Top 10 Most Improved Good Profiles from the Armies of Middle Earth Book

  Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of Middle Earth book from the Forces of Good. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Good in the Armies of Middle Earth book.

As we did in the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of Middle Earth book, so we won't be looking at profiles beyond that book. It also means we're almost done with this part of the series!
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good in the book, so only good profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Durin is incredibly powerful, but the change from last edition is literally just an increase from F6 to F7 at the expense of +10pts, and while that means he is improved, and good, and tough to beat, he's not among the top ten. 
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, which is not really an issue with this book, but again it's something we're looking for in this ranking.
• There were more profiles than this list can hold, so yes, I couldn't include all of the ones that I thought were interesting/useful. There will be some honorable mentions, but suffice it to say, if you really thought that someone should have made the list and didn't, there's a good chance that they were considered and just didn't break the top ten.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Khazad Guard

All images from
the new book!

Not much actually happened with Khazad Guards this edition: they're still able to reroll 1s to wound like last edition, they don't have access to Piercing Strike anymore, but they did pick up one nice upgrade for only +1pt/model: they jumped up to F5, making them truly elite infantry, finally on-par with elves.

They don't make the top ten because a lot of the characters above are either the same or lower cost than last edition, or getting far better value, but it's worth noting that we finally have F5 dwarves, and more than that, per the new rules for two-handed weapons, if they roll a 6 for the duel roll they don't get the -1 penalty, which is nice.

Announcing the TMAT THRO 2025 Tournament!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time of year - The Hunter's Red October will be hitting the TMAT community again (but in September this time, not in October). The tournament will be held in Purcellville or Berryville, VA on September 20, 2025. This will be our first tournament under the 2024+ rules set (now that we have a complete set of profile supplements), which I think is pretty exciting! Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

The ruleset we will be using is from the most recent Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual (the Fellowship walking one). The supplements for the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, the Armies of the Hobbit, the Armies of Middle-Earth, and the Legacies of Middle-Earth will govern the profiles and army lists being used. 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 main rulebook - players will pick one army list from one of the four GW-issued supplements for this edition and follow all requirements for that army list.

Quick Starter Armies with the Armies of Middle-Earth Supplement

Good morning gamers,

We've looked at the Battle of Edoras Box Set, the Armies of the Hobbit, and the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplements in this series so far, so it makes sense to tackle the last sourcebook in the list, the Armies of Middle-Earth. This supplement (and the Legacies documents, which I will not be covering in this series) were greatly awaited by us here at TMAT - a good number of our local players had lynchpin characters in most of their lists in one or both of these releases, so we're very happy to finally have "the completed set" for list building.

As has been noted in every post in this series, GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too!

List building on a budget THIS time is going to be tricky, since we're assuming that you're spending $60 on a rulebook, $50 on either the Armies of the Hobbit or the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, AND you're spending $50 on the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, which means that we'll be looking for armies that you can get for $50 to $350 more (between $200 and $500). As always, I'll provide additional thoughts on how to save money along the way - which with this lot has led to a few conversions that aren't hard. With that, let's start with the Good armies . . .

The New Age Is Begun: The Harad Army List

Good morning gamers,

I don't think there are too many army lists that, after the release of the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, have as few profiles as the Harad army list. We looked at the Depths of Moria last time and that list was incredibly constrained, but at least the Balrog was doing a lot to help that list compete with its limited bench. Today, we're looking a list that has two ways to play - and honestly, I'm not sure either are bad (though one is DEFINITELY going to be board-dependent for its ability to be competitive). Let's dive in and see what's up in the southlands (Editor's Note: I failed to add the Legacy profiles when I uploaded this page - it was written after the Armies of Middle-Earth dropped and before the Legacies document was provided. The profiles have been added now.)!

Harad: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

As was mentioned in the First Impressions article for Harad (and Umbar - Part II of that series will be coming out either late this year or early next year), I mentioned that there were basically no profiles in this army list: the Mumak War Leader, normal Mumaks, Haradrim Chieftains, and Haradrim Warriors. The addition of the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement have grown our options slightly - Haradrim Taskmasters and Haradrim Raiders are also available - but by and large, you can summarize this list simply: you get the basic guys, the command blister, and the Mumaks. That's it.

If you want expanded options for Harad, the Legions of Mordor should be your next stop (more on them next week) - which not only gives you more Harad units to play with, but will also give you a host of Mordor and Easterling units to pick from as well (supplementing Harad's low Defense stat and slotting them into the weak archery slots that both Mordor and Easterling armies have). It's a match made in heaven - but that's enough thunder-stealing for now. :) You can also look at several other alliance options for Harad in the Grand Army of the South (which is now a Corsair/Easterling/Harad alliance instead of what it used to be) or the Umbar army list (for some spicy Harad/Corsair alliance shenanigans). Whatever your preferred Haradrim flavor is, there's probably a Harad list for you now - but today, we're focusing on what basically was the Grand Army of the South LL of yester-year.

Army List Bonuses

Last edition, the Serpent Horde army bonus gave the Haradrim a 50% bow limit and Haradrim Warriors/Raiders "Poisoned Weapons" so all of their weapons got to reroll 1s To Wound instead of just their bows. Whether it was their daggers, weapon-swapped hand weapons, spears/war spears, or bows, they were rerolling 1s - which isn't great at the micro-level, but in aggregate, it was quite strong. The list has basically retained both of these rules, but now all friendly models with Poisoned Attacks (bow) get Poisoned Attacks on everything - so if all of your Haradrim Raiders have bows, then they'll have poisoned war spears as well. If your Haradrim Chieftains have bows, they'll have poisoned melee weapons too. If your Haradrim Warriors have poisoned bows, they'll have poisoned hand weapons. BUT your Haradrim Raiders/Chieftains/Warriors without bows will all be fighting normally. Oh well.

Mumaks in this list picked up two special rules - they have Harbinger of Evil (12") like they had in the Grand Army of the South army list (and which the Grand Army of the South does not have now . . . that list is very, very different now). Additionally, any Mumak commanders (including the Mumak War Leader) may declare a Heroic Combat for free once per game, which allows the Mumak to execute the Heroic Combat (though there's no pivoting if the Mumak wins). While a free heroic action once per game may not normally tip the scales, this does give the Mumaks some tactical options to deal with being pinned down - more on that later in the tactical section.

Top 10 Most Improved Evil Profiles from The Armies of the Hobbit

Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of the Hobbit book from the Forces of Evil. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Evil in the Armies of the Hobbit book.

As we did in the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of the Hobbit book, so we won't be looking at profiles beyond that book. Never fear, though, we plan to go through all the books!
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Evil in the book, so only evil profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Now in an interesting turn of fate a lot of the strongest profiles in this book got reviewed (either in the most improved or most reduced categories), but this is certainly not a ranking of the most powerful options in the book: it's a ranking of who is higher than where they started, so some models well below the average of the power curve will be present on this list.
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, which again is not a big issue with the Hobbit book, because we don't get a lot of new profiles here, but it bears repeating: we're only looking at profiles that made the jump from last edition to this edition.
• And while we would normally say here that there's a longer list, the truth is there weren't that many more this time (admittedly some models received the same treatment, so there was some placement of captains/warriors of a similar stripe in the same spot, but unfortunately a lot of models stayed mostly the same from last edition to this edition, which is kind of sad, but it does mean that this list is mostly exhaustive: not much else beyond this list that I felt was a major improvement.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Troll Brute

All photos from
the new book!

This is one of those profiles that could have probably used some additional treatment but didn't get it: it's now Dominant 5, and it gets the benefit of the new monster rules that allow it to perform a wounding roll against a spear support of a model it removes, but it's mostly still the same: everything you love about the troll brute (S10 impact hits, Fearless), but now worth 5 models on an objective.

The other issue with the troll brute this edition is that he's a pretty low Fight Value troll (and fair enough: no eyes, after all) in an edition where tying his Fight Value is easier to do now, so there's that.

FAQ Time: Unpacking the August 2025 FAQ

Good morning gamers,

I didn't submit anything to this FAQ - I've been busy fussing with Star Wars Legion and Bolt Action lists for the better part of the last few months, so I'll be honest, this FAQ snuck up on me and yet, there wasn't that much that surprised me. There was one VERY big change that I totally did not see coming . . . before we get into that, let's take a look at what got updated . . . and then we'll get into the really spicy stuff that creeped up and went unanswered.

Photo Credit: Reddit

What Didn't Have Changes

It should go without saying that there were no clarifications on the Legacies of Middle-Earth document, which GW has already said exists so people can use the "no-longer-supported" profiles - many of which were beloved in the last edition. I'm personally very appreciative that the Legacies document was released and that we have it - if they don't update any of the profiles, I think I'm fine with that.

Beyond that, everything got updates (though the Matched Play Guide only got one update, so it's basically as-is - I expect that to change as more people play the updated scenarios). Let's dig into what didn't really change (or what worked the way we thought it did) . . .

Rules That Worked Like We Thought

There were a few errata to the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement - most of which were expected: Theodred starts with a shield, Druzhag's Fury magical power targets himself, and like in the last edition, Druzhag can include Beast models in his warband, but that doesn't open them up as options in other warbands. I'm not going to reprint the text of these errata here - but you can find them in the Armies of Middle-Earth Designer Commentaries.

I'm going to start with an FAQ on Treebeard carrying Merry and Pippin from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement: the question was asked if Merry and Pippin are affected at all by the Wrath of Bruinen magical power while sitting on Treebeard's head. The answer, as you'll see below, is no - they cannot be targeted and are unaffected. There was a tandem question asked about what happened to them in Treebeard is knocked Prone - the answer is that they, like any rider, are Knocked Flying:

Q: If Merry and Pippin are riding into battle on Treebeard, and Treebeard is hit by a power such as Wrath of Bruinen, are they also hit by it? What happens when Treebeard is knocked Prone? (p.24) A: The Merry & Pippin rule states that they cannot be targeted individually by Magical Powers, and so they won’t be targeted – they would not suffer a hit from Wrath of Bruinen. If Treebeard is knocked Prone, Merry and Pippin will count as being Knocked Flying, as per the result on the Thrown Rider Chart (see p.70 of The Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual).

The New Age Is Begun: The Depths of Moria Army List

Good morning gamers,

Editor's NOTE: this post was edited on August 18th, 2025 to add in comments on the profiles added by both the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement and the Legacies document. AoME updates are shown in blue while the Legacies updates are in red.

It's no secret - I love the Balrog. I love everything about him - at least, since the MESBG revamp back in 2018 (before that, he was definitively worse than a Dragon). In the 2018-2024 era of MESBG, there was actually a lot of counter-play to the Balrog since a lot of heroes had a chance of getting to F10 and even those who couldn't get to F10 just needed the Balrog to NOT get a 6 on his dueling roll and either get a 6 on their own (possibly with rerolls, but also "just being lucky") or by boosting into a 6 with Might points. In the current stat of the game . . . a lot of heroes can't reach F10, but the counter-play of "getting a 6 when the Balrog doesn't" still exists. Still, he's a big boy and can be a dominant power on any board that he's playing on thanks to some of the changes he received. Let's see how the Depths of Moria army list has changed from the previous Legendary Legion (and Moria in general)!

The Depths of Moria: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

I'm not going to dwell on this segment - I covered the units that are available to Moria (and this army list is just those same profiles) in my First Impressions post. The short of it is that from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book, we have the Balrog, the Watcher in the Water, and Moria Goblin Captains for our heroes and Cave Trolls and Moria Goblin Warriors for our warriors. This got updated in the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement to add Moria Goblin Shamans and Moria Goblin Prowlers and by the Legacies document to include Blackshield Captains/Shamans/Warriors/Drums. Unlike a lot of other army lists, however, you don't have any required units in this list, so you can technically run it as a Balin's Tomb list (Captains, Warriors, and a Cave Troll or two), as a Balrog-centric list (with or without the Watcher), or a Watcher-spam list (which would probably be more popular if there were Bat Swarms available to us). As we'll look at next with the army list bonuses, however, we TECHNICALLY have a sixth unit . . . that we get for free.

Army List Bonuses

Many of the army list bonuses are the same as we had in the previous edition - the Balrog starts the game with "Shadow . . ." active, making him harder to hit directly (only on a 5+ or 6+), though this does nothing if you're shooting at a Goblin behind him and he's in-the-way. He can also lose "Shadow . . ." to use the ". . . and Flame" rule, which allows you to set a model (friend or enemy, actually) within 3" of him Ablaze on a 2+, so long as he hasn't been Transfixed or is otherwise unable to use Active Abilities (and no, this isn't a shooting attack, so he can use it even if he's engaged in melee). Finally, the Dominion of the Balrog still gives friendly Moria Goblin models within 6" of the Balrog +1 Fight Value, which is great for your F3 Captains and so-so/usually-not-that-useful for your F2 Goblins (what with many warriors getting promoted to F4). The far more valuable part of this rule is that until your opponent has dealt 5 wounds to the Balrog, you never count as being Broken - which is great for denying VPs, but also means you may need a method for quartering yourself to get the game to end when you want it to (and you'll want to avoid games that end randomly when one side is broken unless you think you can break the opposing force).

The big change to the rules is that the Drums in the Deep special rule used to extend the range of your drums from 12-18" to battlefield wide and give you VPs for keeping them on the board when banners scored VPs. Now, you don't have access to drums, but you do get the effects of a battlefield-wide drum all the time . . . for free. Yes, this is the secret sixth profile - you get a 0-cost Moria Goblin Drum that can never be attacked, can never be turned off, and that affects all Goblins everywhere . . . for free. This is a HUGE change, especially at low points levels - and did I mention that it's FREE?!?!?!?! I'm very interested to see what happens to this guy when the Armies of Middle-Earth book drops and whether the alternative Moria option is better than what's here . . .

Top 10 Most Improved Evil Profiles from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings

Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book from the Forces of Evil. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Evil in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book.

As we did in the last post talking about the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of the Lord of the Rings book: we will be reviewing profiles for the Armies of the Hobbit, Armies of Middle Earth, and the Legacy PDF in separate posts, but that means they don't count toward this ranking.
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Evil in the book, so only evil profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Sauron is still really powerful (more on him later in our Honorable Mentions category), but we're looking at the people who jumped up the most from last edition, not the most powerful profiles in the book.
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, so the new War of the Rohirrim profiles were not reviewed. I know, we love snow trolls (boy do I love snow trolls! Super cheap F7 with 4 Attacks if you can keep them charging!), but we're skipping them in this review.
• There were more profiles than this list can hold, so yes, I couldn't include all of the ones that I thought were interesting/useful. There will be some honorable mentions, but suffice it to say, if you really thought that someone should have made the list and didn't, there's a good chance that they were considered and just didn't break the top ten.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: The Dark Lord Sauron

While most spellcaster saw an increase in their difficulty to cast spells, Sauron basically stayed the same, while still picking up useful spells like Fog of Disarray and Foil Magic. In most respects he stayed the same, but he picked up a few really useful abilities this edition.

First off, he gained Dominant 10, which means you have to wound him to allow his army to break, but you also kind of do need to remove him if you want to control an objective near him.

Second, he added a new Brutal Power Attack. In addition to Unstoppable from last edition (which he still has, and while all monsters have a smaller version of this, Sauron's is still better since he gets a guaranteed strike against all spearmen, not just a strike against those supporting the models he slays in close combat), he also gained Flames of Evil, and this ability allows him to, instead of performing strikes normally, allows him to choose a single model in the combat: it suffers a S10 hit, and if they survive, they are knocked Prone and Set Ablaze.

Now this is a niche ability: most of the time you want to use your 4 Attacks, or 1 Attack against everyone. But if you know that you need to wound a D9-10 model, and if you don't finish them off you'll at least be keeping them on the ground for a bit, Flames of Evil will do the job.

Also a small thing, but he's one of the few monsters that is still on a 40mm base, so getting a monster into fights is far easier to do with Sauron than it is with most monsters nowadays, which is not nothing.

Not a major change over last edition, but he's seen some improvement, and we should probably note the guy whose title is in the name of the original source book and the Armies of book that we're studying, so here's the big man himself, :P 

Quick Starter Armies with the Armies of the Lord of the Rings!

Good morning gamers,

We've previously looked at how to take the Army of Edoras box set or the Armies of the Hobbit supplement and get started for $200-$500 USD in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. Today, we're tackling the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement as a new player - and since we've already looked at the Army of Edoras box set, we'll be assuming that you aren't interested in playing the factions from the War of the Rohirrim film (but might be interested in playing a Rohan/Dunland faction, so the starter set will only be on the table if you are interested in these factions).

As we said last time, GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too!

Like we did with the Armies of the Hobbit, we're going to assume that you've spent $60 on a rulebook and $50 on the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, which means that we'll be looking for armies that you can get for $100 to $400 more (between $200 and $500 total). I'll do my best with as many of these as possible to provide stacking ways to get into the more expensive armies at lower points levels (to ease into the purchase structure). With that, let's start with the Good armies . . .

$300 Investment in The Breaking of the Fellowship: the Fellowship, Haldir, and 1 box of Lothlorien Warriors

I could have said, "Just buy the Fellowship", but let's be honest, that's boring. :-) This way, you get not only a Fellowship list (and are on your way to any number of other lists), but you're also starting out a Lothlorien army. Now I will say that the three purchases required for this list - the Fellowship, Lothlorien Warriors, and Haldir is just shy of $300 with the main rulebook and the Armies of the Lord of the Rings in hand, so if you wanted to pick up a mounted Boromir to fill out your Fellowship roster (or the Wood Elf Command blister so you can have a banner), you can do that.

The list provided below is a fun list and you can try it out with just the purchase of the main rulebook, the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship, and the Lothlorien Warriors (if you proxy one of your bowmen as Haldir):

20 models isn't a lot at 650, but 17 Might and counting is CERTAINLY good. Also, 11 arrows go twang! Purchasing three copies of Haldir is pretty pricey - but if you did go all-in on buying him, you'll be a good ways towards collecting a Lothlorien list, so you're getting into at least three army lists with this purchase plan!

The New Age Is Begun: The Muster of Isengard Army List

Good morning gamers,

In the last edition, one of my favorite ways to run Isengard was to have Saruman and Grima leading a ton of Uruk-Hai and utilizing a supporting cast of Thyrdan on a horse and Mauhur leading fast Scout bowmen. You can't run that list exactly in the current edition, but you can get most of the way there with the Muster of Isengard army list. With the addition of Uruk-Hai Shamans from the Armies of Middle-Earth and Vrasku from the Legacies document, you can get a pretty interesting Isengard army with this list (especially if you've purchased the Isengard Battle Host box and a commander pack - or converted an Uruk-Hai Captain for yourself). Let's see what's great about this list!

Muster of Isengard: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The profiles available to us now, compared to what was in the Isengard army list, is now quite limited:

• We have Saruman and Grima - and unlike the Army of the White Hand army list, this one has to take Saruman (so we'll always have Saruman . . . and likely will always have Grima).
• We have Uruk-Hai Captains/Uruk-Hai Scout Captains and Uruk-Hai Shamans, but we don't have any of the named Uruk-Hai heroes (except Vrasku if Legacies are in play).
• We have Uruk-Hai Drummers thanks to an FAQ, but none of the Orc or Dunland heroes.
• We've got Uruk-Hai Warriors, Uruk-Hai Scouts, and Uruk-Hai Bersekers - but none of the other warriors (no Orcs, no Warg Riders, no Dunland stuff).

This is a lean list - but there are some pros to taking this army list instead of the Army of the White Hand (or even Isengard in the previous edition).

Army List Bonuses

If you ran vanilla Isengard in the last edition, you broke like everyone else after losing more than 50% of your models, but you didn't have to test for breaking until you lost 66% of your models. The updated text for "You do not know pain, you do not know fear" is that "The Break Point for this army is 66% rather than 50%," so now you both break and start testing at 66% - perfect. 

Top 10 Most Improved Good Profiles from The Armies of the Hobbit

 Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of the Hobbit book from the Forces of Good. Now that we know all the armies that someone can be fielded in, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, we're set to rank the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Good in the Armies of the Hobbit book.

As we did in the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of the Hobbit book, so we won't be looking at profiles beyond that book. Never fear, though, we plan to go through all the books!
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good in the book, so only good profiles will be considered here.
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Dain is incredible, always has been, and he remains incredible in this edition. But he stands mostly where he did last edition (near the top of the slayer heroes for the Forces of Good, maybe higher since most axes can't add +1 Strength anymore, and via his Headbutt rule he can still knock people prone, so he hasn't technically lost the benefit of a hammer from last edition), so he doesn't make the list. No shade: some of the greats are still great, but that's a post for another day.
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, which is not really an issue with the Hobbit books (there's a comment coming, I'm sure, about how GW doesn't really do much with this part of Tolkien's timeline, and they're not wrong to be disgruntled about that), but it is a disclaimer we're making: you do have to step above where you were last edition.
• There were more profiles than this list can hold, so yes, I couldn't include all of the ones that I thought were interesting/useful. There will be some honorable mentions, but suffice it to say, if you really thought that someone should have made the list and didn't, there's a good chance that they were considered and just didn't break the top ten.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Mirkwood Elf Knight

All images from
the new book!

Mirkwood Elf Knights were my least favorite elven cavalry last edition, in part because they lacked the punch and mobility of Rivendell and Lorien cavalry (unless they were right next to Thranduil, like so many other models in the Halls of Thranduil list), but they got a nice new bonus this edition. The King's Knights special rule changed from a banner bonus to a +1 FV and +1 Defense within 6" of Thranduil, so they're now F6 D6, which is really good, especially since you can still buy a banner, and you may not always need the banner reroll if you're rolling 2 Attacks with F6 (whereas the bump from F5 to F6 is a big step considering how much more common F5 is now - even hobbits can get up to F5 in the right configuration).

Not a huge jump, but it does make them more than just "the one swift option you get beyond heroes," which is really nice.

Quick Starter Armies with the Armies of the Hobbit!

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we looked at how to take the Battle of Edoras box set and get started for $200-$500 USD in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. Today, we're answering the all-too-familiar question:

I don't want the start box - I'm not interested in those armies - so how do I spend my money and get into the game?

Well, fear not - today we're looking at the Armies of the Hobbit book and finding armies that you can scale up into the hobby with. As we said last time, GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too!

We're going to do this a bit differently this time - we're going to assume that you've spent $60 on a rulebook and $50 on the Armies of the Hobbit supplement, which means that we'll be looking for armies that you can get for $100 to $400 more (between $200 and $500). I'll do my best with as many of these as possible to provide stacking ways to get into the more expensive armies at lower points levels (to ease into the purchase structure). We won't be looking at all armies in the book, but I'll be laying out different options for the factions of Dwarves, Men, Elves, and Orcs so you can determine what your best point of entry is. 

I will start off by saying that these models are newer, so getting into these factions is going to be a bit more expensive than you'll find with armies from the Lord of the Rings. We'll start with the Good armies . . .

$250 Investment in the Garrison of Dale: 1 Windlance, 2 Dale Commanders, 2 boxes of Warriors of Dale

I know, I know, there's no Girion in this list - that's intentional, actually. Girion isn't currently in the GW webstore, so I have a Windlance taking his place temporarily - pick up Girion when he arrives again and he'll probably be cheaper than the $62 Windlance in my calculation. Dale Commanders only cost $38 for the set and 20 Warriors of Dale can be purchased for $52, so doubling up on both of these options means that for less than $200, you can get two Heroes of Fortitude and full warbands for them with 16 guys left over (plus two banner/war horn carriers) for Girion to lead. We can max out our warbands and get 45 models with something like the following list:

You could drop the second banner and get a war horn, but we don't have any extra warrior slots and no equipment that we can manipulate on our heroes besides getting a Windlance for Girion. If you allow the purchase of a Windlance (either on Girion or separately), the list jumps right up to 650, which is pretty good. For each additional $130 you invest (give or take), you can add another 2 Captains of Dale and 24 Warriors to your collection, but honestly you probably only need to do this once more and you're good to go (so at $400, you're all set for Dale . . . unless you want to get Knights of Dale now that they got their profile back).

The New Age Is Begun: The Last Alliance Army List

Good morning gamers,

A few weeks ago, I walked through the Numenor army list in the new edition of MESBG. That army list has four profiles in it and poses a significant threat at low points levels (especially if they can kill enemy banners or if the scenario doesn't give you VPs for having a banner). Today, we're looking at the more robust army list of the Last Alliance, a historical alliance I ran a LOT in the last edition, which has both advantages and trades that it needs to make when compared to the Numenor army list. Let's see how things have changed since last year . . .

The Last Alliance: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

In the previous edition of the game, Numenor had access to all of the same profiles that it has now - Elendil, Isildur, Captains of Numenor, and Warriors of Numenor. The Rivendell contingent has changed significantly, however:

• You still have access to Gil-Galad and Elrond as your "big heroes", but you've lost access to Glorfindel (a crowd-favorite as a second anti-magic hero alongside Elendil) and if you left Gil-Galad at home, you COULD ally Elendil with Elladan and Elrohir and still have a historical alliance (because loopholes in the rules).
• You still have access to Rivendell Captains, but you lost access to the other mid-tier Rivendell heroes - Erestor (cheap combat hero/throwing weapons), Gildor Inglorion (March/caster), Cirdan (auric caster), Lindir (Elrond-augment/anti-magic auric boost), Arwen (caster), Stormcallers (very, VERY situational magic support), and Bilbo Baggins (ringbearer alongside Elendil) - all but Cirdan, Erestor, and the Stormcallers that nobody took would mess with your historical alliance status if you had Gil-Galad in the list (but leave him at home and you're fine - again, loopholes).
• You still have access to Rivendell Warriors (nee High Elf Warriors), but lost access to Rivendell Knights, which means you're legging it this edition - and only if you can afford a third hero with Heroic March.
• If you're playing with the Legacies document, you also add Erestor to the list - which is great, because having a cheap Unique Rivendell hero is NECESSARY to get this list to play at lower points levels. I wrote this article before the Legacies documents dropped, so I'll be adding text in red that clarifies how the list changes if Erestor is allowed in the list.

With an army list rule that requires you to run at least one of the named men (Elendil or Isildur) and at least one of the named Elves (Gil-Galad or Elrond), your "army list tax" is quite high with these guys, hitting at least 300pts but more likely closer to 350pts. Tack on a March hero and you're somewhere in the 375-465pt range - that's a LOT of points for three heroes! With warriors that will cost you 10-12pts without counting more expensive gear like banners, you're looking at a hefty starting price and should probably steer clear of this list until you reach 700pts (but you CAN make something sort of work at 600pts).

With these limitations in mind, let's see what army list bonuses you're gaining (especially vis-a-vis Numenor).

Top 10 Most Improved Good Profiles from The Armies of the Lord of the Rings

Hey Reader!

We're back with another Top 10 post, today looking at the top ten most improved profiles in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book. I waited to post this until after we got the Armies of Middle Earth book and the legacy PDF (as I suspected that some of the models would feature in those supplements, and they do), and now that we have the full line of army lists, potential models that they can pair with, and special rules, I wanted to take a moment to rank what I think are the top ten most improved models for the Forces of Good in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book.

So to clarify, a few caveats before we look at the list: 

• We're ranking the most improved profiles in The Armies of the Lord of the Rings book: we will be reviewing profiles for the Armies of the Hobbit, Armies of Middle Earth, and the Legacy PDF in separate posts, so no fear: those are coming! But in the words of Elessar, "it is not this day!"
• We're ranking the top ten most improved profiles for the Forces of Good in the book; there will be a separate article for Forces of Evil, "but it is not this day!" So tune in later for a peak at those!
• We're ranking the most improved profiles, not the strongest profiles: Elendil is fantastic this edition, and he went up to Fight Value 8, which is incredible! But that's literally the only change that happened to him (other than the loss of an alliance matrix, and the shield), so he didn't make the list. What we're trying to rank here are the profiles that have undergone the most changes for the best (changes for the worst will come in a future post, possibly, if you guys want that), not which models are now the best. It also means expect that the top of the list is going to be comprised of models that didn't have a lot of special rules before, but now have special rules that give them useful synergies with others and/or make them a vibrantly new profile in their own right (and often weren't that good/had glaring downsides, but now are auto-include models).
• The "Most Improved" means that the profile had to exist last edition, so the new War of the Rohirrim profiles were not reviewed, as they weren't part of the last edition. Hera is great, Old Helm would not have made the cut any which way you cut it, and the others are all actually quite interesting, but none of them made this list because of a technicality. I've been toying with a Top Ten post ranking the War of the Rohirrim profiles, but since I've yet to play with any of them and have seen very few battle reports from others on their performance on the table, I've been putting it off. If you'd like to see it, let us know!
• There were 38 profiles that made the cut of, "Things changed that make this profile functionally different and/or materially better than it was in the previous edition," so I had to cut that list into almost a quarter. We won't be doing an "honorable mentions" listing for all of them (we will list a few that are noteworthy), but suffice it to say, there's a lot of profiles that were considered! So bear in mind that we can't give time to all of them here.

And so with that, let's look at some cool profiles!

Honorable Mention: Warriors of Minas Tirith / Knights of Minas Tirith

Images all from the
new book!

The big thing we want to highlight here is that these profiles both got a bump up to Fight 4, which is huge: still great cost and value, still defensible, but now they have a Fight 4 which, when near Boromir, also automatically wins ties with other F4 models, which is even better than having an elven-made weapon. So this is really good! 

Not much else changed for them (situationally you can get F5 troops based on the army list, but that's list-specific and not always the case), so they didn't make the top ten, but it is worth highlighting because it's a very nice change.

Unexpected Military Formations: The Irolas "Shieldwall"

Good morning gamers,

Editor's Note: anytime you play a game for a while, double check your work - to get the speed you want in the list below, you need to run a Captain of Minas Tirith with or without Irolas (as Irolas doesn't have March anymore). What's provided below is still accurate if you have both in your list - consider swapping out for Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears if you leave Irolas at home.

We had a reader reach out to us via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/tmatsbg) and ask us about a doubles tournament he's headed to and for some advice on a Defenders of the Pelennor list. I sent several suggestions to support an Army of the Dead contingent led by Aragorn (for his doubles partner), but I recommended taking the following warband from Minas Tirith:

The event is, apparently 800pts, which means there's 400pts up for grab for each player - and this warband comes in at just under half of one of the lists, so there's plenty of room to expend (especially in the Defenders of the Pelennor list!). After presenting this idea, however, I was asked "how do you play it?" And instead of trying to use words to describe why you'd want to use this for doubles and how this formation works, I decided to just turn it into a post with pictures. :) I still have to convert 2 Numenoreans into Citadel Guard to have the models, so ignore the two Numenor guys standing in for Citadel Guard in the pictures below.

Why Run This Formation?

To understand why this is a good warband for doubles games, we need to understand how doubles deployment/scoring works in the six scenarios we had in the previous edition (yes, I know the new Matched Play Guide is out, but I don't have a copy yet and I don't think those scenarios are going to change very much). Previously, the rule for doubles (and I assume it will still be true in the new edition) is that speed is king. Most of the time, both allied forces will deploy in separate parts of the board, usually with 24" to cross to get to the other person's army (sometimes more, sometimes less). This means that two armies that have foot-slog across the board at 4-6" speed are unlikely to meet up and if your opponent has two fast armies, they can both engage one force, beat it to a pulp, and then about-face and take on the other force. This . . . is a recipe for disaster.

If you're not going to run all-cavalry, then you want Heroic March in your list - and Irolas has Heroic March. He doesn't have 3 Might anymore, but he's got 2 Might and if he's pushing up a wall of infantry - possibly in tandem with a Captain of Minas Tirith and MORE infantry - then he's doing his job and making sure your units arrive alive.

The New Age Is Begun: The Erebor and Dale Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're looking at an army list that's in a bit of the dumps right now. This hasn't stopped us here at TMAT from looking for good things to like about them, but after playing a few games with this army list . . . it could use a face-lift when the next set of erratas drop. The list is Erebor and Dale - while the Garrison of Dale is seeing a lot of time in the sun and the Army of Thror might see more play now that there's an updated Matched Play guide to make their army bonuses useful, this list . . . is basically at its zenith already and is STILL not valued very highly. Let's see how this list has changed and what's to like about the list!

Erebor & Dale: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The profile selection hasn't changed much - we have almost all of the same units we always had (no windlances or Knights of Dale - the windlances would have a place in this list, I think, but I'm not sure about the Knights given that we have D7 Erebor Dwarves for the same cost). What has changed, however, is our ability to use the army rules that were available in the Army of Thror and the Garrison of Dale factions:

• The army bonuses that used to be active with a historical alliance were useful - getting a 3+ shoot on all of your Dale models was good, as was a 6" banner for Thror (even though it didn't count as an "actual banner"). So long as you had 33% of your Dale guys with Esgaroth bows and 67% of your Dale guys with shields and spears (and possibly spears on those bowmen), you could get 10 (or 15) spears in your list to back up Guardians of the King who were protecting Thror's flanks (getting a banner reroll and an extra die - two-handing, anyone?).
• There used to be no limit on how many Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King in the old edition - that means you could have 33% of your Dale contingent with bows (5 guys and Girion if you just take and fill Girion's warband) and all of your Dwarf warriors could be Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King. I don't know if you've fought against a D7 throwing weapon army before, but it's scary - it's really scary! And then you throw in the power heroes of Thror, Thrain, and a Captain of Erebor (or Grim Hammer Captain) for March? Yikes!

In trade for these two things (army bonuses and minimal limits on our shooting options), we got some new rules. We'll look at those now, since they're the primary changes that have happened for the army list.

Army List Bonuses

Let's begin with the biggest gotcha in the room: your bow limit and throwing weapon limit is likely to be lower in this list than in other lists. Wait a minute, you say, I thought this was supposed to be higher? Yeah, me too at first blush. The numbers you see are "50% bows" and "50% throwing weapons", but these are actually limited to "50% of Dale Warriors can have bows" and "50% of Erebor Warriors can have throwing weapons." Since both factions can have one or the other (bows/no throwing weapons for Dale, no bows/throwing weapons for Erebor), we get a sliding scale that might or might not be better in one (but not the other) than if we ran an allied list previously.

Let's look at an example of what I mean: because you round up with bow limit, you can take 6 Esgaroth bows if you have 11 Warriors of Dale in your list. Additionally, you can have 6 Grim Hammer Warriors if you have 11 total warriors in your Erebor contingent. This gives you 22 models, 6 of which have bows and 6 of which have throwing weapons . . . or less than 33% bows (27%) and less than 33% throwing weapons. Yes, half of our army can shoot - but a standard army list that smashes multiple army lists together with normal list building constraints (like the Men of the West, Legions of Mordor, or Defenders of the Pelennor) can get to two-thirds shooting capacity if they want to.

Updated Armies of Middle Earth (Mordor and Khand)

Photo Credit: Warhammer.com

Good morning gamers,

Just a short interruption on this off-week Thursday to let you know that Rythbryt is finally working on those Seventh Edition updates to our Armies of Middle-Earth Series. :-P The format has had to change slightly, because traditional "factions" have gone away, giving way to multiple army lists (and for some/most of these lists, you need 2 army books plus maybe a Legacies PDF to get the entire roster of profiles that each can take). Plus, you know... some profiles have changed and stuff. :-P

First up this week are Mordor and Khand, which you can access via their old links here:

• {7th Edition} Mordor in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
• {7th Edition} The Variags of Khand in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

Each write-up has been updated to include the complete roster of all profiles that have the "Mordor" and "Khand" faction keywords (respectively), complete with a unit-by-unit summary of which lists can field these models now, what benefits the model gets (if any) from being taken in that particular list, and where you can find the original profile as well as the army list (Armies of the Lord of the Rings, Armies of the Hobbit, Armies of Middle-Earth, or Legacies). In addition, we've updated the general strengths/weaknesses of the "faction" as a whole, and updated our final section to talk (briefly... or at least briefly-ish) about why you might prefer one Mordor list over another, and which lists lean heavily into a specific theme, allow you to replicate older alliances, etc.

As with everything we do, this is a work in progress--and it turns out that updating some of the larger write-ups takes some time when you need to sort through three books (and occasionally an army builder) to get the whole picture (the Mordor update alone took about 10 hours... hopefully the rest will be faster, now that we've ironed out the process some). Still, we hope this proves useful to you as you begin to navigate the new edition. And don't forget, you can also catch up on our profile reviews for the new edition over on this page.

Finally, as always, please let us know in the comments if there's anything we've missed or can improve (or if there's a particular faction you'd like Rythbryt to prioritize next--rumor is that he's looking at dwarves, camels, and fellows if left to his own devices ;-) )!

The New Age Is Begun: The Numenor Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're tackling a hidden gem (I feel) in MESBG today: Numenor! Yes, the Last Alliance gets a lot of press. Yes, the Realms of Men SHOULD get a lot of press. Yes, Numenor can't get banners anymore and that might put them behind in VPs. But this is a list that isn't hard to collect because EVERYONE and their brother is selling unused Warriors of Numenor on eBay because they wanted the Rivendell Warriors that came in the box (and with a little kit-bashing, it's not hard to make the three warrior types or generic captains that you need to make the list work). It's also got a lot of strength in the new edition and not a lot of rules if you are new to the game and looking for Elves-light to start off with. So let's see what's in store for one of my favorite factions in the game - specifically, how they've changed and how to run them in the new edition.

Numenor: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Like last edition, Numenor has four profiles: Elendil, Isildur, Captains of Numenor, and Warriors of Numenor. As we walked through in our First Impressions article, however, these profiles have all seen some changes (more on those later). While I've extended this section in our previous posts in this series, I'm not going to belabor it here - we have four profiles available to us and if we want more, we need to run the Last Alliance or the Realms of Men instead (both of which are excellent lists and very well might be better than this list on paper, if not in practice).

Okay, let's dig into the army bonuses for this army list and how it changes the units you field.

Quick Starter Armies for the Battle of Edoras Box Set!

Good morning gamers,

The new edition has been out for just over 6 months, and while we don't have all of the models that are in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit supplements, we do have enough to get started in the game. As I did with the Battle of Osgiliath box set, I'll be looking today at the very practical question of how to turn your collection of models from the Battle of Edoras starter set into an actual army on the tabletop at different price points.

Before we dive in, I'd like to reiterate something that I do from time to time on this blog: 

GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. 

I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too! With that, let's start by looking at the Forces of Good from the starter set . . .

400-point Army of Edoras for $200: The Battle of Edoras Box Set

Our first stop is . . . well, just the contents of the box set. This is technically more than $200 USD in the GW store, but it's less than $200 if you buy it from an independent retailer - it also isn't going to be a great army, but it can be yours with just the purchase of the box set (which not only gives you the rulebook and a cheat sheet of the profiles for the units in the box set, but also gives you some terrain, some dice/measurement sticks (get a tape measure, of course), and a paper mat to put on your table . . . all good things).

The list writes itself since we only have two heroes and 24 Warriors of Rohan - all of which we can field at 400pts:

Haleth is a good beater hero, though a bit fragile. Hama is . . . fine as a shooting hero, but probably a bit overpriced. Still, they're yours and they will get you into the game with enough of an experience to help you figure out what you want - exactly what a starter box should do.

Now as we add some money to our price point, we can get an "actual" army . . .

The New Age Is Begun: the Road to Rivendell Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're delving into another army list today and this one I'm SUPER excited about. Why? Because the Road to Rivendell army list (our topic for today) is a list that I have been running for AGES. I've run them as:

• A battle company (the Wanderers in the Wild);
• A low-points level historical alliance between the Fellowship and Rivendell;
• A mid-points level historical alliance between the Fellowship, Rivendell, and Lothlorien;
• A mid-points level convenient alliance between the Fellowship, the Shire, and the Wanderers in the Wild (Barliman and Bill); and
• A high-points level convenient alliance between Rivendell (Glorfindel, Gildor, Arwen), the Fellowship (Aragorn, Hobbits), and the Wanderers in the Wild (Tom and Goldberry) . . .
• . . . oh, right, and I made up a custom legendary legion for them a few Christmases ago.

Yeah, I've played this list kind of a lot. When I saw that it was becoming its own thing, I was both very excited AND very pleased that this list got Gildor and Noldorin Exiles from the Legacies document and picked up Tom Bombadil and Goldberry from the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement! All told, this began as a low-points level, all-hero list and with the two newest adds, it can now reach high points levels too! Let's see what's new in 2025 with this army list . . .

The Road to Rivendell: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Five of the heroes in this list have already been reviewed not once, but twice in the Fellowship and Breaking of the Fellowship articles - check those out for the full run-down. One other hero has been reviewed once, and the remaining three profiles are "brand new". Here's how the profiles have been adjusted without rehashing all that I've written there:

• The list is focused on the Fellowship coming to Bree, leaving Bree, and journeying to Rivendell - so naturally, we have Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin with very little gear available. Amazingly, Frodo has access to Sting and the Mithril Coat, which he certainly didn't have in the films (Weathertop would have gone VERY differently, I think, if there was Mithril between Frodo and the Morgul Blade - or was it a spiritual piercing?);
• You also have Aragorn in the list, which is good because without him, you couldn't kill much of anything with this list (one model excepted);
• From the Bree contingent, we have Barliman Butterbur, Harry Goatleaf, and Bill the Pony - all of which were either previously in the Fellowship army list or were part of the Wanderers in the Wild list and historical allies with the Fellowship;
• We have Arwen, who was both historical allies with the Fellowship in the Rivendell list and was later errata'd to be part of the Fellowship list if you had Aragorn in the list:
• New to the scene are Tom and Goldberry, who were Convenient Allies with everyone in the old edition - they were an expensive dynamic duo, but oh so much fun; and 
• If your tournament setting allows the Legacy documents, you have access to Gildor Inglorion and up to 12 Noldorin Exiles (because they are the only Warrior models in the list, if you have at least 10 of them, you can have 4 with bows and 4 with throwing weapons).

The original nine characters come in with all their available upgrades (bow for Aragorn, Sting and Mithril Coat for Frodo) at a tidy 500 points, but Tom and Goldberry allow you to hit 700 points and Gildor and Company can hit 222 (very satisfying) with a banner, 3 Wood Elf spears, 4 throwing daggers, and 4 Elf bows.