Battle Report: Fangorn v. Numenor

Hey Reader!

Who coulda guessed: not only a battle report (which we haven't done in a while), but also a battle report testing out some of the new army lists from the new edition (which I'm going to call 5th Edition, based on The One Rulebook, Warbands, The Hobbit, MESBG, and now the newest 2024-2025 edition, which is what we're playing), showcasing armies that we both think are interesting and are quite different from their previous iterations. So what better way to show you some new content than by crushing our foes on the field of battle!

Tiberius and I had a Saturday morning free (well, watching the children, but they also love the game, so we have fans watching and playing at smaller tables), so we decided to meet up for a 700pt match! Tiberius will be fielding his Numenoreans (with some proxy elves, as he hasn't built enough spearmen yet), while I will be playing Fangorn, because monsters!

Army lists are below:

Tiberius's List: Numenor

Warband 1

Elendil (Army Leader)

7 Warriors of Numenor with shields and spears 

6 Warriors of Numenor with shields 

4 Warriors of Numenor with longbows 

Warband 2

Numenorean Captain #1 (Kaladin)

4 Warriors of Numenor with shields and spears 

3 Warriors of Numenor with shields 

3 Warriors of Numenor with longbows 

Warband 3

Numenorean Captain #2 (Not Kaladin)

4 Warriors of Numenor with shields and spears 

3 Warriors of Numenor with shields 

3 Warriors of Numenor with longbows 

TOTAL: 700pts, 40 models, 7 Might*

Centaur's List: Fangorn

Warband 1

Treebeard with Merry and Pippin (Army Leader)

Beech Ent (Ent Warrior with reroll 1s to wound in close combat)

Oak Ent (Ent Warrior with 4 Wounds instead of 3)

Warband 2

Birchseed (new Ent hero that can call a free Heroic Move each turn if you 1) don't win priority, and 2) your opponent chooses to claim priority. So situational, but very useful for covering bases)

Ash Ent (Ent Warrior with 3+ Shoot Value, and may move up to 3" and still stoop to throw a stone)

TOTAL: 700pts, 7 models, 4 Might*

Scenario: Our scenario for this match is Fog of War, which has changed since the last edition. Not by much, but it has changed. Here are the scoring conditions:

• You get 5VPs if the friendly non-army leader hero you nominate has suffered no wounds, lost no fate, and is still alive at the end of the game; you gain 3VPs if the hero has lost Fate but hasn't suffered any wounds and is still alive at the end of the game, and you gain 1VP if the hero has been wounded, has lost Fate, but is still alive at the end of the game (which is a nice change from the last edition: there's always a reason to go for wounds against heroes). 
• You get 5VPs if the hostile non-army leader hero you nominate is slain in melee at the end of the game (full honesty: I forgot about this change specifying that it has to be in close combat during the game - I had a lot going on), 3VPs if the hero has suffered at least one wound at the end of the game, and 1VP if the hero has lost at least one Fate Point at the end of the game.
• You get 5VPs if you have at least 2 models and the enemy has no models within or touching a terrain feature you specify that is fully within the enemy's half of the board (the "fully within" is also new this edition, and does cut down on the number of potential terrain features someone might choose as those straddling the middle line aren't options anymore - not a bad change, either, especially since it solve issues for big bases that wouldn't fit nicely on terrain features by allowing you to be in base contact instead of having to go into it, so yay for mumaks and Ents having more options); you get 3VPs if you have at least 2 models and at least double the number of models within or touching said terrain feature, and you get 1VP if you have more models within or touching said terrain feature.
• You get 2VPs if you slay the enemy army leader, and you get 1VP if you wound the enemy army leader.
• And finally, you get 1VP if you break the opponent, and 3VPs if you break the enemy without being broken.

So all told there are now 20VPs (instead of 12) on the table, and it's generally easier to get VPs, especially against those notoriously hard to remove models, which I think is healthy.

We rolled for board edge, and I won the roll; I chose the lower board edge, and after deployment it looked like this:

For this game, I'm choosing to protect Merry, as I don't think Tiberius is going to try to kill Treebeard: I think he's going to speedbump Treebeard as long as possible, and throw Elendil at Birchseed. I am going to slay the Non-Kaladin Captain, in part because he looks like a warrior, so I'm more likely to just rush him, and also because Tiberius likes Kaladin, so he's more likely to keep him safe, lol. And I'm going to attempt to get to the stable (top-right ruin building near the bridge), relying on Birchseed's free heroic moves if I don't get priority to tie down enemies and give me a (hopefully) competitive advantage in getting to and holding the objective.

And with that, to war!!!

First Impressions: The Kingdoms of Men, Part I

Good morning gamers,

Editor's Note: This post has been edited based on a comment that was made below - changes are in red.

Today kicks off a study on the Kingdoms of Men from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book and we're covering two small factions today: the Dead of Dunharrow (who show up in the Return of the King army list and the Defenders of the Pelennor army list) and Numenor (who show up in the titular Numenor army list, the Last Alliance army list, and potentially in the Realms of Men army list). These two factions, I think, got some of the best changes in the new edition and both appear to be very good for new players of the game to sink their teeth into. Let's take a look at how these guys have changed from the old edition and what's to like about them.

Dunharrow: How Have They Changed?

This faction has had four profiles since the release of Gondor at War: the King of the Dead (unique hero), Heralds of the Dead (generic heroes, sorta like Captain models, but not quite), Warriors of the Dead (infantry dudes), and Riders of the Dead (cavalry dudes). There were some small changes and some large changes to each of these profiles.

Photo Credit: Tenor.com

All of these profiles have access to Terror, Blades of the Dead, and Spectral Walk. Though the text for Blades of the Dead has changed, the effective use of it is still the same: you wound against the opposing unit's Courage (10 - the roll difficulty) instead of their Defense value. In an age where S3 models can't use Piercing Strike to wound a D8 Dead of Dunharrow model on a 6+ instead of a 6/4+, the fact that these guys can still carve through people with relative ease is a good thing (and a huge draw for new players who want their guys to stay on the table and clear out their opponent's models).

First Impressions: The Free Peoples, Part II

Hey Reader!

Tiberius kicked us off at the end of the year with a great start to our review of the members of the Fellowship in the new edition, so today I'm picking up the baton and looking at the next group of Free Peoples profiles: the 5 hobbit profiles tied to The Shire, and the 4 Ent profiles. Longtime viewers will not be surprised about this, as I've been our longstanding Shire player and recently ran a list at a tournament that was centered around throwing stones, so it combined hobbits with ents for great shenanigans (not necessarily a lot of wins, but it was fun). 

So let's take a look at what changes we have to the profiles that are present in the main Armies of the Lord of the Rings book (with the knowledge that there are likely to be more profiles coming in the Armies of Middle-Earth book).

The Hobbits: How Have They Changed?

Tiberius talked in the previous post about how the Four Hobbits have changed as members of the Fellowship; all you need to know about their use outside of that list for Shire purposes is that 1) Frodo can't take the Ring or any of the cool toys, as Bilbo has them at this point in the story, 2) Sam has access to Rosie Cotton, which is incredible, and 3) all of the members of a Shire list pass Fate rolls on a 3+ and can reroll Failed Fate rolls, so they are far more durable (as are the other profiles we're going to look at), even if a lot of the hobbits are D3. So let's look at the other 5 hobbit profiles in the book.

Top 10 Ranking: Middle Earth SBG Supplements

Hey Reader!

In a continuation of our Top 10 series, we're looking today at...all of the supplements for the recent edition of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game! I'd been holding out hope for an actual Top 10 (as we don't have 10 supplements - but more on that below), but since this is the twilight of the old edition, maybe now is a great time to rank them, as we have the complete list now.

Our ranking is going to gauge the quality of the supplements in five categories, designed to reward the various aspects of these disparate books. First, we're looking at the epic factor of the campaign: how cool/vast/epic is the scenario lineup in the book? Unsurprisingly, if your supplement includes an attack on Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep, Balin's Tomb, or assaults on one or more capitol cities, those books will get higher scores in this category than, say, smaller skirmishes in less visible conflicts.

Second, we look at cost: how much money does it cost to buy the book and all the models you need to play through the campaign. So supplements that involve smaller numbers of models, smaller numbers of Forgeworld/metal models, and require less specialized/out of production kits, will score higher than, say, supplements that require you to buy 2-3 Mumakil and/or a dozen Forgeworld resin heroes, for example.

Third, we rate the content in the book for balance: are the scenarios written in such a way that the scenarios are lopsided (either always to one side or the other, or just lopsided back and forth between the Good/Evil forces)? Are the legendary legions imbalanced, and likely to be FAQed? Having powerful legendary legions doesn't necessarily grant a lower score, but a book with legendary legions that are likely to be changed alongside scenarios that may not be fun to play due to too many uphill battles, will rank lower in this category than a book that shows signs of heavy testing and evenness in its design and execution.

Fourth, we rate the scenarios for variety: are most of the scenarios just a mix of "kill things or get units off the board," or do they include interesting/unique scenario objectives? Do they do anything interesting with forces, deployment, and/or scenario special rules? The more variety there is in the campaign, the higher the score.

And finally, we look at new options: how many new profiles, legendary legions, terrain kits, and/or ways to play the game (really only applicable with Fantasy Fellowships in Quest of the Ringbearer, but we did want to reward that supplement for creating a very interesting new way to play the game!) are in the supplement? Some supplements are heavier or lighter on material (guided by the content in the book), so supplements with more "goodies" will rate higher than ones with less.

So with that, let's take a look at the books we've come to love over the past decade!

First Impressions: The Free Peoples, Part I

Good morning gamers,

Editor's Note: We got two comments last week asking for new edition content - and Rohan has answered with about 4500 words! We're rotating back to posts on every other Thursday this week, so we'll be covering the articles for the previous edition on Thursdays (along with our one-off articles) and new edition stuff on Mondays. We hope you enjoy it! ~Tiberius

We have a new edition - and instead of plowing through each of the army lists one by one for the next year and a half (and likely two-and-a-half years once we get the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement and the Legacies document), we determined that we should do a series of "first impressions" like we did back in 2018/2019 when the MESBG revamp came out. While that series looked at the new profiles and army lists together, the purpose of this series is strictly on profile changes and will only hint slightly at the army lists in which the models can be fielded. There's a lot to take in with the new edition, so we're going to start by looking at some models that have made their way into most of the army lists from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement: the Fellowship of the Ring (and their Bree friends . . . and Smeagol).

Photo Credit: Garrettzecker.com

This post is really a revisited version (sort of) of a three-part series I did on the Fellowship back in September 2019 (on their Tactical Units, Power Units, and Hobbit units), which was a revisit of an even older series back in July 2012 (both of which you can find in our "Tactics Revisited" section on our Tactics page), where I documented the things I was finding about the Fellowship from having played with them A LOT in the preceding two years (I got started with them, after all). We won't be going through army lists or talking extensively about tactics with them - we'll be saving those for army list-specific posts - but we will be talking about how these guys have changed in the new edition and whether the changes make them more or less appealing choices than they were before (with the understanding that how you fit them into your lists is now less free-form than it used to be).

The Three Hunters: How Have They Changed?

Our first stop is Gimli, who is still 100 points and basically hasn't changed. Like, at all. He picked up an extra Fate point (so he's 3M/2W/3F - and joins a very elite group of Dwarf heroes who actually have 3 Fate points), but is otherwise the same bludgeoning stick that he used to be. While I'm glad his points cost didn't go up at all, I was kind of hoping that he'd get some improvements or a points drop, especially since his two Hunter buddies got some sweet new kit for (spoiler alert) no points increase whatsoever. 

Gimli shows up in both of the "Fellowship" lists (Moria and Amon Hen/Lothlorien), as well as a few thematic mashup lists (the Defenders of Helm's Deep, the Return of the King, and the Men of the West), but in all of these lists, he's supporting a bunch of other big-hitters, which means that for me, he's very much still in the position of "I'll take him if I have the points." Admittedly, in the main Fellowship list (and possibly in the Breaking of the Fellowship list), you might not have a choice but to run Gimli, but in the other lists, you need to make a dedicated choice to take him - and I kind of wish the decision paradigm was better (there's one list where he do cool things while mounted on the same horse as Legolas, but we'll dig into how good this is when we get to reviewing that army list). Still, in an edition where Piercing Strike isn't a thing, a Defense 8 hero with 2 Wounds/3 Fate is going to be tough to crack - and if you can get him into the melee quickly, he'll be devastating.