An Incomplete History of MESBG Content Creators

Good morning gamers,

TMAT just passed its fourteenth anniversary (our first post went up on February 14, 2011, but our first post with any meaningful content went up on March 8, 2011 - fourteen years ago last Saturday) and to celebrate that, I wanted to tackle what has become an absolutely impossible task: documenting the history of MESBG content creators.

I'll start by saying that I'm not doing this to toot our own horn - I'm doing it because one of the largest drivers for the creation of this blog is that back in 2011, there was basically no one doing what we do - there were very few people doing anything on the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Nowadays, you can barely cruise a Facebook group without seeing someone's article or podcast or YouTube video advertised (and if you ever watch something MESBG-related on YouTube, you'll be absolutely BOMBARDED by recommended videos). It's a great time to be an MESBG fan, but it wasn't always this way.

While I'd love to get every content creator into this blogpost . . . there is no living way that I could possibly know of all the content creators for MESBG that are active right now or that have ever posted MESBG content - so if I didn't catch you in this article, please don't be offended. I've captured here the blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels that I follow regularly, as well as those mentioned by a lot of other content creators (who, once I hear about them a few times, I definitely check out). Feel free to provide contact details in the comments if you want - here or on Facebook - if you have stuff you like (and while I won't talk in detail about everything I follow, you should check out the sidebar on the blog for the full list of things I keep up with)!

Finally, I'm also writing this to pay some homage to the content creators who used to create MESBG content and have probably fallen off the radar (and may never have been on the radars of newer players). Our game has a great and hallowed history and during times when GW wasn't actively giving us things to read, watch, or listen to, there has always been a small corps (now a veritable horde) of amateurs who shared their love for the game in print, in audio, or in video formats. It is primarily to these creators - both those still with us and those who have sunset their platforms - that I dedicate this post. 

It began . . . well, it began as you might expect . . .

First Impressions: The Hill Tribes

Good morning gamers,

We're doing "part three" of the Isengard faction, specifically focusing on the Hill Tribes profiles from the new War of the Rohirrim film. These models "sort of" replace the GW-created Dunland profiles that have existed for a while (Thrydan Wolfsbane, Dunlending Chieftain, and Dunlending Warriors) or that were introduced in the War in Rohan supplement (Gorulf Ironskin, Frida Tallspear, Dunlending Huscarls, Dunlending Horsemen). We'll look today at how these new profiles compare to the old ones (trying to find profiles that "do similar things") and see what the new face of Dunland looks like.

It's gonna take a while to get to this guy, but he's really what it's all about . . .
Photo Credit: Reddit

Dunland Profiles: How Have They "Changed?"

Our first stop is the lead antagonist from the new film, Wulf. This guy has pretty decent stats for being a Dunlending/Rohan guy - though Fight 6, 3 Attacks/Wounds, and 3 Might/3 Will/2 Fate are pretty good no matter who you are. The closest comparison I have for this guy - since he's just designed to be a beater - is Gorulf Ironskin, who sported an excellent profile for his cost - he was only F5, 2 Wounds, and 1 Will/1 Fate, but otherwise matched Wulf in all of his other stats AND bested him in Strength with S5 instead of S4 (and he got free Heroic Defenses against heroes - which was really helpful when you're only Defense 5). 

Speaking of Defense 5, Wulf's just wearing normal armor, so with Defense 5, he's a pretty squishy leader, but he has access to a horse, he has the Hatred (Rohan) special rule (when that applies, it'll be awesome), and he has a cool new special rule that gives him a personal banner reroll and the ability to reroll 1s To Wound against heroes. The banner part of that is always gonna be great and you'd think that getting a bonus when fighting heroes would make him slot into a hero-hunter kind of guy (especially with General Hunter giving him a Might Point back if he kills an enemy general). However, with "only" Fight 6, "only" Strength 4, and "only" 3 Attacks (and no bonuses To Wound except against Rohan and whatever rerolling 1s does for you), he's not going to reliably fight heroes well - especially if they still have stats. Sure, he can have the Fight Value advantage against a lot of generic heroes, but if your opponent reaches D5 or higher, you're not THAT likely to deal damage to them. This is something Gorulf used to struggle with only occasionally, but I'm afraid Wulf is going to blunt off a lot of heroes if they have stats to make things interesting.

Still, Wulf has a mount, is a little expensive with or without it (130pts with/110pts without - so just take the horse), and that will probably make sure he gets the matchups he wants and I think he'll be fine at killing troops (and eventually a beleagured general/enemy hero). With stats roughly similar to Eomer (except in the Defense and Fate departments), I think Wulf is fine (but unspectacular).

First Impressions: Isengard, Part II

Good morning gamers,

We're back in Isengard today and we're going to cover the rest of the faction after covering the Uruk-Hai last time. We've got mostly men (or Istari, who are like men) today, though there are some Orcs, Wolves, and birds in the discussion as well. There's also a smattering of four different army lists today, so lots of context for the units we're viewing.

Isengard Non-Uruk Profiles: How Have They "Changed?"

If you're interested in learning about the changes to the Uruk-Hai profiles for the Isengard faction, you should check out the previous article in this series. Today, we're looking at the other units in the Isengard faction, which will have some overlap with the discussion next time of the Hill Tribe units.

We need to start our discussion of Isengard with the big man himself: Saruman. There are two army lists with access to Saruman: the Army of the White Hand list (where he isn't required, but all of the army list bonuses only work if he's on the board) and the Muster of Isengard (where he is required, but oddly enough has no army special rules tied to him being in the list). From a stat perspective, Saruman is basically unchanged - same numbers, Courage/Intelligence value of 3+, nothing special.

Saruman still has the Palantir, which now forces a roll-off with the likes of the Azog Ambush rule (awesome, since it used to be overridden and wasted) and is still a very valuable reason for taking Saruman. He picked up a new rule, Saruman's Deceit, which allows him to apply a -1 penalty on a single enemy hero's attempts to resist magical powers cast by Saruman against the hero (though a natural 6 remains a 6). If you think two-handing with the penalty is bad (I don't, but many people do), then this is like applying the new rules for two-handing to your resist tests . . . chew on that for a minute.