In the Mind: 2nd Tournament Recap of 2025

 In the Minds: Wolves of Isengard

I recently attended an event down in College Station. I took the new meta breaker known as the Wolves of Isengard. The list was quite fun and I only fought a handful of combats throughout the game with my heroes relying exclusively on troops. I only used 1 heroic move the entire event and with an all cav list that is quite impressive. Lets dive into my first game.

Round 1: Halls of Thranduil, This game was extremely fun. We were playing domination and after setting up my objectives as far away from the middle as possible I set everything up. He created an L formation between some woodland terrain and some trees. I used the river to set up a throwing spear formation and set them up to shoot his bows first turn and bait him out. Turn one i shot out 4 archers with throwing spears and bows to his 2 warg riders. The following turn I followed it up with 2 more kills. Sadly he then passed 2 in the ways with Legolas and did 3 6's to kill sharku outright. I encircled his formation slowly and took out his cav then got Legolas bouncing back and forth to keep his army from being overrun. I cracked through over a few turns and even on my first cavalry charge with no counter move as i moved last he killed nearly all of those warg riders meaning i would certainly break. As result i pulled my captains back to save their resources for break tests. 

This worked out decently well. I was able to break the elves in a few turns then the following turn I broke as well. In the following 11 courage tests i passed a grand total of 2 and my captain with all his saved resources rolled double 1s and fled. I had all of the objectives but 1 before this set of rolls and ended up tying 1, losing 3 (to no one) and then with the only 2 courage tests i did pass i was able to go grab one that was near that warg rider and another ran 10 inches and was barely 3 inches out of another objective so he dismounted into range to get me a 7-6 minor win. 1-0 for the event so far.

Round 2: The Oliphaunt's arrive. Yes, I was playing a low model count list with a mumak. He had a full warband in the howdah and a full warband minus 1 on the ground meaning i had to get some howdah kills to break him. On the bright side for me we were playing reconoitre. I set up ran my scouts forwards then my entire army came on turn 2 and marched forwards turn 3. The mumak came in turn 4 and ran over a handful of wargs.  

I set up bait to get his foot warband out of the choke that blocked my army from getting off. Of course when there are 7 warg riders he can charge and not have them charge him he accepts so i then proceeded to move off all of my captains and Sharku as well as quite a few warg riders including dismounting some of them to get some free models off in essence. 

He then kept killing and i broke then I had the opposite issue of the last round. NOT a single model fled the battle field when I was 1 model off quartering. Thankfully he still had a foot chieftain so i dismounted a throwing spear warg rider and ran him into the chieftain and the chieftain was to bloodthirsty and although i unfortunately rolled a 6 he did as well and then killed the warg rider. In the end I won 15-3 that game. 2-0 1 major win and 1 minor win. On the table right below top table for the final round.

Round 3: Reclamation of Osgiliath in Fog of War. This round was amazing I had to kill Farimir and I decided my captains would never even get into any position where I would be in range to be charged at all. I used 1 to go snag my terrain piece about 15 inches away from the gondor force and the other hid behind a wall the entire game. 

This match was so much fun and we were just in essentially a standoff. He had 9 bows, I had 8 and 18 throwing spears. I just used these times of down time to secure my objective, and precisely position my army to be ready for him to come into me. This was the first game where I actually got to use Sharku in combat and I really wanted to because he is so much fun for a little tiny hero. 

I started putting all of my missile fire into Farimir and chipped off two wounds that he used 2 fate and then took a wound before switching to using Boromir's 3 fate throughout the game to stay alive. When this started happening he realized he needed to come into combat and rushed forwards. I left y army into range for him to charge the next turn allowing tons of counter charges from me. He went in and i got a massive surround crumbling his army in 2 turns. He then had Boromir, Farimir, and about 8-10 warriors left in this area of terrain. I just continually put every shot i and into Farimir's combat and did 2 more wounds in total and Boromir's fate saved once but the other could not and Farimir fell. A big thing for me is that the first turn Boromir charged in I shot out his horse meaning he felt like he was at a massive disadvantage. This ultimately led to me having all of my captains safe not using any fate, me getting my terrain, killing Farimir, and breaking the Gondor without being broken. This game was a wonderful experience and well I was shocked he was slightly newer to the game but had a really good grasp of his army what it did do and what it could do. I think the amount of 39 wargs and warg riders kind of freaked him out in the beginning which helped me but I will say... He will go far in this game if he keeps it up. This left me with an 18-3 Major victory scoring me 2 majors and a minor and placing me tied for first. When the tiebreakers came down to vps I had scored 40 while my good friend and fellow DFW mate, took first with 41 vps and his Ride Out list. I wish their was a fourth round so I could have faced him as every game against him is an absolute joy and I think his list isn't very good, But it was fun to see two all cav lists taking the top 2 spots at this event... Cant say i didn't say all cav lists were the way to break this edition and scenarios we have in the last post or anything like that... In the end DFW took home all three podium spots, best painted, and best sport in this out of town event for us. And ultimately the best part. We took home the Texas League trophy after our strong showing in the 2024 season. 

Thank you for reading, Comment on what armies you want to see me run. Maybe an Iron Hills chariot army? Hobbits? I am up for nearly everything and have most of the armies in the game and love the challenge of others picking my armies and lists. 

In the Mind: The Ultimate META breaker? Is Cavalry the Way to go?

 In the Mind: Introducing a New Way to Win

If you have followed the blog for any amount of time you have probably picked up one major theme. I dont like what is commonly deemed as the lists to take. In fact I like to not only shy away from that but rather take what everyone else deems as garbage. I started out running Iron hills for my first ever event with all of the lower end dwarf heroes from Erebor. Then the next even I went with Azog and a bunch of hunter orcs all with two handed picks and that was awesome. Then I turned around and ran Angmar with the Tainted and buhdur in comparison to most peoples witch king and gulavar. I then proceeded to run Hunter orcs with all the little heroes and a gundabad captain bringing in 4 war bats for the heck of it. I then started a project idea that followed me for half a year. Men of the West. I told my good friend to pick a list for me to run for our grand tournament. He seeing his chance to put me with a list he could easily beat instantly said Men of the West. As the story goes. I didn't have a single model in the army. I ran a proxy list to test what i was thinking. I was simply blown away. It was insanely powerful. (If you want to read about the full journey look at my previous blog on that specific army). I ended up coming in 3rd at our grand event with the list. Simply to say ever since then I have gone out of my way to take odd, weird, seemingly skewed lists. I turned around and started running all cav Gondor with Aragorn instead of Boromir and all normal captains for the rest of the edition. as well as a radagast/gandalf combo with some laketown which was fun. I took what people said was garbage. I then figured out how they work. I firmly believe any list can be competitive. 

Throughout this journey I wasn't running THE lists to take. But I wasn't going the hard opposite side either. I took odd lists that i liked quite simply. With this new edition on the rise and the comfort levels returning to normal the common lists are starting to flow along with the common opinions for what is deemed as good. The year started off with a friend of mine being sad because "Spiders are dead this edition" So what did i do? Decided to take the rise of the necromancer with spam spiders as my list and took down my first event of the year with the monstrosity of a list. I was also told f3 armies aren't worth it unless they have big heroes or ways to shut down big heroes. I also heard Rohan got insanely good and no cav can even compare to their sheer power. They have returned to the "Horse Lords." So me being me... decided we cant have that. So with all of this set up I present. The ultimate META breaker. Those that directly dethroned the Horse Lords in a direct matchup. Yes, you heard that right. That leaves only two options... but only one of those is a cavalry force.

The Wolves. I have been collecting this list for well over a year now and have now attained somewhere around 40 warg riders 18 wild wargs, Sharku, and a bunch of converted captains on wargs. Let me explain just why I think this list is the best dark horse list in the game. I would say the necromancer legion is way more powerful. But... thats at what that legion does. stops and kills heroes. This list does not do that. It has a completely different style of play. And it is LETHAL. Let me break down how to play this list efficiently as I have found. First lets do a quick overview analysis.

Strengths: Mobility, High numbers for cav, Tons of missile weapons, Tons of might, High strength.
Weaknesses: No big beat stick, low defense, lots of big bases.

This is where I would call this list "The Darkhorse" or i guess more of the darkwarg. Sharku flies under everyone's radar. He is f4 2attacks on the surface with d5. Not good at all... But on the charge he is 3 attacks (4 with cav bonus) and gains plus one FV. That is very very good. He can now reliably take out 4 troops a turn with his free heroic combats. 

Why is this list the ultimate meta breaker? Well the style of gameplay it plays is ultimately completely different then every army this edition. It doesn't play the game. Rather, it plays THE game. You see most armies rely on simple factors of big heroes or magic that prevents those big heroes from cutting through swaths of troops and then you secure the objectives at the end. This list plays the opposite. You never give up the objectives that win the game. 

Here is the gameplan. Every army in the game will not want to engage with you. You can wipe out cavalry forces faster then any other list other then eagles. They will even run. Infantry will want shots to deplete numbers so will deploy back. So its just get around the board and pin them in the far backfield and apply pressure. You can cut through troops insanely fast while gaining a better position then any and i mean ANY other list in the game. I have played this list quite a bit now and it is shocking how frightened opponents are of it. You outpace every list in the game with the amount of cheap might for march alongside already 10 inch move. You have more throwing spears then any list and can get to the mid 50s at 800 points. That is a normal horde army level let alone a cavalry horde... its insane. Now i will say 500-650 is the perfect spot for this list and at 500 it is almost unbeatable. It is so powerful and not enough lists have the tools to deal with it properly at that points level. but even at higher points i have been finding some success and I think only time will show that more. But anything with objectives is a piece of cake and maelstrom. INSANE. then the scouts rule is super helpful as everyone knows if they want their bows to be safe they need to be over 20 inches away further giving board control. and if they dont deploy that far back then move a few wargs as scouts and sacrifice them to turn off the enemies shooting. You have tricks, speed, and ultimately something no other list does. It plays the true game rather then focusing on just being able to kill faster or better then the enemy. 

You take everything that provides you advantages for the long term rather then the shorthand experience of getting a few kills easier. You trade a big killy hero that kills other heroes for a small hero that can easily double his points in what he can kill. In just one game against some elves I killed about 5 elves along with Legolas and Tauriel after kiting them and letting them use their might to keep the cavalry charges from going off. He is dangerous to heroes when they lose their might. You have the tools to win any game. You have the tools for all situations. You can dictate the game if you hold the objectives early. It applies pressure which can lead to mistakes. That being said it is still a highly skill based list. But if you want a challenge or you want to become a better player then by all means go get this list. Look out for the next time we delve into the Minds of Moria to find what lurks within.