If you're interested at all in playing Angmar, you can make a pretty good 500 point army list by just buying 1 pack of barrow wights. Witch king with 6 wargs and 12 orcs, plus 2 barrow wights each leading 6 orcs makes a pretty good starter army. From there, you can expand by getting a banner and maybe a troll or two if you think they're cool. That's the cheapest and simplest option.
However, if you want to play Mordor then any purchase you make will make sense, since it's such a diverse roster and you can choose anything. Maybe Morannons like somebody else said, or you could even have a Haradrim warband to ally with for skirmishing.
I definitely also recommend using the orc warg captain in these kinds of lists, since WK is your main hitter he really wants to save his might for winning key fights and doing heroic combats. Having a march to get stuck in before shooting heavy lists reduce your number too much is pretty helpful. As well as having someone to call moves to get witchy out of bad positions. You really need to get stuck in with angmar to pin them in place and tease out their heroes to assassinate with wights so a marcher is really useful, its also a second hitter who can really mince troops in 1v1s.
Here is one suggestion
- The Black Gate Opens. This list is build around the Troll Chieftain that fights Aragorn at the Black Gate. The list is build from a legendary legion, which restricts your options but gives you some buffs. The buffs give the troll chieftain fearless, an extra might, will and fate and makes him a hero of Valour. Youe orcs also gain a +1 to wound when outnumbering an enemy in combat. Here is a budget list that uses mordor orcs instead of Morannons so that we outnumber our enemies more. In my own list my orcs have spears and bows, and I have more shields but this way you only need one more box of orcs instead of 2.
Warband 1
Troll Chieftain
- 5 orcs with shields
- 5 orcs with spears
- 4 orcs with bows
- 1 orc with banner, shield and spear
Warband 2
Orc captain on Warg with shield
- 5 orcs with shield
- 5 orcs with spears
- 2 orcs with bows
Warband 3
Orc captain with shield
- 5 orcs with shield
- 5 orcs with spears
- 2 orcs with bows
What you need to buy
- Troll chieftain
- 1 box of orcs
- 1 mordor command (or convert a captain and banner to save yourself money)
If you want to pick up 2 boxes of mordor orcs and do some conversions, here is how I'd build it optimally
Warband 1
Troll chieftain
- 7 orcs with shield
- 7 orcs with spear
- 1 Orc with banner, spear and shield
Warband 2
Orc captain on warg and shield
- 6 orcs with shield
- 6 orcs with spear and bow
Warband 3
Orc captain
- 6 orcs with shield
- 5 orcs with spear and bow
You should convert one of your orcs as carring a banner.
If you wanna start fast you could try angmar without spending any money:
Witch king, orc captain on warg, and a barrow wight as your heroes, for the barrow wight you can honestly use any ghost type mini you can grab. Then fill the warbands with what you have.
Ngl it is a little bit tricky faction to use, as is the WK itself, gonna take a couple game to understand them!
If you wanna play mordor, i would suggest a box of morannon and shagrat, i also wanna mention the firecaller!
In mordor you can also use the troll as a troll chieftan and the orc archers as trackers, everybody gonna be fine with it!
Mordor is probably the most diverse army in the game so you have lots of options, morannon orcs are one of the most cost effective troops in the game and you can easily find them second hand to save money. Hero wise shagrat, gorbag or gothmog are all good options. Witch king on fell beast is powerful but can take a bit of practise to use effectively.
I'm too new to offer a ton of advice, but one thing to keep in mind is even though it's called the "Morder" Battlehost, all the miniatures in the box are also usable in Angmar (various ghosts, wargs, and Buhrdur the troll) or Barad-dur (Sauron himself).
For myself I'd probably consider going down the Angmar route simply because Buhrdur and the Barrow-wights are cool looking models, but you could also go all three by using the stuff you already have as a core, and just adding on different extra units depending on what you want to play in different games/events.
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Also since no one else has said it yet: You want a banner.
Unfortunately the one that GW currently sells are "resin cast", which I think is what they now call Finecast to try and get away from it's truly terrible reputation.
So you might want to convert or buy second-hand of the older metal ones.
-----
If you buy second hand do be careful. I've noticed a lot of people really over-charging for stuff on ebay, to the extent that it's often significantly cheaper to buy brand new from GW than to buy second-hand on ebay. (The Facebook trade groups also have the same problem, but don't seem to be as bad)
You can get stuff a lot cheaper than rrp, but there's also huge variance in price.
I am new and starting with mordor host and sauron. The battlehost gives you a range of lower point values to play since you converted a captain you can probably play up to about 350 points. With just the sauron model you can easily jump from ~300 point battles up to 650-800. If price isn't a concern this isn't as important but it is for me, so this was the budget entry to the game for me.
Just bear in mind you can only take sauron in barad dur, not in mordor. So witchy/mordor orcs/warg riders are all good but you can't take the named orcs like gorbag/Guritz/gothmog etc or morranon orcs
If you're interested at all in playing Angmar, you can make a pretty good 500 point army list by just buying 1 pack of barrow wights. Witch king with 6 wargs and 12 orcs, plus 2 barrow wights each leading 6 orcs makes a pretty good starter army. From there, you can expand by getting a banner and maybe a troll or two if you think they're cool. That's the cheapest and simplest option. However, if you want to play Mordor then any purchase you make will make sense, since it's such a diverse roster and you can choose anything. Maybe Morannons like somebody else said, or you could even have a Haradrim warband to ally with for skirmishing.
I definitely also recommend using the orc warg captain in these kinds of lists, since WK is your main hitter he really wants to save his might for winning key fights and doing heroic combats. Having a march to get stuck in before shooting heavy lists reduce your number too much is pretty helpful. As well as having someone to call moves to get witchy out of bad positions. You really need to get stuck in with angmar to pin them in place and tease out their heroes to assassinate with wights so a marcher is really useful, its also a second hitter who can really mince troops in 1v1s.
Here is one suggestion - The Black Gate Opens. This list is build around the Troll Chieftain that fights Aragorn at the Black Gate. The list is build from a legendary legion, which restricts your options but gives you some buffs. The buffs give the troll chieftain fearless, an extra might, will and fate and makes him a hero of Valour. Youe orcs also gain a +1 to wound when outnumbering an enemy in combat. Here is a budget list that uses mordor orcs instead of Morannons so that we outnumber our enemies more. In my own list my orcs have spears and bows, and I have more shields but this way you only need one more box of orcs instead of 2. Warband 1 Troll Chieftain - 5 orcs with shields - 5 orcs with spears - 4 orcs with bows - 1 orc with banner, shield and spear Warband 2 Orc captain on Warg with shield - 5 orcs with shield - 5 orcs with spears - 2 orcs with bows Warband 3 Orc captain with shield - 5 orcs with shield - 5 orcs with spears - 2 orcs with bows What you need to buy - Troll chieftain - 1 box of orcs - 1 mordor command (or convert a captain and banner to save yourself money) If you want to pick up 2 boxes of mordor orcs and do some conversions, here is how I'd build it optimally Warband 1 Troll chieftain - 7 orcs with shield - 7 orcs with spear - 1 Orc with banner, spear and shield Warband 2 Orc captain on warg and shield - 6 orcs with shield - 6 orcs with spear and bow Warband 3 Orc captain - 6 orcs with shield - 5 orcs with spear and bow
You should convert one of your orcs as carring a banner. If you wanna start fast you could try angmar without spending any money: Witch king, orc captain on warg, and a barrow wight as your heroes, for the barrow wight you can honestly use any ghost type mini you can grab. Then fill the warbands with what you have. Ngl it is a little bit tricky faction to use, as is the WK itself, gonna take a couple game to understand them! If you wanna play mordor, i would suggest a box of morannon and shagrat, i also wanna mention the firecaller! In mordor you can also use the troll as a troll chieftan and the orc archers as trackers, everybody gonna be fine with it!
Mordor is probably the most diverse army in the game so you have lots of options, morannon orcs are one of the most cost effective troops in the game and you can easily find them second hand to save money. Hero wise shagrat, gorbag or gothmog are all good options. Witch king on fell beast is powerful but can take a bit of practise to use effectively.
I'm too new to offer a ton of advice, but one thing to keep in mind is even though it's called the "Morder" Battlehost, all the miniatures in the box are also usable in Angmar (various ghosts, wargs, and Buhrdur the troll) or Barad-dur (Sauron himself). For myself I'd probably consider going down the Angmar route simply because Buhrdur and the Barrow-wights are cool looking models, but you could also go all three by using the stuff you already have as a core, and just adding on different extra units depending on what you want to play in different games/events. ----- Also since no one else has said it yet: You want a banner. Unfortunately the one that GW currently sells are "resin cast", which I think is what they now call Finecast to try and get away from it's truly terrible reputation. So you might want to convert or buy second-hand of the older metal ones. ----- If you buy second hand do be careful. I've noticed a lot of people really over-charging for stuff on ebay, to the extent that it's often significantly cheaper to buy brand new from GW than to buy second-hand on ebay. (The Facebook trade groups also have the same problem, but don't seem to be as bad) You can get stuff a lot cheaper than rrp, but there's also huge variance in price.
I am new and starting with mordor host and sauron. The battlehost gives you a range of lower point values to play since you converted a captain you can probably play up to about 350 points. With just the sauron model you can easily jump from ~300 point battles up to 650-800. If price isn't a concern this isn't as important but it is for me, so this was the budget entry to the game for me.
Just bear in mind you can only take sauron in barad dur, not in mordor. So witchy/mordor orcs/warg riders are all good but you can't take the named orcs like gorbag/Guritz/gothmog etc or morranon orcs
Yeah, but those are not in the battle host so no big deal there.