The Citadel of the Stars, Part VI: Hunter or Hunted

Good morning gamers,

We're continuing through our custom campaign in Osgiliath and playing through the third scenario from the Battle of Osgiliath starter set: Hunter or Hunted. The scenario victory conditions are . . . a little weird, but could also be really fun. As we have been doing, we're adjusting the participants so the game will have street-legal lists for the new edition.

Hunter or Hunted (Battle of Osgiliath, p. 6)

We've decided to use the following models in today's game:

• Forces of Good: Garrison of Ithilien
• Faramir, Captain of Ithilien 
• Madril, Ranger of Ithilien
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 8 Rangers of Gondor
• 4 Rangers of Gondor with spear
• Forces of Evil: The Legions of Mordor
• 2 Morannon Orc Captains with shields
• 4 3 Morannon Orcs
• 4 3 Morannon Orcs with shields
• 4 3 Morannon Orcs with spears
• 4 3 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears
• 1 Mordor Troll

In order to win this game, Good needs to kill the Troll and Evil needs to kill Faramir . . . needless to say, I intend to be a coward and hide with my bows drawn and shoot for as long as I can.

The New Age Is Begun: The Assault Upon Helm's Deep Army List

Good morning gamers,

We've already viewed the Muster of Isengard and Army of the White Hand lists for Isengard - or in short, the two lists you can run Saruman in. Today, we're poking at a list that was very strong in the last edition and has fallen from grace a bit (in my opinion, at least) in the current edition: the Assault Upon Helm's Deep. This army list has retained many of the units and rules that it had in the last edition, it's received a few nice buffs, but it's also lost some things, so there's not all good news for Helm's Deep players. There are no Legacy profiles in this list (and only a few things were added with the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement), so let's take a look at what Helm's Deep players have to work with now!

Assault Upon Helm's Deep: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Like in the last edition, your options for units is incredibly limited - you have Uruk-Hai Captains/Shamans as well as Siege Veterans for your Ballistae as your heroes, and the sturdy-and-reliable Uruk-Hai Warrior and power-house Uruk-Hai Berserker for your standard-cost warriors and Isengard Trolls and Uruk-Hai Demolition teams (besides the ballistae) for your warriors. And that's it - no seriously, that's it!

When you compare the line-up to the Muster of Isengard, this comes in about the same - you get a small selection of units, but everything is elite (and as a result, it's all expensive). The upside that this list has over the Muster of Isengard is that you don't have to take Saruman - you can instead take 2 Captains and a Shaman/Ballista/a third Captain for the cost of Saruman and Grima. The downside of this list is that . . . well, you don't have access to Saruman (or cheaper Uruk-Hai Scouts as an alternative to Uruk-Hai Warriors). The profile selection alone isn't enough to scare me off this list, but as we look at the army list bonuses, I'm kind of concerned about how good this list is now . . .

The New Age Is Begun: the Barad-Dur army list

Good morning gamers,

We recently had our annual THRO tournament here at TMAT and we had three guys who participated in five game days for Star Wars Legion (a four-part tournament and a single-day three-game Recon event) and one intro-to-Bolt-Action game day who joined us for their first Middle-Earth event. One of them expressed an interest in running Sauron . . . and I was like, "Well, we know the three scenarios you're going to play and he's not a bad take." So that got me thinking faster than normal about how the Barad-Dur list has changed in this edition - and as a result of much thinking, here's an article. :) Also, there's only one Legacy profiles to examine, so any discussion of that profile is marked in red, per the usual for this series.

Barad-Dur: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The profile selection is more or less what it was before - we still get access to Sauron, the Witch-King, and generic Ringwraiths for our spirit contingent, we still get access to Troll Chieftains and Mordor Trolls (both of which saw glow-ups to help them out this edition) for our supporting monsters, we still have access to siege weapons (both kinds) to provide long-range support, and we still have access to basic Orcs and Black Numenorean heroes/warriors, like we did in the last edition.

What we've lost in this edition is Shelob and Orc Taskmasters - and honestly, if that's all you're losing, you're in a pretty good place. Shelob is a very maneuverable piece and she added a bunch of the special rules she used to get only in the Cirith Ungol list into her base profile, so it's a bit sad that she's not available here. Not being able to whip Sauron into getting a free Might point when he declares Heroic Moves may not have been much of a thing in the last edition, but it could have been a thing . . . and now it's not.

All told, the world is still a pretty good place for this list and if you were used to running it previously, not much has changed (though some of the profiles and options have changed, so pay close attention when list building and invoke that arcane art of "reading").

The Citadel of the Stars, Part V: Ambush

Good morning gamers,

We're past the half-way mark in our custom Osgiliath campaign and we're in the second scenario from the Battle of Osgiliath starter set. We've adjusted the scenario participants quite a bit here - instead of all-Rangers vs. a mix of Morannons, we've got a half-Rangers/half-tin-cans Ithilien list against yet-another-Legions-of-Mordor list!

Ambush (Battle of Osgiliath, p. 4)

We've decided to use the following models in today's game:

• Forces of Good: Garrison of Ithilien
• Faramir, Captain of Ithilien 
• Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 8 6 Rangers of Gondor
• 4 1 Ranger of Gondor with spear
• Forces of Evil: The Legions of Mordor
• 2 Morannon Orc Captains with shields
• 4 6 Morannon Orcs with shields
• 4 8 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears

In the actual scenario, there are 12 Rangers of Gondor and Damrod against 16 Morannon Orcs (which is actually pretty cost-comparable, Good is favored slightly). We've basically taken the original Orc participants and upgraded two of them to Captains and equipped everyone with shields - nothing too drastic there (except the addition of heroic resources and F5 vs. men on two of the models). Good has changed a lot, adding in Faramir and an extra dude and swapping out 6 Rangers for 6 Warriors of Minas Tirith. This will be different, but understand that the promotion to D6 doesn't make the death-by-archery any better for the Morannons in this fight (it just makes them harder to kill in melee).

The New Age Is Begun: the Army of the White Hand Army List

Good morning gamers,

If Ardacon is any indication, then the Army of the White Hand is a good list - all three people who podiumed in the Invitational Masters event were running the list and that probably says more about the view of this list that the highest competitive minds have rather than how good the list is at your local tournament scene. That being said, everyone's talking about "the White Hand" list and whether Crebain are broken because of it. The list is more than just about Crebain - but Crebain are also very important to it working well. Let's see what's up with this list and some thoughts for running it, shall we (and as always in this series, anything related to Legacies will be highlighted in red for whatever players or tournaments don't allow Legacy models)?

Army of the White Hand: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list is the closest thing to a "normal Isengard list" from the last edition. You have access to Saruman and Grima, most of the Uruk-Hai profiles, most of the Orc profiles, and all of the Dunland profiles from the last edition (especially if you include the models that moved to Legacies). The primary profiles that you're missing are Lurtz, Ugluk, Mauhur, and Uruk-Hai Drummers from the Uruk-Hai hero side of the house, Uruk-Hai Warriors and Berserkers for the Uruk-Hai warriors, and the ballistas and bombs (which are oddballs, but still Uruk-Hai). You're also missing Snaga and Sharku from the Orc contingent - but that's literally it. Everyone else and their brother shows up in this list - and that means there are a LOT of options.

The list also doesn't have required heroes, so you can technically run whatever you want in it - Centaur used it for the first scenario of our custom Osgiliath campaign because it is LITERALLY the only list where you can get just Orc Captains and Orc Warriors in your army! Now, all the army list bonuses are all tied to Saruman, so you should probably run him, but you don't have to - and that's great. There's also a wide variety of subfactions that are represented in this list - Dunland, Uruk-Hai, Orcs, and of course Saruman and Grima - so depending on the theme you want to run, this list provides a nice canvas for your play (if you have a competitive bent, the options are probably less, but there's still some variety).