who we really want here (Hama is very far down the hierarchy of Rohan Heroes, but we have to buy him to get Gamling). 

The strength of a Rohan army as mentioned is their cavalry, but also in their cheap but effective Heroes. To keep the momentum of the charge going we need Might points, and Gamling provides us with an additional 3 to the 6 we already have from Theoden and Eomer plus the Royal Standard of Rohan can regenerate Might for Rohan Heroes who are out of Might points. Additionally, Gamling can lead an additional 12 Warriors for future expansions of your Rohan army.

So there we have it, with the additions of Theoden, Gamling and another box of Riders of Rohan, we have turned our Rohan Battlehost box set into a legal and viable 600 points list of Theoden, Eomer, Gamling, 12 Riders of Rohan and 12 Warriors of Rohan. Hope this is what you were hoping for Rob, and that its useful to any newer players out there, or players thinking of getting into the game.

Art by Tom Romain

Rob

Again, for my suggestions on the Rohan Battlehost I wanted to focus in on the theme and represent an iconic scene from the movies. Thematically, Rohan is famed for it's cavalry and all the iconic scenes featuring Eomer (the Hero included in this Battlehost) are cavalry based, so I'll start with a box of Riders of Rohan, the same as Dave. As Dave said, this brings us to 12 Riders, a solid Warband for Eomer to lead. We would require the use of half of the Infantry provided in the Battlehost to cover dismounts for this cavalry, but we also have the opportunity to include some of the remaining Warriors in the army as well. This may be slightly less thematic than the full cavalry charge but is a handy option to have.

At this point we are going to need some additional Heroes to expand our force any further. I could have gone for a Pelennor Charge of the Rohirrim theme but this would end up almost identical to Dave's suggestions above, so instead I decided to attempt to recreate the scene that first introduces the viewers to the Rohirrim in the Two Towers, where Eomer and his Eored accost the Three Hunters during their pursuit of the Uruk-Hai. Therefore I'd be adding the excellent Three Hunters pack to give us a list that looks like this:

Eomer on Horse with Shield

8 Riders of Rohan 

4 Riders of Rohan with Throwing Spear 

3 Warriors of Rohan with Shield and Throwing Spear 

Aragorn with Bow and Elven Cloak 

Legolas with Elven Cloak 

Gimli with Elven Cloak

698 points 

So there's loads of recommendations for building upon the new Good Battlehost boxes, join us again in a couple of days when we'll move towards the Shadow and take a look at the Evil Battlehosts, Mordor and Isengard. Special thanks to Micheal and Dave for their contributions to this article. 

*[Rob] The only player I know that can score more VPs than their opponent and still lose all their games, I'm still trying to figure out the maths on that one.