The Scouring of the Shire, Part 10: The Old Storehouse

Good morning gamers,

The scenario we've got lined up for today is the Old Storehouse, which will involve Hobbit Militia backed by Hobbit Archers, Fatty, and Baldo trying to steal stuff from "the storehouse" (in the form of a pig, some ducks, and two sheep). My Ruffians will start as sentries in this game (we LOVE sentries), and the entire board has the "nighttime conditions" in effect (can't shoot beyond 12", +1 To Wound with your shooting attacks). I've faced Centaur's Hobbits in nighttime conditions one too many times (and an unfortunate number of those times has been with D3 Wood Elves), so I know that his shooting attacks are going to be deadly. If any Shirriffs are killed in melee, they'll instead be Paralyzed.

The Old Storehouse

Baldo got three extra traps for this scenario for winning a previous scenario, so Centaur got to put out a few extra traps in addition to the eight that were already there. Centaur had to split up his models between the two opposing board corners, so he put all four archers on one side with Baldo and two Militia near the bottom-right corner and then put Fatty and the other six Militia at the top-left corner. I spread my guys out at the top-left and bottom-right of the storehouse because . . . you know, I've got sentries and don't want them spread out in a useless position. With the board set, Good claimed priority on Turn 1 and we got stuck in!

Top 5 Profile Changes - Minas Tirith Edition!

Good morning gamers,

So apparently, we have a new edition ahead of us - and while I originally mocked up some thoughts for this mini-series to be posted next year, it seems like it would be good to get ahead of the "eight ball" as it were and get these ideas into the cyberspace and see what you all are thinking. One of the things GW has said about the new edition is that profiles are being reworked to better reflect what they did in the films (and I assume this also applies to the books), so I figured Minas Tirith would be a good faction to begin with a face-lift. I'll do a few more of these before the new edition releases (I hope I get all these through before the deadline!), so if you have thoughts on other factions that you'd like to see, drop a note in the comments!

For the sake of this series, I'm going to assume that GW is going to perform minor surgery on most of the profiles (and I expect some profiles will get by with little to no changes), so for my purposes in this post, I'm going to limit myself to a SINGLE change per profile that I think would bring the model from its current place of obscurity into a place all its own. When the last edition change hit, some profiles (like Theoden and the Balrog - both of whom had a renaissance in this edition of the game) got massive reworks, but for the most part, the profiles got minor edits across the board (like Warriors/Knights of Minas Tirith getting shieldwall or Riders of Rohan/Rohan Royal Guards getting Arise, Riders of Theoden). This is what we're going to do today. Let's start with one of my favorite Gondor heroes in the books/films . . .

Profile #1: Faramir, Captain of Gondor

Photo Credit: The Armies of the Lord of the Rings

In some respects, the current profile for Faramir is fine - if equipped with a horse, lance, heavy armor, and shield (a standard kit-out for a hard-hitting hero), he costs 35 points more than a Captain of Minas Tirith with a similar loadout and has +1 FV, +2 Courage, +1 Might, +2 Will, +1 Fate, has a different array of Heroic Actions (Strike/Defence/Accuracy/Resolve instead of March), Woodland Creature (which doesn't matter when he's on a horse), a slightly better shoot value (if you want him to be using his bow - definitely the case in his Legion, probably not in a normal Minas Tirith list), and a special rule that makes him charge things if Denethor is also in his army (could be a problem, but only if you take Denethor). All told, getting +1 FV, +4 heroic resources, some extra Courage, and more heroic actions is probably worth 35pts, but only barely.

However, Faramir isn't the only Hero of Valour or hard-hitting hero in the Minas Tirith list. For 15 fewer points, you can get Hurin the Tall on a horse and most players agree that he hits as hard if not harder than Faramir does, all while potentially denying VPs for killing your army leader if you can keep him alive (which matters more in some scenario pools than others). Additionally, you could just NOT get Faramir and ally in any number of sub-100-point heroes from the Fiefdoms or Rohan to get similar or better damage output than Faramir (all while keeping your army bonus). If you throw in the convenient alliance Heroes of Valour/Legend (like Gwaihir, Galadriel, and Haldir if you were looking for a bow-armed Faramir), the reason to take Faramir just kind of patters out. OH, and there are Minas Tirith Fortitude heroes who are threatening his place for far cheaper price points as well (admittedly, all of them are on foot, but they're also a ton cheaper, so there's that).

Announcing the TMAT THRO Tournament 2024!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time of year - The Hunter's Red October will be hitting the TMAT community again (but in December this time, not in October). The tournament will be held in Berryville, VA on December 14, 2024. We're trying our hand at a doubles tournament this year - bring a buddy for the first round, but then be ready to rotate partners as the tournament progresses! Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

Regardless of whether we have a new edition by mid-December (it appears likely), the ruleset we will be using is from the updated Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual (the Sauron one). The Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Lord of the Rings, while the Armies of the Hobbit supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Hobbit. Legendary Legions and profiles from any of the GW supplements released between Gondor at War and Rise of Angmar (inclusive) may be used, provided that the army building requirements for the Legendary Legion are followed. Any GW errata for these books will take precedent over the printed text of these documents.

2) Thou Shalt Honor Thy Alliance

This tournament follows the alliance "restrictions" provided in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings and Armies of the Hobbit supplements - players are allowed to have "pure" armies or Legendary Legions (no alliances). Unlike the stated rules for doubles events in the Matched Play Guide, the players who arrive as a team for the first round may not take the same Legendary Legion (as we will be rotating partners).

FAQ Time: Reviewing the August 2024 FAQs

Good morning gamers,

Well, a lot has happened in the MESBG community since Aradcon a few weeks ago - and it's got us here at the TMAT blog excited on a number of levels. February and August have been the FAQ drop months, which have been good for shaking up the meta a bit (sometimes more drastically than other times) and as usual, as July turned to August, I was anxious to see what was new for the game (especially with a new edition coming out and a new sourcebook to boot)!

Photo Credit: Reddit 
I didn't submit anything this time . . . they have my previous correspondence if they wish to know my thoughts on certain Legendary Legion fixes and scenario quandaries for the new edition . . .

Then the GW team threw us a curve ball - in their August 15th Warhammer Community post talking about the new edition, they wrapped up a smashing article with the following:

With the next edition so close, we have made the decision not to release our usual FAQ and Designer’s Commentary document in August. Don’t worry, we will be back on schedule in February with our usual updates – the first of the new edition!

So . . . that makes summarizing the FAQ for August easy, right? Not exactly . . .

The Board Is Set: How to Play Contest of Champions

Good morning gamers,

Author's Note: with a new edition looming ahead of us, it's unclear how the scenarios are going to change . . . so since we're nearly done with the series, we're going to press on and hope that the changes that we see don't invalidate all of our work. Even if the scenarios get reworked, hopefully the principles found in these articles will give you a starting point for how to play the scenarios. If they all change . . . we'll write more articles next year. :)

This is our third and final scenario in Pool 4 - and alongside Heirlooms of Ages Past, this scenario is a polarizing one for many players: Contest of Champions. This scenario is, on its face, about how many models your army leader can kill in melee. For some armies, this is fine - if I'm running Aragorn, Azog, or Boromir, I'm probably able to kill enemy models pretty well (and for a long time). If your army leader is Treebeard or the Balrog, you can probably kill models AFTER you catch them. However, if your army leader is someone like Galadriel or Saruman . . . well, that's likely going to be harder.

Well, today, we're looking to see what kinds of strategies we can use to play this scenario - and we'll approach the topic first by recapping what Pool 4 is all about and then identify the options that are available to you depending on the kind of army you're running. Let's take a look (though you can skip the recap, once again, by clicking here).

Pool 4: Killing Lots of Models

The previous three pools have mostly involved controlling certain points on the map (Pools 1-2) and having enough speed to get to an object or set of objects (Pool 3). While your killing power has value in these scenarios (either for holding or securing objectives - or for punching a hole through the enemy to get to their objectives), there is no pool where your killing power is more important than in Pool 4.

In two of the scenarios (Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions), players have to do a bit more recordkeeping than normal and have to keep track of the wounds they deal to their opponent and the Fate points that are spent by their opponent's heroes (Lords of Battle) or the number of kills their army leader gets in melee (Contest of Champions). Both of these scenarios also allow the armies to start up close to each other if they want to, so things can very quickly become a blood bath . . . which some armies welcome gladly.

Top 10 Changes for the New Edition: Centaur Edition

Hey Reader!

So as you probably have heard, there's a new edition of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game coming down the pike. We don't know when it will arrive (I assume the preorders will arrive in November so that people can order Christmas presents in time for December) but I suspect that an edition is never late, nor is it early, it arrives precisely when it means to, :P 

I wasn't crying out for a new edition (and certainly didn't have this on my 2024 Bingo Card), but in light of the fact that the team behind it has loved the game for over 20 years, I'm not afraid of a massive overhaul or "40kization" of the game. Call me naive, because maybe I am.

So whether you think that a new edition is needed or not, I took a moment to think about the top 10 changes I'd love to see in the new edition, and how these changes can make the game better (and by this exercise, came to the conclusion that perhaps a new edition could be justified after all). Plus who doesn't love a good ol' Top 10 post (that may make people angry, as apparently mine do? :P )!

So with no further ado, if I was king for a day, here's the top 10 things I'd change about the game.

The Board Is Set: How to Play Lords of Battle

Good morning gamers,

Today brings us to my favorite scenario from Pool 4: Lords of Battle. Last time, we saw how To the Death slants most of the scenario VPs into breaking and quartering the enemy - which means that if neither force can break each other, the game is going to end in a really low score (or if one side is quite likely to break the other in an open fight, the other side is disincentivised to actually come out and make a game of it). Lords is different as we'll see shortly - but before we do, let's go over the general principles of this pool of scenarios (which you can skip by clicking here if you've read it in one of the other posts in this series) . . .

Pool 4: Killing Lots of Models

The previous three pools have mostly involved controlling certain points on the map (Pools 1-2) and having enough speed to get to an object or set of objects (Pool 3). While your killing power has value in these scenarios (either for holding or securing objectives - or for punching a hole through the enemy to get to their objectives), there is no pool where your killing power is more important than in Pool 4.

In two of the scenarios (Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions), players have to do a bit more recordkeeping than normal and have to keep track of the wounds they deal to their opponent and the Fate points that are spent by their opponent's heroes (Lords of Battle) or the number of kills their army leader gets in melee (Contest of Champions). Both of these scenarios also allow the armies to start up close to each other if they want to, so things can very quickly become a blood bath . . . which some armies welcome gladly.

Both of these scenarios also give 1-3 VPs for breaking the enemy army, but To the Death gives a whopping 3-5 VPs for breaking the enemy - and an extra 2 VPs if you quarter the enemy! If your army isn't able to break the enemy in any of these scenarios, you're going to be hurting . . . and particularly so in To the Death.

THE SUN IS RISING! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!!!

Author's note: To the extent you can decipher them, all thoughts contained herein are completely my own, and may not reflect the views of the TMAT team as a whole, its individual contributors, or its esteemed readers.

Welp. It finally. Happened.

Photo credit: Warhammer Community

After a year of patiently silently watching trolling our blogs, YouTube channels, Facebook groups, and tournament hallways while we endlessly wishlisted complained about what we wanted next what we hadn't gotten, we finally got what we deserved:

A brand new sourcebook, ten new models spoiled, and a ton more content on the horizon. A brand new sourcebook and collection of models that are about to be rendered obsolete by a completely new edition. This is totally what we've been begging for the last thing we wanted or needed!

Allow me to elaborate on behalf of the collective (which of course agrees with me--after all, I have a platform!).

Photo credit: Warhammer Community

Well, we wanted Rhudaur and it looks like we're gonna get it! we got Hyboria instead. Look at those muscle tones--these guys look ripped! don't the developers know it's cold up north? The horns, the cloak, it's all so wild and feral 40K crossed with Thor Odin-son. And the fluff description describes him as the "leader of the Warriors of Carn Dum," so either there's a repurposed Dunlending profile in the works, or there's something more they're holding back this is lazy writing, or we're about to have yet another profile without models, like Reavers and Gundabad Catapult Trolls and Azog's Signal Tower.

The Scouring of the Shire, Part 9: Arrest of Falco Boffin

Good morning gamers,

It's scenario NINE and we have one of the oddest scenarios to date - Folco Boffin (one of the WORST heroes in the game) and eight Hobbit Militia (one of the WORST warrior profiles in the game) are going up against a bunch of Shirriffs . . . is it even possible for them to win?

The Arrest of Folco Boffin

The board has three Hobbit smials on it - the 12 Hobbit Shirriffs and two heroes deployed within 3" of the southern board edge and Folco and his friends deployed within 3" of the northern board edge. The Shirriffs can Paralyze and carry Falco and the Militia, but they can't kill them - if Centaur's Militia can win fights, they could gain the upper hand quickly. There will be no Thrown Stones this game ("we don't want hurt you guys") - it's basically a bar fight on a roadside, so let's see how it goes!

The Board Is Set: How to Play To the Death

Good morning gamers,

We're starting our fourth round of scenario analysis posts and we're tackling Pool 4 for the next three weeks. When I got started playing MESBG (LOTR SBG back then), the scenarios that eventually made up Pool 4 (the precursors for To the Death, Lords of Battle, and Contest of Champions) were the most straight-forward and our gaming group played them a lot. We also learned a lot about how powerful archers could be (especially back when volley fire was a thing), how great being D6 was, and how important the amount of terrain on the board was. These are all good things for new players to learn . . .

. . . but it can also be unfun if you don't know how important all of these things are and your opponent does know. So today, we're going to begin by looking at what the distinctives of Pool 4 are (you can skip this summary section by clicking here if you want) and then get into what I consider to be the least fun of the three scenarios: To the Death.

Pool 4: Killing Lots of Models

The previous three pools have mostly involved controlling certain points on the map (Pools 1-2) and having enough speed to get to an object or set of objects (Pool 3). While your killing power has value in these scenarios (either for holding or securing objectives - or for punching a hole through the enemy to get to their objectives), there is no pool where your killing power is more important than in Pool 4.

In two of the scenarios (Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions), players have to do a bit more recordkeeping than normal and have to keep track of the wounds they deal to their opponent and the Fate points that are spent by their opponent's heroes (Lords of Battle) or the number of kills their army leader gets in melee (Contest of Champions). Both of these scenarios also allow the armies to start up close to each other if they want to, so things can very quickly become a blood bath . . . which some armies welcome gladly.

The Scouring of the Shire, Part 8: Uprooting Bagshot Row

Good morning gamers,

We're back with another Scouring of the Shire scenario, and this time we have The Gaffer and some angry Hobbit Militia trying to keep Bill Ferny and a squad of Ruffians from tearing trees on Bagshot Row. The scenario rules might look a bit like deja vu, but I think this scenario was better than its predecessor. Let's dig into it!

Uprooting of Bagshot Row

The rules for this scenario are simple: the Ruffians need to quarter the Hobbits (there are 13 of them, so three remaining) and the Hobbits need to kill Bill Ferny (if both happen on the same turn, it's a draw). This is . . . exactly the same scoring conditions as we had in the first scenario (Skirmish in Bree - though if Bill Ferny doesn't kill 2 models in that scenario, it's also a draw), but there are some really key differences in the supporting rules.

First, all the Hobbits and Bill Ferny must charge if they can - this makes it so Bill Ferny has to either stay completely out of the fighting (which could slow down the speed at which the Hobbits are quartered) or he needs to get stuck in (possibly without support). This you-gotta-charge rule is absent from the Skirmish in Bree scenario and makes the game more exciting if you want to use Bill's Might point to help you kill stuff faster - though Bill Ferny does have to do some fighting in the Bree scenario or the game is a draw - but in this scenario, he at least has the option to stand back if he wants to.

Second, the Gaffer gets +1 FV when fighting Bill Ferny (which means they'll both be F3 and neither has Heroic Strike). The Gaffer also rerolls failed To Wound rolls in combat against Bill (or rerolling 1s/rerolling all faileds with his stones if Bill Ferny is within 4" of a flower or has removed one or more of his flowers respectively). This gives the Good side a hero who's not particularly good, but is also not bad - and last time, they didn't have a hero to fight the Ruffians at all.

Third, last time, the Ruffians walked on from one board edge while the Good models started in the middle of the board. This time, the Ruffians start on one side and the Hobbits start on the other - that allows the Hobbits a bit more choice on how they want to play, though the bows on the Ruffian side do make it so they can't just sit and wait for the Ruffians to charge.

Okay, so with all that in mind, we set up as you see above - Centaur got his Hobbits as far up as he could and I deployed my Ruffians as close to 3" away from the smial as I could. Bill Ferny is touching the chimney and feels very exposed at the moment. Centaur then placed his flowers and decided to use them to make a "no man's land" across the center, undoubtedly to either make a kill zone for his stones or to force me to go around, which will limit my application of numbers. Let's start round one!