11/11/2024 - Bringing Isengard to Clash on the Coast

 

Hey Everyone!

I'm back! Between preparing for Clash on the Coast, local organization and work, I've been a bit stretched thin of late... some may say like butter... scraped over too much bread. Now that Clash is behind me and with the new edition on the horizon, it's time to get back to it!

Obviously things are changing with the new edition, namely the loss of the Blog's namesake to Legacy, amongst a few other Isengard choices, but I'm confident Isengard will be as playable as ever!

I don't plan to go over the impact of Isengard's Legacy models, just because until we know what exactly Legacy means, I don't want to jump to any conclusions. I am going to be doing lots of breakdowns of profiles, armies, building styles, and legacy come the new edition, so stay tuned for that!

For now... I want to tell everyone about the Clash on the Coast Grant Tournament I went to in October, featuring the North-West Hobbit League's Masters Invitational.

As I mentioned earlier this year, after getting third in the North-West Hobbit League's Battle for Bridgetown (https://thedunlendingwarcry.blogspot.com/2024/04/4242024-battle-for-bridgetown.html), I earned myself a North-West Hobbit League Masters invite.

This event was a 4 round event, with pre-determined scenarios that the participants voted on. Only the top 4 would move on to rounds 3, and the top 2 on to round 4 for the win. The scenario order ended up being: Domination -> Fog of War -> Destroy the Supplies -> Lords of Battle.

Leading into the event, seeding was seemingly set, with potential for adjustments as the final ticket earning event, Fellowship of the Bling. Before then, it appeared that I would be taking the 12th Seed, having not been able to attend a NWHL event in 2023, which meant I would be playing Into the West's Richard Lin, a scary first game, him being 1-0 against me from our match at Adepticon. To try and counter-act this, I posted a billion lists in the Into the West Patreon Discord, to try and throw Richard off my trail of what I was taking. Along the way, I also apparently threw myself off my own trail, and there were some truly wacky lists built out. Between Uruk Spam Isengard, triple Ballista AuHD, Angmar (what?) and even only Wildmen Dunland, It was all over the place. Following Nova, I had to dial in to decide, and got a bit of inspiration from the Hammonds of the Durin Show. Markus and Mitchell brought Durin to Nova's 1000 point GT, and a lot of their reasoning was a last hurrah, and I felt that on a spiritual level. So it was decided. I was playing Saruman Isengard.

I was happy with that decision... but in it's deployment... I missed pretty badly. I gave Uruks another chance. A fair bit of concern was towards trying to win the first two games, but not spam out to give myself a disadvantage if I made it to the fourth round with Lords of Battle. With that, I ended up with:

I focused in on Uruk lines, crossbows and magic for control, along with Grima. I was truly expecting to be about middle of the pack on numbers, but boy was I wrong. The average, not including Alex from Texas's Army of Lake-Town was the mid 30s, and I was tied for the lowest model count.

Game 1: Domination vs Ian (Into the West): 1-9 Major Loss

Ian brought his Arnor to bear and Saruman came in hard, removing Malbeth's protection for the first four turns of the game. Unfortunately the Crossbows seemed to not realize that. While the Rangers of Arnor started picking off models, me losing 10 before lines clashed, my Crossbows killed 1 singular Warrior of Arnor, missing almost every shot. By the time the lines clashed, my army had already ran out of steam (of which there barely was any to begin with), and Arnor simply walked all over it. It definitely seemed like I had an advantage on paper, but in execution, the Uruks simply did not perform. It was a rough start to the day, and did very much make it improbable I made it into the second half of the event, but I was definitely not ready to give up.

Game 2: Fog of War vs Mitchell (The Durin Show): 3-6 Minor Loss

Mitchell, who was the other 30 model list, brought King Dain and Gloin, with a solid line of Iron Hills Dwarves. Early on, I had some pretty good casting and shooting, taking out a fair few Dwarves and Goats early as we moved to engage. When the lines clashed, the Uruks really started punishing the Dwarves, and by the end of the game, only Gloin and a few others remained. But by that point, my protect, Grima, had been slain, following Saruman's untimely death, and Vrasku whiffed while not trapped, took 2 wounds and rolled a 1 on fate to give up his target. Gloin was close to being wounded, having lost the final fight of the game, but my Uruk did not roll well enough. I ended up coming just shy of breaking, but could not get wound points, nor protect, compared to the Dwarves getting their target and keeping their protect.

With that second loss, it was absolutely clear that I was not continuing, but, it turns out I wouldn't anyway, as the top 4 ended up having no losses on their record. Unfortunately, the world of Men (and Dwarves) did not end that day. But, at least the Champion ended up being Jake, another Southern Californian, bringing his Witch-King, Suladan and Shelob to victory. Go America!

It was a rough start to the weekend, but I wasn't going to let some silly Uruks get in the way of the GT.

For the GT, I took a finely crafted and honed version of Isengard. I think it is this edition's peak version. I've been building out and testing this style for quite a while now, with probably ~200 games played of it. If you've been reading my other posts about my style of Isengard play, you know I like to think outside the box, and do not subscribe to any defined "META" pick, as I find it often wrong or uncreative. With that, it ended up being:

This was the thought process behind the choices made:

1) I knew Saruman was coming

2) I looked at what hero can best capitalize on Saruman casting, and determined that while I like Gorulf for line holding, I like Thrydan's mobility (not to mention his second will since casting is on the rise)

3) I looked at what tools help Thrydan perform. I envisioned him on a flank, so decided that a few D6 uruks to hold that flank for him to feel less pressure would be ideal. I knew that I was taking orc supports for the most part. Because hes on the corner, i see the huscarls as also holding that flank since they cant easily be made to run away via expected spectres/sentinels, and should be within 3" of him when needed, along with being able to pivot as bodyguard shock troopers, which I think is highly undervalued in open Isengard. The horseman is a buddy to help Thrydan on heroic combats

4) I looked at what other tools can work with Saruman, which naturally is Vrasku and a few crossbows, looking for early game picks from 18" casting on approach. 

5) When doing Saruman's warband, the focus is always what can hold up the longest, and normally i do orcs and wildmen to tar pit, but the orc shields are growing on my as cheap frontliners so that I can pivot my backline when they are needed elsewhere. I also grabbed 2 berserkers to act as "guards" for Saruman for flyers with terror

6) Lastly, I looked at a way to pad numbers, and its easy to just do Oathmaker with some hobos and orcs. The additional huscarls are meant to be able to peel off to protect Oathmaker, or supply fight 4 to the line when needed. Its pretty easy to get the fight bonus when you have 2 Dunland heroes.

7) 2 crebain are 2 crebain, Grima doesnt fit here due to taking Thrydan over Gorulf.

Compared to my normal run up and mash approach, this list capitalizes a bit more on the early game stuff from range, with the crossbows having plenty of bodies to block for them if needed, and Saruman running things out of position for a good engagement with Thrydan, horseman and crebain, ideally with a heroic combat in the mix.

I tested the list against a number of different armies, between Last Alliance/Last Alliance Adjacent type lists, spam lists, magic heavy, shooting heavy, etc, and did not find that it ever came down to what my opponent was playing, but how I played and how the scenario played. This is just how I like it. I don't feel like anything is an outright problem for me to face, and while I don't expect to 12-0 anyone, I do expect to earn solid victories when playing this list, and give up minimal losses if it goes against me.

With that, lets go over my games:

Game 1: Pool 4 : 6-0 vs Bannermir MT in Lords of Battle (37 wounds to 25) - Major Win.

Magic be magic, bodies be bodies. Trading low point wildmen and orcs for models more expensive adds up, along with blocking Boromir from fighting till he had lost most of his army and his horse. Game ended first roll but was on track to be a tabling 10-0 with one or two more turns (was never going to triple him).

Game 2: Pool 6: 4-1 vs Rohan with tons of Riders (bows) in Fog of War (was basically an open field) - Minor Win.

Magic be magic, bodies be bodies. Again, trading low point troops for cavalry and using might and magic to out position. Lost 10 models to shooting on approach, but only about half were Uruks, and was able to trade effectively with Saruman's blasts for the few turns he kited. Executed Theoden and Erkenbrand on the same turn with Saruman + Thrydan heroic combat/strike and slingshot. Was on track to be a 7 or 10 to 0 with one or two more turns, but ended first roll.

Game 3: Pool 3: 6-1 vs WK, Mouth + SQ with tons of Numenoreans in Retrieval - Major Win.

Crebain are great, Saruman could go toe to toe with WK due to better magic plays. I knocked my opponent's casters off their mounts the first 2 turns of the game, also taking out the banner. Fearless wildmen and bodyguard huscarls go where they wish. Thrydan executes monsters with no fate. Went to time, with me breaking my opponent on the last turn. Saruman notably got to pull major shenanigans, commanding a Black Numenorean to drop my object at the feet of an uruk, who they took it and ran away, ceding one point, but denying more. This was notably the only list that outnumbered me, with an advantage of 1, but I was able to even out numbers with magic before engagement happened.

Game 4: Pool 1: 8-3 vs Azog in Hold Ground - Major Win.

Bodies and tar pits drained Azog's resources so that when he finally got Saruman, he was out of might and stuck as the troops rotated to the middle. Came on first, spent a couple points of might to have good position and then minced the entire army besides Azog and 2 berserkers. Ended 4th roll, Azog was up but so was Thrydan, both without resources but with me above 33% by a good margin.

Game 5: Pool 2: 4-8 vs Richard's (Into the West) Soup in Capture and Control - Minor Loss.

Traded Thrydan and Vrasku's 6 combined might for deleting Forlong and Theodred by the end of the second turn, but lost virtually every duel due to low rolling and not killing when I did in a line off that forced Richard into a position that was much better suited to me. Can't manage to do much when losing so many duels even when removing heroes from the game. I made a positioning mistake that cost me Saruman, but with all else that was occuring, Saruman would not have saved the game for me. Still managed a minor loss rather than a major due to a long term play with Oathmaker and wildmen to nab second objective last turn of the game. Ended on time.

Ultimately, I went 4-1, with 3 Major wins, 1 Minor win, and 1 Minor loss, for a total of 16 Tournament Points, 28 VPs earned, and only 13 ceded, which is about what my average is for VP gain to loss.

Luckily, despite my loss in the final game, my record earned me third place in the overall tournament, earning myself a fantastic looking trophy topped with Orthanc, so fate was apparently directing me towards third, and the Heroes of Carn-Dum, and some Warriors of Carn-Dum to go along with them. So I guess I'm building Dunland from Wish.com now!

So to wrap this lengthy post up, I podiumed at the third largest Middle Earth Event in North America with Isengard. In a sea of soup lists, fight 5 lists, and tons of other effective lists, I showed that Isengard can duke it out with the best of them. I've always said, Isengard can do solid... solidly middle of the pack, when you build it like normal, or lean into the legions, and these days, you don't hear much about Isengard going the distance, but I've been able to perform with this style of Isengard this year. Between my performance at 3 GTs, 2 of them being amongst the top 3 sized events in NA, I can say confidently that this style of Isengard was missed by lots over the course of this edition, and definitely has the tools to compete where other Isengards fall short.

I look forward to seeing what the new edition brings, and how I can make Isengard fight for the top.

Until then, thank you for reading, and stay tuned come the new edition! I will be doing Isengard breakdowns, Rules breakdowns, and a whole bunch more.

See you!

-Scott