The New Age Is Begun: The Battle of Bywater List

Image Courtesy of GamesWorkshop

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! Today we're looking at the Battle of Bywater list from the Armies of Middle Earth book, aka "The Defenders of the Shire legendary legion" but with a few new twists.

In my last article we talked about The Shire army list, and while some of the models here are the same, you'd be surprised how differently this one plays from both that list and the old Defenders of the Shire legendary legion.

The Battle of Bywater: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The list of models you have in this army list hasn't changed much from the previous edition: you still get access to the Four Travelers (Merry, Pippin, Frodo, and Sam), all of the old hobbit sculpts (with Maggot and Lobelia, ironically, being the big two here), and the new hobbit sculpts we got from Scouring of the Shire (except Lotho Sackville-Baggins, so no F5 shenanigans with Shirriffs in this list). And of course, a horde of peasants ready to do their best to defend their cabbages (or whatever it is you put on your table).

FAQ Time: Unpacking the February 2026 FAQ

Good morning gamers,

It took a week longer than I'd hoped, but the GW development team have spoken and we have some balance updates! This FAQ changed a few things that had to do with the "big lists" that we see talked about (or bemoaned playing against) on top tables - some of whom got hit harder than others. There was one profile that appears to have gone unscathed though, so there will be a discussion about that at the end.

Photo Credit: Reddit

What Didn't Have Changes

Amazingly, everything had changes - though not everything had significant changes. I decided this time around to mostly save the erratas for the end, as the changes there seemed a bit more interesting to me than the FAQs themselves. We're going to begin first, though, with the clarifications that seemed to be pretty close to what we assumed from before . . .

Rules That Worked Like We Thought

The first change is simple: to account for the new Shelob model, Shelob's base size has been upped to 80mm:

Page 146 – Shelob – Base Size Change to 80mm. 

Thankfully, Shelob is fast enough that she can probably make due with a larger base size - but golly 80mm is a bit bigger than it was before! I've been playing with Mumaks a lot recently and I've got to say, having big bases can be great, but you have to not want to be too precise to make your plays happen. Having a base that is the same as two cavalry next to each other can maneuver through most places, but not in all places - and those heroes who are embedded in their battle lines are gonna feel pretty safe against Shelob while their mates are everywhere.

The New Age Is Begun: The Army of the Great Eye Army List

Good morning gamers,

It's here . . . it's come . . . oh yes, we've been building up to the "big Mordor list" from the Armies of Middle-Earth all month and it's finally time to tackle the Army of the Great Eye! Back when I got started in the game, there were lots of Mordor lists in the Legions of Middle-Earth supplement. About a year after getting started, we got "the warband books" and all of those Mordor lists got compacted into one big "Mordor" supplement (the only faction that got its own book). Then, in the last edition, Mordor both retained its omnibus nature AND split up into smaller groups (first by getting a Barad-Dur faction/losing access to Spectres, then later getting Legendary Legions that gave them more rules in trade for fewer profiles).

This list feels like we've gone back the warband books a bit - and if you liked your Mordor Soup lists in the last edition (like I did), this very well may be the list for you! Let's see what's available to us and what we're giving up by going with this list!

The Army of the Great Eye: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

I'm not going to go over the whole list - it's everything from the Army of Gothmog, Cirith Ungol, and Black Gate lists that we've looked at over the course of this month PLUS some more guys (the Witch-King, Black Numenorean Warriors/Knights, and a lot of Legacy profiles). If you want it, you can find it in this list . . . just like you used to be able to do in the vanilla Mordor list of the previous edition. A profile selection this vast, however, comes with one big balancing factor, though . . .

Army List Bonuses

This list has exactly ONE special rule . . . yes, that's right, it functions not only like the omnibus lists you'll find, like the Legions of Mordor or the Battle of Five Armies, but this is not actually that much different from the way pure Mordor lists used to be run in the last edition. The rule is called The Great Eye and you place a 25mm marker on the battlefield somewhere in your deployment zone (how this works in a maelstrom scenario is anyone's guess). At the end of each Move Phase, the controlling player rolls a D6 and on a 2+, the controlling player can place it anywhere within 6" of its current location (measure first before you pick it up!). On a 1, however, the opposing player can place it anywhere within 12" of its current location (measure first!). Like Ringbearers and other weird-moving models, you can't overlap model bases with this token, but models can end their movement on it.

The Great Eye token provides three bonuses to its controlling player. First, friendly models treat it as a banner (3" range because a range is not specified). Secondly, enemy models within 3" of the token suffer a -1 penalty to Courage/Intelligence tests that they have to make (I assume this is not cumulative with Harbinger, but I may be wrong there). Finally, if your opponent has a Ringbearer (not Sauron, obviously), then if the Ringbearer is wearing the Ring within 3" of the token, you roll a D6. On a 3+, the Ringbearer is corrupted and removed as a casualty!

When you boil it down, this is basically giving you a 5/6th chance of getting a banner that cannot be shot off the board each turn . . . and you can redeploy through enemy units without risk. Additionally, you can pester a Ringbearer with it . . . but with at least one Ringwraith on the board, I doubt most Ringbearers will be putting on the Ring. That said, even if your Ringwraith dies, there's still a threat you can pose to Ringbearers who aren't Sauron.

The New Age Is Begun: the Black Gate Army List

Good morning gamers,

A few weeks ago, we looked at the Army of Gothmog, which in this edition has picked up a few profiles and lost a profile from the previous edition. This time, we're looking at the Black Gate army list, which has also picked up a few profiles but lost two critical profiles. This is mostly based on the Black Gate Opens Legendary Legion, which was one of the first Legendary Legions released and remained popular for quite some time (mostly as a way to field lots of Troll Chieftains!), but there was also a very interesting discussion amongst Black Gate players as to how much you leaned into Morannon Orcs (S4/D6) and how much you leaned into Mordor Orcs (cheaper, same FV/Courage). Today, that discussion won't be necessary - but there is, I think, a big question as to how good this list is with the current requirements it has. Let's see how things have changed . . .

The Black Gate: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Most of the profiles we have available to us are the same as before - the Mouth of Sauron, Mordor Troll Chieftains (one is the "Uber Troll Chieftain" and has to be taken in the list), Morannon Orc Captains, Morannon Orcs, and Mordor Trolls. The bones of this build are good - most of these units are available in the Army of Gothmog, but you're adding a much cheaper supporting piece in the Mouth of Sauron (at least when compared to Gothmog), a more expensive but much more powerful hitting piece (again, when compared to Gothmog), and you get some additional units that weren't present in the last edition: Ringrwaiths on Fell Beasts, Mordor Orc Taskmasters, and Mordor Orc Shamans.

We've lost two critical profiles, however: Mordor Orc Captains and Mordor Orc Warriors. The Orc Captain was great in the last edition because, like the Army of Gothmog, this army is pretty much dependent on war drums on their Trolls (or Heroic Marches from their heroes) to get them anywhere in a hurry - but Orc Captains used to be able to be taken on Wargs in this list, so you could have a few very fast heroes and now, if you want mounted troops, your options are the Mouth of Sauron and Fell Beasts . . . that's pricey.

Tiberius's Top 10 Ranking - Best Middle-Earth Film Adaptation

Good morning gamers,

Usually, Centaur does our "top ten" posts, but I've been thinking a lot about the various film adaptations that we have for Middle-Earth and figured someone on this platform ought to finally put them in a ranking. Those of us who are excited for new Middle-Earth content and "going back to Middle-Earth" are probably at least a little interested in how the Hunt for Gollum is going to go, so in preparation for that, feast on the following Top Ten list, though I will begin with a couple of quick caveats . . .

First, this is NOT going to include TV shows - which means you will not be seeing either seasons of Rings of Power in this article. Telling a story through 6-8hrs of TV time isn't a fair comparison to the 1.5-4hrs that a film can cover - that, and I know people can have polarizing views on the series. I will keep my opinion about the series to myself (though I think I will not be alone in sharing that I thought the storytelling in Season 2 was tighter than Season 1, perhaps because it had most of its characters introduced in Season 1), but as most of you might be able to guess if you've read this blog for any period of time, I'm generally pretty optimistic and positive about things - and if I can search for good in something, I usually find it.

Second, just because I rank a film on the lower side of the scale doesn't mean there's nothing good in it. Building off the previous thought, there are good things to be found in all of the films we're about to view - but it appears to me that the greatest reason people rank things poorly is because of the "deviation from expectation". If you came to a film like The Desolation of Smaug and expected it to cover just what was in the Hobbit (more on this later), you were probably disappointed - and if you're like my wife, you probably thought that much of the fighting in the Battle of Five Armies and the extra-canonical relationship stuff from the Desolation of Smaug could have been dropped to make the trilogy into two films. Fair enough - those were deviations from your expectations and you're more than justified in feeling that way.

While I will try to manage my criticisms of the films, please understand going into this that my reviews will still be pretty positive - I'm not here to bash someone else's creative genius and I certainly don't think I could have made any of these films better than their creators. I am a fan of all things Middle-Earth and I love a good story - so the films that get me the most immersed into the world and that tell a well-contained story are going to rate well . . . and those that don't will rate less well. With that in mind, let's start off with . . .