You can probably optimise it by including more siege bows and crossbows, but this is a great starting point and will do well on the table. It is worth carefully reading what each faction gets, as some choices cannot be used in some of the other factions. You can really pick your poison from this point, too – some more named heroes, and some specialist troops like crossbows or berzerkers will give you a much more varied toolbox and will help to build towards bigger, scarier Isengard lists.

I did want to give a shout-out to the MESBG team for what they did with the Witch-King, though - I know when I got started playing the game, figuring out how to kit out a Nazgul was HARD.

For expansion you can pick something every possible faction can take (the Mordor Orc Commanders pack where the captain and banner can be used in every possible faction that uses Orcs, the Taskmaster and Drummer are Mordor and Barad-Dur only) or you can pick a sub-faction (Barad-Dur gets Black Numoreans, Angmar get cool monsters, Mordor get Morannon Orcs and Mordor Uruk-hai) and specialize. However, for the reasons we talked about earlier, I still think the Battlehost is such good value that you’d be better off just shelving the other models until you feel like playing a different list – so we’ll be branching off from list 1. I will say it again though, Lord of the Rings is a very good game, and GW are making it easier to get into it. This is one of the cheapest expansions to the battleforce, because the Witch King (tooled up here to murder enemy heroes and break lines) is so pricy.

All 48 plastic figures are included with their corresponding bases, but unpainted and require assembly. This is a great opportunity for experienced players to expand their army, or for new collectors to get into the game. The Battlehost clocks in at 623 if you give Saruman a horse (and horse’s are great for character’s mobility).GW have created boxes with a new, modern plastic character and two boxes worth of infantry or cavalry. They do have a series of pretty interesting smaller forces, like Ugluk’s Scouts, Wolves of Isengard or the Dunlendings, but nothing that ties the disparate parts of the army list together. Due to distribution restrictions we are only able to ship this product to the United States, Puerto Rico and U.