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).