New Rules, Part VIII: The Free Peoples, Part I

Good morning gamers,

With only one of the old warbands books left to cover, we’re entering the home stretch. Today we tackle the more conventional armies from the Free Peoples, so prepare yourself for Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits! As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts” (at the time of this writing, the Kingdom of Khazad-Dum, Rivendell, and the Shire have been covered).

1) The New Lists: Rivendell, Lothlorien, The Kingdom of Khazad-Dum, and The Shire

The armies you’ll see here haven’t changed very much over the ages – the Shire list in particular reflects what the old Legions of Middle-Earth book had, while Rivendell got a profile (finally) for the knights that were always listed in the Legions book. Lothlorien has also returned to its roots, though with a few changes here and there. The list that has changed the most is the Khazad-Dum list (Dwarves used to be three lists back in the Legions days), consolidating the Dwarves from the era of the War of the Ring to “one” list (which is really two lists). All told, not a lot of changes at the macro-level.

New Rules, Part VII: The Kingdoms of Men, Part II

Good morning gamers,

Today we continue our discussion on the armies of the Kingdoms of Men – focusing on the Gondor-based civilizations. Most of the armies in this book have remained true to their Legions of Middle-Earth and Warband versions, with a few slight changes. As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts” (the only army that has been covered at the time of this writing is “Gondor”, which is predominantly focused on Minas Tirith, but includes a Fiefdoms list).

1) The New Lists: Minas Tirith, The Fiefdoms, The Dead of Dunharrow, The Wildmen of Druadan  

Let’s begin by looking at the lists – most of which stick to the old Legions of Middle-Earth builds. The Wildmen of Druadan (who had their own list in Legions and got lumped with “Wanderers in the Wild” in Warbands) and the Dead of Dunharrow (who also had their own list in Legions and got lumped into “The Fiefdoms” in Warbands) are back to having their own lists. Like Sharkey’s Rogues, they got a special rule that allows them to field warbands without a hero to lead them – which is not only really cool, but encourages us to play a mono-focused list with each of them, instead of having a Captain of Dol Amroth leading the Dead of Dunharrow (or Bilbo Baggins or Bullroarer Took leading Woses). We’ll delve into the fun this provides later.  

For Fiefdoms, they’ve returned to their Legions roots (losing Dunharrow guys) and relying instead on the strength of men. Unlike Dunharrow and Druadan, you need to buy more than one hero for them, but many of their heroes can field more than 12 warriors (Imrahil, Duinhir, Angbor, Forlong). All told, it’s pretty great. 

Back in the Legions days, there were many Minas Tirith lists – a generic “Minas Tirith” list to cover the early Third Age kings/stewards of Gondor, the Rangers of Ithilien with Faramir, Damrod, Madril, and Cirion, and the White Tower of Icthelion with Gandalf the White, Mega-Boromir, Mega-Aragorn, and Denethor. What has basically happened to the lists today is that all of these have been wrapped up in a single list (patterned mostly after the White Tower of Icthelion list from Legions) with all of the other heroes (including the Kings of Men) added to their number. The joining of all these lists gives you flexible choices for expensive and cheap heroes and many, MANY different ways you can play them. All told, Minas Tirith remains a good starter list for the hobby, though its competitiveness I think is greatly determined by your gaming meta. 

New Rules, Part VI: The Kingdoms of Men, Part I

Good morning gamers,

It’s been a while since our last post, but we’re now turning to the Armies of Good from the Lord of the Rings. With the release of the Armies of the Hobbit, expect posts of those armies (Good and Evil) coming out early next year. As we did with the Armies of Evil from the Lord of the Rings, I’ll be using the old Warband books as the means of binning the armies that we have now. In my last post on the Armies of Evil, I said we’d do the Free Peoples as two posts and the Kingdoms of Men as one post, but the more I poured over the armies, I said, “Nope, each of these books gets two posts.” As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts” (the only army not covered in this post at the time of this writing is Arnor).

1) The New Lists: The Rangers, Numenor, Arnor, and Rohan

I chose in this post to delay covering the four Gondor civs (Minas Tirith, The Fiefdoms, and the Dead of Dunharrow, and the Wildmen of Druadan who live in the northern parts of Gondor that might technically be Rohan...can't remember). The armies we’ll be covering today have changed in some significant ways from their Warbands versions, but have returned to the fundamentals of their older Legions of Middle-Earth armies (so the changes aren’t THAT radical).

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 3

Hey Reader,

Welcome back to TMAT! We are back with Game 3 from this year's THRO Tournament! This match places me against my brother Tiberius, who sports a dwarf army that did really well against my army in testing. Tiberius boasts an army completely comprised of axe-wielders, allowing him to use the special strike for axes with impunity since no one in my army attacks against Defense (the ironic disadvantage stemming from my advantage of wounding against Courage Value). So while he boasts a primarily S3 army, he will be wounding my D8 on 6s (because AXES).

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 2

Hey Reader,

Happy Friday! Sorry for the delay: between a busy Thanksgiving weekend and preparations for the recently announced Brawler Bash tournament, I am running behind on battle reports. But here we are with Game 2 from this year's THRO Tournament!

This match is against my good friend Zorro (yet again - I'm sure we've faced at virtually every tournament so far, and I enjoy facing him), sporting an Isengard Uruk-Hai force. There were two uruk forces at this tournament, and the higher Fight Value of Uruk-Hai was something that concerned me going into the tournament. But with his entire force wounding me on 6s and my whole force wounding him on 4s, I figured this would be a decent fight, if not a steamroll for my men (as I actually bring banners, so low rolls can be fixed!).

Announcing: Brawler Bash 2019

Good morning gamers!

It is my privilege to announce a new TMAT tournament: Brawler Bash 2019! This tournament, set to take place on Saturday, January 19, 2019 at Patrick Henry College, is a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game tournament. The tournament will consist of 3 matches, all using variants on the To the Death scenario. This makes learning the rules simple (as the objectives are mostly the same for all three matches), and the ultimate objective for the tournament is simple: bash the other army!

Below is the information regarding how to register for the tournament and what to expect.

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 1

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to TMAT! This is the battle report for my first match of the annual THRO tournament, and my first match is against my good friend Kirk, sporting an army of dwarves. There were two dwarf forces at this tournament, and of all the armies I was arrayed against, this was one of the few that I was really afraid of facing, as they are a good counter to my force (passing Courage automatically for over half the force, wounding on 5+ for over half the force, and almost half the force have 2+ attacks).

New Rules - Part V: The Fallen Realms, Part II

Good morning gamers,

Today we’re wrapping up our discussion of the armies of evil by tackling the other side of the Fallen Realms book, where we’ll talk about Isengard (two lists) the Eastern Kingdoms (two lists) - we've already covered Mordor, Angmar/Moria, and the other Fallen Realms armies in case you've missed those. As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts.”

1) The New Lists: Isengard, the Easterlings, the Variags of Khand, and Sharkey’s Rogues

These four lists haven’t changed too much since the last version (besides being broken out from each other). The Easterlings and the Variags of Khand are virtually unchanged, except that most of the Easterling models got common rules that encourage running them as large blocks of units. Isengard, on the other hand, has seen many changes: they got one of the best army bonuses in the game, their captains have increased slightly in price (offsetting what used to be a free Strength point) and Lurtz finally got improved to be what we always wanted. Saruman also got improvements to make him more like the Saruman the White profile that we’ve loved for the armies of Good since forever (and ultimately making him a very powerful piece on the board now). Perhaps the greatest shift is seeing Sharkey’s Rogues turn into their own list again. While I liked Ruffian archers as a cheap volley team in the Warbands sourcebooks, the army rule provided to Sharkey’s Rogues allows you to run warbands without leaders, which can be a very, VERY powerful thing (but no spoilers yet).

The Hunters Red October 2018 Recap

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the TMAT blog! Over the next few weeks I'm going to be doing battle reports from the recent THRO tournament, so keep an eye on this space! As a bit of background for the tournament, I want to discuss the army list that I brought, my strategy going into the tournament, and how I felt about the various armies that were going to be present at the tournament.

For information on the format of the tournament itself you can see Tiberius's post on our blog here; the tournament would feature four prelim games, each using a different scenario from a list of five. So our lists had to have a plan for how to deal with each scenario.

New Rules - Part IV: The Fallen Realms, Part I

Good morning gamers,

In our previous posts, we’ve talked about the general rules changes, and then walked through a few thoughts on the Mordor and Angmar/Moria army lists. Wrapping up our discussion of the armies of evil is the old Fallen Realms book, which include the armies from Isengard, Harad/Umbar, and the Eastern Kingdoms (now seven different lists). I’ve decided that trying to tackle seven armies in one go was going to be too overwhelming, so instead, we’re breaking the Fallen Realms up into two different discussions. Today we’ll focus on the Southron armies (Serpent Horde, Far Harad, Corsairs of Umbar), and next time we’ll conclude our discussion of Armies of Evil by tackling Isengard and the East. As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts” – though at the time of this writing, none of these lists have been reviewed yet.

1) The New Lists: The Serpent Horde, Far Harad, Corsairs of Umbar

Back in the Legions of Middle-Earth days, there were many different Harad lists – three of which were very similar to what we see in the book today. But there were other lists – a generic Umbar list that allowed you to run generic heroes crossing the Serpent Horde and Corsair armies, allowing for great pairings of cheap spears and high-Fight value skirmish troops.

With the new rules, while the lists have been broken out, the Serpent Horde gives you the unique benefit of being able to ally easily with more civs than any other evil faction. With three historical allies (Corsairs of Umbar, Far Harad, Mordor), the Serpent Horde has the greatest possibility for force diversity of any Army of Evil (and rivals most of the Armies of Good).

The draw-back is that while the Serpent Horde can ally with any one of these factions and retain their army bonus, none of these other nations can ally with the others, so getting a three or four faction alliance will result in none of your beloved army rules lasting. Still, if you’re planning on playing any of these civilizations, you don’t HAVE to be mono-focused in your army creation.

As far as Far Harad and the Corsairs are concerned, they’re not much changed and both can basically be run either mono-focused or with the Serpent Horde. As we’ll see in a bit, taking convenient allies with these civs is not a big deal, since their army bonuses are nice but not necessary for the team’s survival.

New Rules - Part III: Angmar and Moria

Good morning gamers,

In our first post, we discussed some of the rules changes that I thought were good/not-so-good with the new rules set. We then looked at Mordor to see a few different lists you can run with their army bonuses (and whether keeping the army bonuses are worth it). Today we're going to look at the armies that used to be included in the Moria and Angmar warbands book (which are conveniently still Moria and Angmar), but both of these army lists have been reviewed already on Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog, so take a look at that for other takes by great players of the hobby.

Unlike Mordor, Moria and Angmar rely heavily on the old army structures that we found in the Legions of Middle-Earth book. As such, there are some big changes for Moria (less so for Angmar) from the Warbands book (one of which I don't like), but ultimately I think it drifted towards where it always should have been.

1) The New Lists: Moria and Angmar

Back in the Legions days, there were two Moria lists - the "Moria" army list and the "Dwellers Below" army list (which was basically generic Goblin heroes, Wild Warg Chieftains, Moria Goblin Warriors, Wild Wargs, Bat Swarms, and Giant Spiders). Between the two lists, you could ally with basically anyone, but if you wanted Durburz in your army (he was the only named hero back then), you needed to run Moria proper (not the other one). In the new version, they've basically eliminated the second list altogether, distributing the wild beasts of Middle-Earth in the Angmar list (for Wargs) and the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood list (for spiders), though thanks to Druzhag the Beastcaller you can include bats, spiders, and wargs in your army (Ashrak also allows you to get spiders), so if you WANT those creatures, you can still get them.

Not much to say about Angmar - they've remained mostly unchanged from release to release. The one major change that I found is this: back in the Legions era, Spectres were D5. In Warbands, they were D6. Now they're D5 again. Coupled with the fact that spears don't augment the front-line guy like they used to in Legions, Spectres have become a lot less powerful than they used to be. Still, they are Terror-causing warriors who can move low-Courage models with ease wherever they want, so having a few in your army isn't bad (though having a lot is probably a waste).

New Rules - Part II: Mordor

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we discussed some of the rules changes that I thought were good/not-so-good with the new rules set. Today we're transitioning from a rules-based discussion to army-based discussions. I'm not going to try to share my all-powerful wisdom on each army - if you want experts discussing the lists, check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog, since he's doing a series with the champions of each army list to talk about the changes and propose lists. It's good stuff (and I'm learning a lot).

What I AM going to talk about is instead how the lists have changed and provide some sample lists (600pts) that either use or don't use the army bonus provided by the new rules. As I've poured over the various army bonuses, I've often asked myself, "So do I really need this?" The answer to some armies (creating some surprise on my part occasionally) is "Sometimes...but not always." With that, the structure of this series is going to be going through the Warbands Supplements by book and highlighting how the armies have changed from there (with references to Legions of Middle-Earth as that's where it all began).

1) The New Lists: Barad-Dur and Mordor

The new army lists reflect the two different eras of Mordor armies - the Second Age army (Barad-Dur) led by the Dark Lord Sauron (*insert reverent awe here*) and the Third Age armies (Mordor) led by various captains of the Dark Lord, not least of which is the Witch-King of Angmar. Splitting the list into different ages solves all kinds of alliance problems that existed in the Warbands books - The Dark Lord Sauron didn't exist at the same time as Shagrat, so there should be a disincentive to bring them both in the same army. The unit choices don't differ greatly in your warrior choices (though you can only get Morannon Orcs and Mordor Uruk-Hai in the Mordor list), but the big difference is the named hero options.

Barad-Dur can only take a handful of named heroes (The Dark Lord Sauron, The Witch-King of Angmar, and Shelob), while there are a TON of named heroes for Mordor (named Nazgul, named Orc/Uruk heroes, ). While there's nothing wrong with generic hero options, Barad-Dur will be limited in the heroic actions it can call if it only has generic heroes. Thanks to Heroic March being primarily limited to generic hero choices, you're not without options, but Heroic Strikes will be hard to come by with the Barad-Dur list. Mordor has far more versatility for heroic actions, profile choices, and special rules, making them (in my mind) the go-to for Mordor armies (unless you REALLY want to play with Sauron - more on that in a bit).

The New Rules - Part I

Good morning gamers,

So as we prepare for the THRO 2018 tournament (trying out the new rules!), I'm taking some time to pen some thoughts on changes from the original rules (as laid out in the One Rulebook or ORB) since that's what we've played with here at TMAT (didn't go all-in on the Hobbit SBG rules). I've limited my thoughts to 10 topics, some of which I think are good improvements (especially over the Hobbit SBG version), and some of which aren't necessarily "bad" improvements but might not have been necessary. Without further ado, here we go:

Announcing TMAT's THRO 2018 tournament!

Good morning gamers,

With the new books out and lots of new rules changes (for us at least), it's time for another tournament! The purpose of this tournament, like previous THROs, is to try new things and this year we'll be using the new rules set (in its entirety). The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on November 10, 2017. For this year's tournament, we'll be running fairly small armies, allowing for a focus on the new rules and what they do. Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):