Guest Post: (In)convenient Allies in MESBG: Preconditions for a Competitive Alliance with Sharbie

Good morning gamers,

This weekend we host yet another article from Sharbie - if you haven't read his previous article on the Watcher in the Water, you should. Today, Sharbie explores the idea of including allies in your lists - what do you look for in an allied contingent? What can they provide that merits losing your army bonus (unless you're Historical allies, which most factions aren't)? Can you go too far with an allied contingent and lose the core of your original force? All of these questions will be covered below - take it away, Sharbie!

TMAT Talks, Episode 3: Top-10 Spell-Casters (Evil)

Photo Credit: Tolkienfacts.blogspot.com

Our discussion of top spell-casters continues with TMAT Talks, Episode 3! Centaur, Tiberius, and Rythbryt give their rankings for evil's magic-users, plus take several rabbit trails into how to mount your Nazgul, whether you should channel Fury, and two spells that are almost as good "in the box" as they are cast (almost). Plus more "Pocket Full of..." army lists to get your creative juices flowing!

Like what you hear? Disagree with our thoughts? Let us know in the comments section!

TMAT Talks, Episode 3: now available on YouTube

Articles Mentioned By Tiberius:

• Sauron,  Smaug, and Dragons with Wings and Wormtongue: TMAT Talks, Episode 1: Top-10 Monsters (February 2020)
• Saruman: Magic in MESBG, Part III: Isengard (April 2019)
• Multi-Purpose Casters (Ringwraiths and the Necromancer): Using / fighting Spell-Casters: Multi-Purpose Will Mages, Revisited (August 2019) 
• Black Dart (Casting/Channeling): Top-5 Ways to Waste Might Points: One Gamer's Opinion (December 2019)
• The Witch-King and Mordor Infantry Choices: The Bare Necessities, Part IX: Mordor (March 2020)
• Barrow-Wights (and other things) in Angmar: The Bare Necessities, Part XI: Angmar (March 2020)
• Druzhag and His Pets as an Ally: A Pocket Full of Power, Revisited (June 2019)

TMAT Talks, Episode 2: Top-10 (Good) Spell-casters

Photo Credit: Pardon My Elvish

Back and louder than ever! In the second episode of TMAT Talks, Centaur, Tiberius, and Rythbryt give their top-10 spell-casters for the forces of good in Games Workshop's Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game (and had such a good time of it that we ran out of time to discuss evil's spell casters, who will have to settle for their own video later).

This episode also features the debut of a new segment: "A Pocket Full of..." where we offer you mini-lists based around some of our favorite casters that you can incorporate into other armies for some added pop. Plus, it even incorporates the then-most-recent FAQ changes because we care about you (though not the actual-most-recent FAQ changes, not because we don't care but because we're not Time Lords).

Like what you hear? Disagree with our thoughts? Let us know in the comments section!

TMAT Talks, Episode 2: now available on YouTube

Guest Post: Army Tiers in MESBG (with MinutemanKirk!)

Hey Reader!

The following is a guest post from MinutemanKirk, one of the regulars on the blog, who wrote a very interesting post on tiers of armies in the Lord of the Rings side of the MESBG house (so there are no rankings of armies from The Hobbit in this list). We found it very insightful, and wanted to share it with you all here.

If you have questions about it, you can comment below (as I'm sure Minuteman Kirk will be following along), or he mentioned to me that you can reach out to him directly for more thoughts. Feel free to reach out to us on our Facebook page and we'll connect you with him.

And now, with no further ado, a ranking system for the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, courtesy of MinutemanKirk!

Editor's Note: MinutemanKirk wrote this piece prior to the recent FAQ/Errata changes on alliances, and subsequent FAQ/Errata changes-to-the-changes on alliances. If anything, this discussion is more timely given the current community discussion on alliances and the role of players vs. game developers when it comes to setting army lists.

Armies of Middle-Earth: Updated Errata and Rules Summaries (February 2020)

Photo Credit: Now for Wrath, Now for Ruin

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled lull in programming for a quick discussion of the new Errata and Designer Commentaries that dropped earlier today. While most models remain unchanged, there were several clarifications (and, in some cases, changes) that seemed worth highlighting, including some that may impact the Rivendell faction we spotlighted yesterday.

You can access the official list of changes by clicking the link above, or by checking out our all-in-one-place summary at the end of this post if you don't feel like piecing together the various pdfs on Warhammer Community. But we might as well start with the obvious one: 

• The End of Shades (as allies)!!!!!(?) Ah, the dreaded shade. -1 duel penalties are always rough, but most of the time you have a choice whether you can suffer one (you take an Unarmed hero in your list, or choose to use a two-handed weapon) or have some way to challenge it (in theory, you can always save your Will to resist a Shatter). But not the Shade (beyond staying more than 6" away from him at all times which... you can't always choose to do). That's a great feature in a niche list like Angmar, which has tons of crazy buffs but also pretty non-descript troop options to deal with (Strength 3, Fight 3, Defense 5 orcs, spectres, and warg riders, with the occasional Fight 6 Might-less Cave Troll), and only a couple combat-oriented heroes (the Witch-King, Burdur, and Gulavhar... everyone else is pretty meh when it comes to fighting, so long as a Barrow Wight hasn't cast Paralyze). It's not great if you're trying to fight Fight 5 Half-Trolls from the South or 100 Goblintown grunts, while taking mandatory -1 penalties to your duel rolls because someone allied in a Shade. The recent changes to Red Alliances were probably adopted with this synergy in mind, but the new errata takes the bull by the horns. Now, the Shade inflicts a -1 penalty to all models within 6" of it, friend or foe, with the exception of friendly Angmar models. So you can still take a Shade in an allied evil list if you like, but it won't help (and will, in fact, hurt) your allied contingent significantly. Will some players still ally-in a Shade? Sure. But I think it probably becomes much less niche, which is a good thing. Especially since...
• Each allied contingent now has to include at least one Hero of Valour. ...