Good morning gamers,
Well, we're in a new world since the last time we did a "how to play" series, so we're kicking off 2026 by revisiting our "Back to Basics" series. To my surprise and delight, some of the articles from this series remain some of the Top 20 articles viewed in any given 30-day period - which could be a Google roaming bot or it could be that both new and returning players are reading our older stuff. Either way, I'll take it. :)
As we did back in 2021, we're going to learn to play the game by looking at the fun aspect of the game that starts before you show up at the table: creating an army and how to understand the profiles you're looking at.
Army Composition Basics: Heroic Tiers
When building an army, you have to start with heroes - and not all heroes are equal. In past editions of the game, there either wasn't a hero-to-warrior ratio you had to follow (during the Legions of Middle-Earth days when I got started) or there was a 1:12 ratio (when the "warband" books came out). Since the last edition, there are five different tiers of heroes, giving you differing levels of command for your heroes. What is interesting in the newest edition of the game is that heroic tiers aren't listed on the hero profiles anymore - this is good, because many army lists and Legendary Legions in the last edition would change the heroic tier of a hero, so there would be conflict between the unit profile and its army lists. Now, the heroic tier is determined by the army list alone - which I think is at it should be.
Like we did last time, we'll look at Minas Tirith unit to illustrate how these heroic tiers work:
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| Aragorn is the King is a Hero of Legend - many would follow him and listen to his commands . . . |
Heroes of Legend can lead 18 warriors in their warbands. They also pass their first "Stand Fast" roll automatically, which we'll cover in a later post (but for now, just know that when your army thinks it's time to flee the field because they've lost a lot of guys, these heroes say, "No, we've got this!" and the warriors stay in the fight). Heroes of Legend are rare - 0-3 choices for most army lists - but they allow you to bring a LOT of guys with them (relative to the "standard hero"), allowing you to bolster your numbers without the "tax" of an extra hero.