I haven’t played my Isengard SBG force for well over a year, so anything new introduced with the WotR roll out is not included. But from my experience Isengard Raiders can be quite effective on their own. They differ from Uruk Warriors in only a single point of Defense. Yes, that is still less than a fully armored Uruk Warrior, but a D5 Scout is still one of the better “grunt” troops. F4/S4 will match a lot of enemy and their D5 keeps them pretty safe up to S5 enemy. And with F4 you can shield with a reasonable chance of success if you are out numbered.
I like to give my Scout armies a full 33% bows. They 4+ which is fair, but they aren’t dedicated shooters. I rarely would keep my bow-armed Scouts back shooting as it’s a waste of materiel. Instead I would half move them and shoot until they reached combat then just treat them as normal warriors. They may get a couple kills while closing which only helps them, but even if they don’t at least the presence of bows keeps you from being the only side in the game without the ability to shoot.
You can bring along a lot of Orc troops as filler (feed them to strong enemy models, manage zone of control or help get Surrounded for your Uruks), to provide spear support for your Uruks, and for Ugluk to hack away at when needed. It looks good, plays well, and is right on target with Tolkien’s themes.
Warg Riders in SBG aren’t that great but can be useful when you get used to their strengths and weaknesses. With a shield they have fair survivability. The Warg strength, combined with a Charge, will often kill easily. They can get to an objective fast and hold it reasonably until other forces arrive or they can flank or provide early engagement for you. As with any cavalry in SBG a Hero is almost mandatory. A well set up Heroic Combat with them can be surprising at worse, devastating at best, and the ability to Heroic Move away from a bad Priority roll can mean the difference between having them another turn or not. One extra bonus with them is that Wargs have a chance of hanging around to fight if the Rider is killed. Not a great chance, but it does happen for me once or twice per game and that Warg model is nearly as effective as the Warg+Rider.
I have played Scouts as a smaller portion of a larger Fighting Uruk Hai army but I have the most fun with them as a dedicated force reinforced with Orcs and Warg Riders and using 2-3 of the appropriate named Heroes ( Lurtz, Ugluk, Sharku, Grishnak).
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