Announcing TMAT's THRO 2016 - Battle for the Mark!

Good morning gamers,

It is my great pleasure to announce the fifth annual THRO tournament! The purpose of this tournament, like previous THROs, is to try new things and (and less on gaining prestige). The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on November 12, 2016. For this year's tournament, we're experimenting with a few new things: smaller lists, basically one scenario type, and limited army choices. Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

TMAT 2016 Preview: The Army of the Dead

Hey Reader!

Also been a long time since I last posted - between working full-time (with growing responsibilities as I train a mostly green team, including my boss), starting up a small business, and blogging for the aforementioned small business - on top of normal life - it's been a whirlwind of excitement around the How, :)  But the Forge has been busy with a brand new army for the upcoming TMAT GT, and I'm super excited about it!

In retrospect, I don't think anyone (except maybe Tiberius - I was chatting with him about it when I was adding the wash) that I even owned models for the army, so when I posted on the blog I got a few responses of, "Wow: you own Army of the Dead models?"  And I was like, "...oh yeah: I haven't show you guys these."

So I decided to do a post (much in the same style as the post Tiberius put up, which you can find here), highlighting my army for the tournament.  So with no further ado, my Fiefdoms army...

TMAT 2016 Preview: The King's Champion

Hey everyone,

Long time no write, I know. Been working on a few things before a short trip this week, and got some time in for a picture or two. Behold, the (nearly finished) King's Champion and Heralds conversion for my upcoming TMAT list:

Here's the list (missing a few models I'm going to borrow from Glenstorm's collection). 10 of the units are Defense 5 and flexible skirmishers, while the rest are Defense 6 archers, D7 front-liners, or D8 (or D9!) heroes. 

Announcing: TMAT GT 2016!

Time to announce the opening of registration for the fifth annual Tell Me A Tale Grand Tournament! This tournament is a small 1-day independent tournament for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game and will be played on Saturday, May 7, 2016 in Purcellville, Virginia starting at 10am (players are asked to arrive at least 20-30 min early for check-in and setup). LOTR SBG players in the greater D.C. area and beyond are welcome to attend, but are asked to register NLT Apr 30. The tournament is free to play and the rules for the tournament are provided below.

The Last Alliance: Concept & Strategy

In this post update, we're looking at Numenor and Rivendell & Eregion and what you can do with them. First, we'll do a brief overview of both army lists and then we'll talk about how those in our gaming group have approached the hero and warrior choices for a High Elf list and then we'll close with what I saw in both of these lists and how I've chosen to build my army. Pictures will be an update from the workbench for our progress on Numenorians (and a few High Elf acquisitions).

Unpacking The Lists: Numenor and Rivendell & Eregion

Both Numenor and Rivendell & Eregion (hereafter Rivendell) lists have one thing in common: they have one warrior option. On the one hand, having one warrior option is nice because you know very quickly what you want - spears? Bows? Shields? Shields with spears? Banners?

On the other hand, having more than one warrior choice often allows an army to compensate for the weaknesses of a basic unit (for example, having a Strength 4 unit choice). This means that an army taken solely from Rivendell or Numenor will be stuck with certain limitations (say, expensive base units for the Elves or average Defense values for Numenor).

Tactica: Getting The Most Out Of Your Archers

EDIT: If you found this page, you should know we've posted an update for the new MESBG rules (2018)! You can find the updated page here.

Aaaaaaaaaand we're back! It's been far too long everyone, but things have been crazy - lots to catch up on.

2016 brings with it a new emphasis: Elves! And what way to showcase some of the work we're doing on our Elves than a post on archery. The regular readers of this blog know that archery is my thing - most of my armies max out their archery or have some kind of magical power that works like archery. In the gaming group you see here on TMAT, most of the armies that come to our tournaments lack in archery (often having 0-6 units that participate at range greater than 8"). This post is for the non-believers out there and ways you can tailor your list to do more in a distinct (and potentially powerful) phase of the game.