Building Battlehosts - Battle of Osgiliath

 

When Games Workshop released the new Battlehost Boxes a couple of months ago I asked several members of the Irish SBG community to offer their suggestions on how to build out an army based upon the contents of each box (you can find these articles here and here). And now that the latest starter box is landing in players hands I thought it was time to do the same thing for the contents of the Battle of Osgiliath box. Same rules apply as before, each person gets the contents of the box and an additional £60(ish) to spend at GW (cheaper prices are available in FLGS, but I'm using RRP here to provide an even benchmark) to create an army. This time around who better to ask for help than the 2 most recent IHL champions, Ivan Sheehan and David Coleman. 

Minas Tirith 

Ivan Sheehan

Hello all, Rob asked for my help on a little series he's doing and i was delighted to help out. I was given the good side of the new starter and a 60 pound budget to expand. I have 2 avenues I'll look at but 1st the box contents. 

Faramir 

Madril

Damrod

12 warriors of minas tirith

12 rangers of gondor. 

So off the bat we have a decent amount of might and plenty of bows (too many really). I would look to add some cavalry and infantry to balance out the bows and another hero. My 1st Avenue would be the new minas tirith battlebox, you get a decent hero in Gandalf and 6 cavalry and bulk out more on infantry (24 more warriors) and come in 10 pounds under budget. Very handy. This will be the best way to expand your starter box to playable levels quickly. I'll have lists at the end. 

The other avenue is a different hero and some cavalry and a blister of infantry. So with the route I'd bring in Faramirs brother Boromir and then cav. Boromir with his banner is a massive force multiplier and the cavalry will provide some needed punch especially with boromir having his banner

So boromir at 24 pounds and cavalry at 27 pounds brings you to 51 pounds. Which is a little awkward budget wise but if you done mind going a little over I'd throw in a pack of fountain court guard. Some bodyguard is always good to have and the d7 can be hard to shift. 

Now onto lists 

With the battle box you end up with something like this at 750 points. Which is a decent benchmark to aim for. 

Gandalf on shadowfax

6 knights with shields

Faramir, bow

6 warriors with shield

6 rangers

Madril

4 rangers with spear

8 warriors with spear and shield

Damrod

2 rangers

4 warriors with spear and shield

This uses all your heroes and most of you warriors and has decent numbers and covers a bunch of your bases at the beginning and will certainly get you started on the journey. It also is not exactly 750 points so if you fancy trying some conversions you can add 5 more spears to your force. 

Now the other avenue. This one is a touch more restrictive but I'll lay out my thoughts. 

This one is 650 points due to warrior limitations

Boromir with horse and Banner. 

​6 knights with shield

Faramir 

4 fountain court guard with shield

4 warriors with spear and shield 

5 rangers of gondor

Madril

2 rangers of Gondor

2 rangers of gondor with spear

4 warriors with shield. 

Damrod. 

So this uses all available heroes but the lack of troops means this one only just gets to 650 and I'd recommend another box of warriors to bulk it out as a next purchase. 

Overall i think i prefer the Gandalf avenue especially the new players as it provides a good base to build from. If you don't mind going over budget then the custom boromir build with added warriors might be for you. 

Thank you for asking me to be apart of this again Rob. 

Rob

As I did previously with the Battlehost suggestion articles, I'm going to focus more on the theme aspects of list building in my suggestions. As this box is based on the Battle of Osgiliath that naturally was the obvious starting point for a themed army. 

Looking at the contents of the box set we can see that we have some decent heroes but that the warriors are massively over the bow limit with 16 of 24 carrying a bow. Luckily Games Workshop have already helped us out here with the Rangers of Ithilien Legendary Legion allowing all those Rangers to ignore the bow limit. In order to field this Legion it is required to include Frodo, Sam and Smeagol (who still fit with a film inspired Osgiliath army) so they're the 1st thing on the shopping list*. After that I wanted something else to really lean into the Osgiliath theme and what better than some Osgiliath Veterans. Adding 2 packs of those, still left some money in the budget so a Minas Tirith Command pack was added to the list to provide another Hero in the form of a Captain plus a Banner and a Warhorn for the army. With all these purchases we are left with a 700 point army as follows 

Warband One 

Faramir with bow

2 Osgiliath Veterans with shield

2 Osgiliath Veterans with spear

2 Osgiliath Veterans with bow

1 Minas Tirith Warrior with banner 

1 Minas Tirith Warrior with Warhorn

Madril

4 Rangers

2 Rangers with spear 

Damrod

4 Rangers 

2 Rangers with spear 

Captain of Minas Tirith with shield

3 Minas Tirith Warriors with bow 

4 Minas Tirith Warriors with shield and spear 

4 Minas Tirith Warriors with shield 

Mordor

Dave Coleman 

So for our Mordor section of the new Starter Set we are going to focus on a Morannon Orc focused army with some hitting power in the form of the Mordor Troll & Morgul Knights and some fantastic Magic support with the Witch King of Angmar and the Mouth of Sauron. 

The extra kits I am adding to the starter set is the Witch King of Angmar Foot & Mounted, the Mouth of Sauron Foot & Mounted and a box of some of the best cavalry around, the hard hitting & terror causing Morgul Knights. These extra boxes comes to £65.

A sample 750pt list could look something like this with the above additions to the starter set:

Witch King of Angmar, Horse, Morgul Crown, 3 Might, 5 Will, 2 Fate

5 Morannon Orcs with Shields

5 Morannon Orcs with Spears & Shields

Gothmog, Warg, Shield

7 Morannon Orcs with Shields

6 Morannon Orcs with Spears & Shields

1 Morannon Orc with Spear, Banner & Shield

1 Mordor Troll

Mouth of Sauron, Armoured Horse

2 Morgul Knights

This list packs 30 models including your 3 Heroes and Monstrous Troll. You also have 8 Might which is a nice amount for 750 points. The Morannon Orcs will form your main line supported on the flanks by the Morgul Knights and the Troll. You can utilise the higher strength of your models to crush any opposing mainline troops. Your two spellcasters can sit in the backfield neutralising your opponents heroes with reliable transfixes and they can also strike pin point areas with their high mobility while mounted and they're both no slouches in combat either with base Fight 5 and 3/4 Attacks on the charge. Gothmog is a reliable beatstick with 4 attacks on the charge, you should be aiming to have him clean through warriors while using Master of Battle to counter enemy heroic actions and keep your army moving. 

I would recommend doing a small conversion using the Banner contained in the Morgul Knight Kit to model onto one of the Spear armed Morannon Orcs.

Rob

Again the fairly obvious scene to try to recreate with the Evil half of this box is the assault upon Osgiliath, after all that's what the box is based upon. This box would be a great foundation for an army themed around that, and, in my opinion, is possibly a better starting point for a general Mordor army than the Mordor Battlehost due to the inclusion of Morannon Orcs instead of Mordor Orcs, which are generally considered a better choice. In fact, this was the direction of my initial thoughts on this force, building a Mordor army based around the Army of Gothmog Legendary Legion.

However, I decided eventually that I wanted to do something a little different and looked instead at the other battle that features Gothmog heavily, the Battle of the Pelennor. We already have have Gothmog with the Warg we see him riding at the Pelennor, a Troll and a host of Orcs, which makes a solid starting point for an army. The other main feature of the Battle of the Pelennor is of course the Mumakil of Harad, and so for my suggestion that's what I'm going to say, simple as that. With that simple addition we can get a Pelennor Fields themed 750 point army as follows. 

Warband 1

Gothmog on Warg

1 Mordor Troll

7 Morannon Orcs with shields 

7 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears 

Warband 2

War Mumak of Harad with Rappelling Lines and Tusk Weapons 

6 Harad Warriors with bows

6 Harad Warriors with spears 

Thank you to Ivan and David for taking part in this article.

So there's our suggestions. What are your thoughts and what would you do differently?

*Ok, the Hobbit models available currently aren't the best fit thematically, but you can probably pick up more suitable sculpts on the 2nd hand market easily enough if that bothers you.