Top 10 Most Improved Good Profiles from the Armies of Middle Earth Book

  Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of Middle Earth book from the Forces of Good. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Good in the Armies of Middle Earth book.

As we did in the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of Middle Earth book, so we won't be looking at profiles beyond that book. It also means we're almost done with this part of the series!
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good in the book, so only good profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Durin is incredibly powerful, but the change from last edition is literally just an increase from F6 to F7 at the expense of +10pts, and while that means he is improved, and good, and tough to beat, he's not among the top ten. 
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, which is not really an issue with this book, but again it's something we're looking for in this ranking.
• There were more profiles than this list can hold, so yes, I couldn't include all of the ones that I thought were interesting/useful. There will be some honorable mentions, but suffice it to say, if you really thought that someone should have made the list and didn't, there's a good chance that they were considered and just didn't break the top ten.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Khazad Guard

All images from
the new book!

Not much actually happened with Khazad Guards this edition: they're still able to reroll 1s to wound like last edition, they don't have access to Piercing Strike anymore, but they did pick up one nice upgrade for only +1pt/model: they jumped up to F5, making them truly elite infantry, finally on-par with elves.

They don't make the top ten because a lot of the characters above are either the same or lower cost than last edition, or getting far better value, but it's worth noting that we finally have F5 dwarves, and more than that, per the new rules for two-handed weapons, if they roll a 6 for the duel roll they don't get the -1 penalty, which is nice.

Announcing the TMAT THRO 2025 Tournament!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time of year - The Hunter's Red October will be hitting the TMAT community again (but in September this time, not in October). The tournament will be held in Purcellville or Berryville, VA on September 20, 2025. This will be our first tournament under the 2024+ rules set (now that we have a complete set of profile supplements), which I think is pretty exciting! Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

The ruleset we will be using is from the most recent Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual (the Fellowship walking one). The supplements for the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, the Armies of the Hobbit, the Armies of Middle-Earth, and the Legacies of Middle-Earth will govern the profiles and army lists being used. Any GW errata for these books will take precedent over the printed text of these documents.

2) Thou Shalt Honor Thy Alliance

This tournament follows the alliance "restrictions" provided in the main rulebook - players will pick one army list from one of the four GW-issued supplements for this edition and follow all requirements for that army list.

Quick Starter Armies with the Armies of Middle-Earth Supplement

Good morning gamers,

We've looked at the Battle of Edoras Box Set, the Armies of the Hobbit, and the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplements in this series so far, so it makes sense to tackle the last sourcebook in the list, the Armies of Middle-Earth. This supplement (and the Legacies documents, which I will not be covering in this series) were greatly awaited by us here at TMAT - a good number of our local players had lynchpin characters in most of their lists in one or both of these releases, so we're very happy to finally have "the completed set" for list building.

As has been noted in every post in this series, GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too!

List building on a budget THIS time is going to be tricky, since we're assuming that you're spending $60 on a rulebook, $50 on either the Armies of the Hobbit or the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, AND you're spending $50 on the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, which means that we'll be looking for armies that you can get for $50 to $350 more (between $200 and $500). As always, I'll provide additional thoughts on how to save money along the way - which with this lot has led to a few conversions that aren't hard. With that, let's start with the Good armies . . .

The New Age Is Begun: The Harad Army List

Good morning gamers,

I don't think there are too many army lists that, after the release of the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, have as few profiles as the Harad army list. We looked at the Depths of Moria last time and that list was incredibly constrained, but at least the Balrog was doing a lot to help that list compete with its limited bench. Today, we're looking a list that has two ways to play - and honestly, I'm not sure either are bad (though one is DEFINITELY going to be board-dependent for its ability to be competitive). Let's dive in and see what's up in the southlands (Editor's Note: I failed to add the Legacy profiles when I uploaded this page - it was written after the Armies of Middle-Earth dropped and before the Legacies document was provided. The profiles have been added now.)!

Harad: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

As was mentioned in the First Impressions article for Harad (and Umbar - Part II of that series will be coming out either late this year or early next year), I mentioned that there were basically no profiles in this army list: the Mumak War Leader, normal Mumaks, Haradrim Chieftains, and Haradrim Warriors. The addition of the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement have grown our options slightly - Haradrim Taskmasters and Haradrim Raiders are also available - but by and large, you can summarize this list simply: you get the basic guys, the command blister, and the Mumaks. That's it.

If you want expanded options for Harad, the Legions of Mordor should be your next stop (more on them next week) - which not only gives you more Harad units to play with, but will also give you a host of Mordor and Easterling units to pick from as well (supplementing Harad's low Defense stat and slotting them into the weak archery slots that both Mordor and Easterling armies have). It's a match made in heaven - but that's enough thunder-stealing for now. :) You can also look at several other alliance options for Harad in the Grand Army of the South (which is now a Corsair/Easterling/Harad alliance instead of what it used to be) or the Umbar army list (for some spicy Harad/Corsair alliance shenanigans). Whatever your preferred Haradrim flavor is, there's probably a Harad list for you now - but today, we're focusing on what basically was the Grand Army of the South LL of yester-year.

Army List Bonuses

Last edition, the Serpent Horde army bonus gave the Haradrim a 50% bow limit and Haradrim Warriors/Raiders "Poisoned Weapons" so all of their weapons got to reroll 1s To Wound instead of just their bows. Whether it was their daggers, weapon-swapped hand weapons, spears/war spears, or bows, they were rerolling 1s - which isn't great at the micro-level, but in aggregate, it was quite strong. The list has basically retained both of these rules, but now all friendly models with Poisoned Attacks (bow) get Poisoned Attacks on everything - so if all of your Haradrim Raiders have bows, then they'll have poisoned war spears as well. If your Haradrim Chieftains have bows, they'll have poisoned melee weapons too. If your Haradrim Warriors have poisoned bows, they'll have poisoned hand weapons. BUT your Haradrim Raiders/Chieftains/Warriors without bows will all be fighting normally. Oh well.

Mumaks in this list picked up two special rules - they have Harbinger of Evil (12") like they had in the Grand Army of the South army list (and which the Grand Army of the South does not have now . . . that list is very, very different now). Additionally, any Mumak commanders (including the Mumak War Leader) may declare a Heroic Combat for free once per game, which allows the Mumak to execute the Heroic Combat (though there's no pivoting if the Mumak wins). While a free heroic action once per game may not normally tip the scales, this does give the Mumaks some tactical options to deal with being pinned down - more on that later in the tactical section.

Top 10 Most Improved Evil Profiles from The Armies of the Hobbit

Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of the Hobbit book from the Forces of Evil. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Evil in the Armies of the Hobbit book.

As we did in the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of the Hobbit book, so we won't be looking at profiles beyond that book. Never fear, though, we plan to go through all the books!
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Evil in the book, so only evil profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Now in an interesting turn of fate a lot of the strongest profiles in this book got reviewed (either in the most improved or most reduced categories), but this is certainly not a ranking of the most powerful options in the book: it's a ranking of who is higher than where they started, so some models well below the average of the power curve will be present on this list.
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, which again is not a big issue with the Hobbit book, because we don't get a lot of new profiles here, but it bears repeating: we're only looking at profiles that made the jump from last edition to this edition.
• And while we would normally say here that there's a longer list, the truth is there weren't that many more this time (admittedly some models received the same treatment, so there was some placement of captains/warriors of a similar stripe in the same spot, but unfortunately a lot of models stayed mostly the same from last edition to this edition, which is kind of sad, but it does mean that this list is mostly exhaustive: not much else beyond this list that I felt was a major improvement.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Troll Brute

All photos from
the new book!

This is one of those profiles that could have probably used some additional treatment but didn't get it: it's now Dominant 5, and it gets the benefit of the new monster rules that allow it to perform a wounding roll against a spear support of a model it removes, but it's mostly still the same: everything you love about the troll brute (S10 impact hits, Fearless), but now worth 5 models on an objective.

The other issue with the troll brute this edition is that he's a pretty low Fight Value troll (and fair enough: no eyes, after all) in an edition where tying his Fight Value is easier to do now, so there's that.