I recently watched two friends play a game of Rohan vs Fallen Realms in my local GWS with some very interesting results

The Rohan player had been talking a lot about how he wanted to bring a completely mounted what he called a 'proper' Rohan army

The highlights of this army include some Riders of Rohan, a large formations of Royal knights , Erkenbrands riders, a six company strong formation of The Sons of Eorl, Eomer, Theoden and a Mounted Kings Guard (the army looked incredible on the table)

The Fallen Realms player took Khamul, Dalamyr and the Betrayer along with a 2 huge formation of Easterings with pikes, a huge formation of Corsairs and a formation of Khandish mercenaries with 2HW among others but those are the important ones

The FR player put Khamul in with the corsairs who didn't have shields, Dalamyr in the Khandish unit and the Betrayer in with one of the Easterings

The Rohan player faced with getting no charge bonus if he charged either the Easterlings or the Khandish mercenaries exerted most of his armies force against the weak Corsairs who duly died in their droves, exactly as the FR wanted them to, each time they died Khamul was causing a grievous amount of damage to his cavalry. He would move the Betrayer to where ever he was needed most usually the Khandish who he would use to flank attack the knights with there re-roll 2HW cutting them to sherds or his Easterlings if he was planning on charging them in instead. Even after the corsairs were all dead he just jumped Khamul into the next flimsiest unit or the unit with the largest number of enemies attacking it then rinsed and repeated.

The fallen realms player it is doubtless to say won convincingly, the 2 ringwraiths magic really took it's toll aswell

This tactic was clearly very effective and stopped the Rohan player using any of his special charge abilities to there full potential and got his cavalry massacred. This got me wondering is it actually possible to make a usable and effective cavalry army if you play it properly and ally well.

It is possible to make any army useable, provided your opponent doesn't tailor his list to kill yours (if he'd been there with a Goblin horde with just one hero, the result would have been quite different), it's just there are some that are very hard to use (Elves, Spirit-only Angmar, all cavalry-Rohan), and some that are point-and-click death (Mordor RAF, Corsair Arbalesters+Betrayer, 5-Wraith Gorgoroth Horde). However, you will never win the GT with an all-cavalry army (unless you are really, really, really good).

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

Maybe I'm missing something, but why didn't the Rohan player simply out-shoot the enemy? It might have taken a long time, but he could have shot the Devlan Mud out of one of the pike blocks, then slammed into the corsairs and (with a bit of luck) finished off the depleted pike block.

Because the other player had two Nazgul. With Wings of Terror to make them into super-cavalry, SFC on the Rohirrim and Visions of woe added for good measure, some RoR worthless shooting won't have helped much.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

I love cav, i always run heavy cav armies (meaning a good portion of my wotr force is cav, not the cav being heavliy armoured) Cav in wotr are amazing with lances, unfortunatly i dont rate all rohan mounted entries (such as outriders, or westfold) to be a option, go all royal guard, kings guard and theodreads guard, bring the entire royal family to the table literatly, the gegular riders just arent good enough.

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I have my issues with GW but in the end, secretly, I am a GW fanatic.

I also wanted to field the faramirs knights battle host, 3 formations of 6 companies of Mina's tiring knights in a line just like the movie, with Faramirs up front.... I have the figures just need to get round to fielding them... Now that's an idea!

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Leonardis
Army blog:Http://www.thewarofthering.blogspot.co.uk/

are any of the Rohan battlehosts worth taking if your planning on going highly mounted or are they not worth there points

Theodens Guard might be nice, but I'm not sure.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

I don't actually have the battlehosts book so you someone please tell me what the 3 or 4 are, also as were doing mounted armies what about the Faramir's Knight one

I will have a look at the weekend, I have Sharkus Riders of Isengard on my blog.

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Leonardis
Army blog:Http://www.thewarofthering.blogspot.co.uk/

Ok so a quick update:
Faramirs knights
Theodens knights
Riders of the Westfold
Eomers knights
Last march of the Ents (monsters)
Knights of Morgul
Warg riders of Isengard
Beast of the wild (although mainly cavalry have to have druzhag and goblins)
Mumak herd (monsters)

Hope this helps!

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Leonardis
Army blog:Http://www.thewarofthering.blogspot.co.uk/