Stupidly Fun Lists, Part I

Good morning gamers,

Recently, we had a "longtime reader" send us the following comment:

I have 2 rather stupid but fun list ideas. This is already a suggestion for a category for you guys ;) "Just dumb fun lists" or so.

Anyway: List 1: All artillery gondor (3 Trebuchet,, 3 avenger bolt throwers, flesh out with whatever.

List 2: All fellbeast mounted nazgul, air superiority fighters. Welcome to the black dart missile age.

I always wanted to run this with allied dol guldur nazguls or castellans if somehow possible, but well.

Alternatively: Troll-only Barad dur squad. I still have to paint my trolls though

I began writing a reply when I decided that the "comments section" of an old post wasn't the right place to do it. This got me thinking as well about what lists would be "stupidly fun" to run - and maybe these thoughts will give you things to think about as well. With that, let's kick off a new series on "stupidly fun" lists to run - and how to make them viable (if not competitive). For the sake of starting somewhere, our lists today will all be 650pts - this should mean that you're probably 100-150pts off of whatever game you're playing, since many events are still run at the 500-800pt level.

The New Age Is Begun: The Rise of the Necromancer Army List

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we looked at the Pits of Dol Guldur army list, which has a pretty limited number of profiles. Today, we're tackling the Rise of the Necromancer army list, which basically took over the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur army roster and added some of the special rules/list building options from the Rise of the Necromancer Legendary Legion. As a fan of the Legion last edition, I viewed this as a direct upgrade - we can take normal troops if we want and we get almost all of the buffs to the Necromancer/others that we had before. Great move, GW, great move.

With a decent glow-up this edition, this list doesn't seem to be catching the eye of too many people, but it's certainly seeing play (at the time of writing this, TTA tells me that there are 288 recorded games with the Rise of the Necromancer army list and it sits at 141 wins, 137 losses, and 10 draws for a 49.0% win-rate - and there were 4 players at the 2026 Adepticon tournament that took it, which puts it at the higher end of the army-lists-used spectrum . . . though it's not as popular as Men of the West, Battle of Fornost, Reclamation of Osgiliath, or Grand Army of the South and as-popular as the Beornings, the Shadows of Angmar, and the Defenders of the Pelennor - good company those lists are). Let's see what all the fuss is on the other side of Dol Guldur, shall we?

The New Age Is Begun: The Pits of Dol Guldur Army List

Good morning gamers,

Ages ago, Centaur, Rythbyrt, and I did a podcast episode where we talked about the Fall of the Necromancer Legendary Legions and that built into a bigger discussion about all-hero lists (and hero-heavy lists) and what makes them good. The episode has aged a bit, but the general consensus we had at the time was that of the four Legendary Legions released in that supplement, the least interesting was the Pits of Dol Guldur.

After the toning down of the Vanquishers of the Necromancer Legendary Legion, the premiere Legion from that book became the Pits of Dol Guldur Legion. Championed by excellent players like Evan Iverson, a free-Heroic-Combat-each-turn from Azog, paired with a you-win-priority-and-no-enemies-can-call-Heroic-Moves rule that superceded rules like the Palantir of Saruman, made the list an incredibly hard-hitting, glass-cannon style list that some players who enjoyed their big smashy heroes paired with small-but-smashy infantry really liked. Today, we're looking at the heir of this Legendary Legion - the Pits of Dol Guldur army list - and seeing how the new version of the list compares to the old . . . and yes, it's both gained some things and lost some things. Let's see how it shapes up in the new edition, shall we?

The Pits of Dol Guldur: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list has all of the previous profiles and added a few more (really one more). Like last edition, you have Azog, the Keeper of the Dungeons, and Thrain the Broken as your named heroes and you have Gundabad Orc Captains and Hunter Orc Captains as your generic heroes. While you still have the three previous warrior profiles (Hunter Orcs, Gundabad Orcs, and Fell Wargs), you also have access to both Mirkwood Giant Spiders (good ones) and Mirkwood Hunting Spiders (bad ones), which gives you more strategic options for dealing with enemy heroes. 

The list has a mix of cavalry models (Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs got broken out into their own profile now), fast infantry beasts, light infantry (who can be archers, but probably shouldn't be in this list), and heavy infantry. The list doesn't look like it has much in it, but you're covering a lot of bases with a limited number of profiles. Let's see what we've been given as army list special rules in order to incentivize taking this list over other Hobbit-era lists . . .

Back to Basics, Revisited: Monsters in MESBG

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we talked about how cavalry work in MESBG and today, we're turning to an element of MESBG that can absolutely alter the way a game can go: how monsters work. When I first got started in the game, things like "Brutal Power Attacks" weren't a thing - and neither was Heroic Strike (every hero had Move, Shoot, and Combat - and that was it). This meant two things with regard to monsters: first, a Monster was quite likely to have a higher Fight Value than anything he was fighting (or at least a tied Fight Value). Second, the go-to tactic for dealing with them was hoping one poor, unfortunate soul would be brave enough to tie them down for a turn - and if the dice were kind, he'd get a 6 while the monster wouldn't and he'd live to do it all over again on another turn. Or . . . you'd just shoot the guy/tie him down with an Immobilize to make him F1 with 1 Attack. My, those were odd times . . .

While the Hobbit rulebook modified this strategy some (early versions of Brutal Power Attacks were a thing), monsters - especially Warrior monsters - were in a bit of a spot because EVERY hero could call Heroic Strike and win the Fight Value mini-game. When the MESGB rules revamp arrived in late 2017, we got a rebalanced set of Brutal Power Attacks and Heroic Strike was constrained to certain heroes. Heroic Defense was added to others in that edition, which allowed for more diverse options for dealing with monsters.

In the current edition, Heroic Strike got toned down, Brutal Power Attacks changed slightly, and Dominant X was added to monsters. With no less than FOUR things you can do when you win a fight (and for some Hero monsters you can pick from a few more options), a lot of new players (to say nothing of us old vets who have various versions of the old rules sets in our heads) might forget some of the nuances of how these rules work. So what we're going to walk through today is not only how monsters work in MESBG, but how to use them well and how to fight against them if you see them across the table.

The New Age Is Begun: The Battle of Greenfields Army List

 

Photo Courtesy of GamesWorkshop

Hey Reader!

We're back with another shire-centric list!!! This is what I knew you DEFINITELY WANTED!!!

And after looking at orc lists recently, I'm not going to lie: it's so freeing to see cheap, horrible, waistcoated infantry again. Never fails to bring me joy.

Today we're looking at the Battle of Greenfields list: the niche part of Shire history where Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took led the hobbits of the Shire to a victory over Golfimbul and his orcs of the north.

Battle of Greenfields: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list didn't technically exist last edition; you could take Bullroarer as part of a Shire list, and if you did you couldn't take any other named heroes (so all of the hobbit heroes), but it was very common to team in people like Gandalf and Rangers, so there were options.