Starting an army - A beginners guide to building a 500pt list
Welcome to a series of posts that aims to encourage new players to embrace the wonderful wargaming world of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game.
The purpose of this beginners guide is not to over explore the meta game or evaluate the competitiveness of lists, but to instead give a potential strategy battle gamer a good foundation and platform from which to launch their journey into Middle-Earth a la Games Workshop style!
With a hobby an expensive as ours, making the decision to start an army is a tough one. What faction should I collect? Which models do I like? How do they perform? How much do they cost? What should I be buying? How do I build an army and how many points should I purchase?
This guide invites all One Ringers to contribute (if they would like to, of course) suggested, straightforward 500 point lists of various factions (no allied lists) that would give the new strategy battle gamer an idea of what they can purchase to start playing their desired faction. Whilst just starting with a couple of hundred points is fine for learning the system, 500 points should allow you to start really engaging with the community, particularly for tournaments or gaming nights.
Getting Started
1) Which faction should I choose? This is one of the most common questions posed by new strategy battle gamers on this forum. There is no right or wrong answer to this question, as with most things it is completely subjective! But the soundest advice, advice which I too received upon joining this community, is to start with an army where you like the models most. Don't worry about being competitive or not for now. Choose a model/hero/faction you like the look of and start your SBG journey there
2) Buy the Sourcebook... Once you have decided which army you like the look of, I cannot stress enough the importance in investing in one of the following sourcebooks, even if you plan on using this thread to get advice on the foundations of your army.
Kingdom of Men - for Rohan, Gondor, Arnor, Fiefdoms and Numenor
Free Peoples - for Eregion (Rivendell), Lothlorien and Mirkwood, The Shire, The Fellowship, Wanderers in the Wild, Durin's Folk (Dwarves), The White Council.
Fallen Realms - Umbar and Harad, Easterlings and Khand, Isengard.
Mordor - ....erm Mordor!!
Angmar and Moria - ... Angmar and Moria!
For the Hobbit army lists, you will need to buy the Big Hobbit Rulebook.
Building army lists is one of the true joys of being part of this hobby and a sourcebook will give you everything you need to get started, including how to structure a legal list and the points values of every unit in your army. Each army is different but remember, maximum of 12 warriors per warband which must be led by a hero and most armies adhere to a strict 1/3rd bow limit rule. Heroes must lead warbands from their own lists but you can ally in warband from other armies, so long as they are also "good" or also "evil."
3) Buy your army - Try your best to support your local gaming store if you can or alternatively, ebay can be great for picking up models at a good price. Or of course you can order direct from GW!
Having a clear idea of what you want/need to get your army started will make it much easier for you to make some clear decisions on what you need to purchase. Hopefully this thread will give some good ideas/inspiration of some basic lists that will help a beginner get started!
Good luck! Remember, this community is here to help, support and encourage you to start this hobby, engage with us and get the most from it.
Whilst we won't list individual points values or spell out rules word by word (you'll need sourcebooks and rule books for those) hopefully this guide can at least give some basic ideas on how to structure armies of various factions.
Welcome to the Strategy Battle Game community!
