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.
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