Top 10 Hero Choices for the Realms of Men

All photos courtesy of GamesWorkshop

Hey Reader!

I've been playing around with the Realms of Men list recently (and took them to the TMAT GT this past May, where I finished with 2 Wins, 1 Loss, and 1 Draw), and as part of my experimenting with different iterations of the list, I decided to do a Top 10 post looking at the hero choices, because things are INTERESTING in this list.

There are quite a few heroes available to you (5 Kings, 6 Generic Captains, 2 specialists in the Knight of the White Tower and the Rohan King's Huntsman, and several siege captains), so all of them will make the cut! But how useful they are is another question. Before we start the review, let's look at what we'll be ranking in this assessment.

• To start, you need to take a king to field their relevant captains and warriors, but we are not going to therefore say, "Ah yes: the king is automatically higher ranked because you need him to run the captains." We'll evaluate each individually for their usefulness in the list.
• We will consider what kinds of warriors you get access to by taking a given hero, as unit options are part of why you'd consider taking a king/captain, and whether you should branch out into a second, third, or more factions because of what options will be unlocked.
• We will assume that you are playing at a standard points range (600-800pts), so that there is no assumption of only having 1-2 kings: you can run as many as you want, which means that there are reasons to mix and match factions. So just because one faction may be stronger than another in terms of options, that doesn't automatically move them to the top (or bottom), though it may give a reason for pushing deep into one or the other.
• Kings do have access to Heroic Strike; this will naturally lend them to being taken, and does make them inherently valuable. But Heroic Strike on its own does not necessitate "Top 5 Status."

So with no further ado, let's jump into the list!

Top 10 Most Improved Evil Profiles in the Armies of Middle Earth Book

Hey Reader!

(Okay before we begin, you should know, because he won't tell you, so I will: Tiberius has a birthday this week! So leave him a comment below telling him how much you appreciate everything he does for this channel! Okay, back to the article)

We're here at last: the last of the Top 10 posts in our Most Improved profiles series, today looking at the Armies of Middle Earth book for 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 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.
• 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: just because a model is strong or powerful doesn't mean it will appear in this ranking, because if they're basically the same as they were last edition, they won't be much improved. 
• 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 series.
• 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: Druzhag the Beastcaller

Druzhag has always been a useful shaman - one of the most common named shamans you would see at a tournament, and his ability to turn a lowly Wild Warg or spider into a behemoth is a highly effective use of points. And he remains that: Enrage Beast is still really good, and that's still mostly why you're taking him.

But he picked up some new tricks: first, he picked up Writhing Vines, so he can create difficult woodland terrain, potentially after cavalry have already committed to a charge (so goodbye the vast majority of charge bonuses!), or potentially before they've charged, causing their movement to be quartered within its range (which is a great way to prevent charges in the first place, which Moria needs).

The second thing he picked up is that if he suffers a wound, before rolling Fate, he can roll a D6: on a 2+ the wound can be passed off to a beast within 2" of him. This is key: removing Druzhag was a huge priority last edition, and effectively caging him (and thus passing on firepower to maintain a protective bubble around him) was critical to getting the most value out of him. But now, after hits have successfully resolved as wounds (which means probably not all of the potential wounds that could have been dealt), you have a chance to pass those wounds off to wild wargs or spiders that you don't need/care about as much as your shaman. And on a D4 base (that can still roll for Fate if you roll a 1), that's really, really good.

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.

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.

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 

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.

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.

If Tiberius Were King For A Day: Top 5 Profile Changes I'd Make

Good morning gamers,

Any person who reads Tolkien or watches the films is bound to love something about Middle-Earth (assuming they're the fall-in-love-with-Fantasy type). For some players, this often rears its head in MESBG with cool custom profiles being proposed for characters that show up Tolkien's works that aren't the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, custom Legendary Legions, or occasionally cool scenarios that try to recreate events from Middle-Earth's history.

But more often than not, I see this love for characters, profiles, and factions displayed in a request for updates to existing profiles. Questions like, "How do you get Osgiliath Veterans to work? I love the sculpts and I think they're so cool, but they just don't seem to be worth it - what do you do to make them work?" Have you seen these questions? And have you asked them?

Well, I've decided to compile my list of five profiles that I like (for various reasons) and what I would change about them to make them "better" if I were the King of SBG for a day. I will say that the profiles I've chosen are not only models that I like and think need a slight alteration, but they're also models I play with regularly (and would play with more if their rules were tweaked ever so slightly). With that, let's dive into . . .

Profile #1: Osgiliath Veterans 

Let's start with a profile that everyone struggles to see the point of or a use for (though I tried really hard last year): Osgiliath Veterans. "OsVets" cost +1pt more than Warriors of Minas Tirith and have an identical profile to them with two exceptions: first, they get +1 Courage (which makes them C5 with the Minas Tirith army bonus), and second, they trade the chance of having +1 Defense with the Shieldwall special rule for the chance of having +1 Fight Value if they're near Faramir or Boromir (which is actually easier to do than keeping Shieldwall up). 

A Season of Giving: Revamping the Rangers (Part II)

In case you missed it, Monday featured our measured update to the Rangers faction. But if that didn't scratch your itch, no worries! Our gift to you on the day of the Feast of St. Thomas Beckett (or "5 Golden Rings" day if you prefer... which is probably more appropriate for this game) is an unmeasured, full-blown revamp of the Rangers faction!

As some of you may recall, Centaur did a post last year suggesting various ways to revamp the Rangers. Some of his profiles (and a lot of his suggestions) have made their way into this in the form of new profiles or special rules. But there's also expanded wargear options, changes to the alliance matrix, updates to a couple Legendary Legions, and horses... tons and tons and tons of horses.

As a caveat, this version is primarily designed for TMAT's upcoming Arnor campaign, which we'll probably release some time this decade (deadlines aren't my forte). But of course we've done our best to try balancing these for competitive play (though I guess you can let us know how you think we succeeded).

As with Part I, I'll have screenshots as we go, but if you want to follow along you can download the whole thing HERE (and in Greyscale HERE). Spoiler alert: this is more than I've written in a long while. So if you find yourself only partly through and you're exhausted, I did try to warn you (instead of ambushing you like the poor orc shmucks in this awesome picture are about to be ambushed).

Photo Credit: Quora.com

Here we go!

TMAT Talks: Episode 19 - The Ultimate Uber-Slayer Podcast (Part 5)

One year from when they first began this gargantuan project, Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt are back, attempting to do the impossible: rank the top-50 slayer profiles for the forces of evil.

(No, really... it's very hard!)

In part 5 of their uber-slayer podcast, the TMAT crew discusses their top-picks in three underrated categories (all of which purposefully exclude the likes of the Witch-King, Azog, and Smaug): best budget slayers (under 101 points), best unmounted (man-sized) slayers, and the best generic (spammable) slayers that evil can field. There are some surprises and surprising omissions (not all of which were intentional). 

Did your favorite slayers make the cut? And what does this tell us about how the final list will shake out?

Now available on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny
____________________________________________

Show Notes:

Intro (0:00)

Good: Top-10 Slayers for under 101 points (3:20)

Good: Top-10 Slayers who can't take mounts (50:45)

Good: Top-10 Generic Slayers (1:38:20)

Fleshing Out the Faction: Arnor

Hey Reader!

As you probably know, not all of the factions in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game have the variety of choice as the "big factions" like Mordor, Minas Tirith, and Isengard. And while that's not necessarily bad (in truth I'm amazed we have some of the factions we do have in the line, as they get little time in the books and less to no time in the movies), it would be nice if some of those smaller factions got a bit more love to make them more playable on the table.

Today our posts is one of those attempts to correct this, offering homebrew options for new warriors and heroes for the faction of Arnor.

The ideas for these units can also be found in our new adventure module, The Dark Age. It covers the rise of the Witch-King of Angmar to prominence in the north and the fall of Arnor, with the players serving as agents of the Witch-King as he conquers the lands of men. For more on this and to download the free module, visit the downloads page here.

I.  Three Kingdoms: Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur

By the early Third Age, the Kingdom of Arnor was comprised of three regions: Arthedain to the west, Cardolan to the south, and Rhudaur to the east. The topography varies for each of them, resulting in variance in military development and needs for each portion of the faction. This will serve as the basis for our development of the faction: each of these will provide different units for Arnor.

Currently Arnor gets access to three warrior choices: the Hobbit Archer (which technically comes from west of these regions), the Warrior of Arnor (which will come from Arthedain), and the Ranger of Arnor (which will come from Rhudaur).

For the new models, we make the following assumptions based on the history of the region. First, Arthedain had the largest cities, giving them option to lots of trade, metalworking, and strong leadership (which is why it lasts the longest of the factions). The remnant of Arthedain would become the Dunedain that we know so well from the travels of Aragorn.

Second, Rhudaur is on the frontier against the Ettenmoors, with watchtowers but no major settlements, and their people are primarily guardians along the road leading east to Imladris. With woods and frequent troll incursions, all of their warriors are prepared to meet large, bulky threats in the field. Third, Cardolan is primarily hill country and downs, with few large settlements or industry. This means Cardolan units will be more lightly armed, and will be almost completely devoid of armor.

The captains will be similarly built, following the same guidelines. You'll have a mix of lesser captains and "Kings of Men"-style profiles, but no new named characters.

So with this in mind, here's our crack at fleshing out the Arnor faction.

Fleshing Out the Rangers

Hey Reader!

As we're talking about the Rangers this week, I thought I'd take a moment to do something a bit different: offer some ideas for new profiles for Ranger models to expand the range a bit more.

Not every faction needs to be as fleshed out as, say, Minas Tirith or Mordor, and the Rangers are one such faction: I don't think you need a lot of options to choose from to make this faction feel thematic and unique. The fact that it is an all-hero faction already makes it feel unique, and we don't want to detract from this.

But since this can also lead to a lack of options to deal with different threats and play styles, I present the following as homebrew profiles that might make your Ranger armies more flexible in dealing with threats.

I.  The Rangers of the North

In Tolkien's legendarium we have no indication that the rangers have vast numbers of troops - only a small platoon of men join Aragorn in his quest through the Paths of the Dead, and these are all that could be mustered by Halbarad. So while the obvious gap in the faction's options is troop options, I want you to know that 1) as a former Grey Company player from the old edition that had the option to take Rangers of Arnor, and 2) as someone who really misses having 30 shots in a round, I want to state upfront that we're not resurrecting that option in this update. You will still have an all-hero force, so your numbers will likely always be lower than your opponent.

And that's fine - that's the ranger way.

I will also say, thematically, all of the ranger profiles that currently exist should get hand-and-a-half swords instead of just swords, based off of Aragorn's ranger sword. I also don't think that requires a point increase, as they are not getting Burly or another rule that allows you to two-hand without a penalty, so personally I don't think there's a big deal with just making that change. But eh, we'll see what happens.

What we will provide below are a small number of new options to fill the other needs: slightly cheaper options so you can expand your numbers somewhat (at the expense of veterancy and survivability), as well as some support options to help you cover over some of the common issues the army faces. We will also provide some new named rangers, just to give the list more flavor, much like the new ranger heroes that were added with Quest of the Ringbearer.

Fleshing Out the Faction: Fangorn

 Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! I want to start off by saying that I love the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, and am ever so pleased with the hard work that the team at GamesWorkshop puts into the game to bring us the best play experience possible. I have been overwhelmingly pleased with the supplements and models we have gotten, and am very grateful for the hard work behind the scenes.

But I also think that with the release of War in Rohan there were a few missed opportunities for both Fangorn and Isengard, and I wanted to cover the former of those in this post.

Fangorn is a great faction: it's full of monsters (which are fun to use), very defensible (Defense 8 and 3 Wounds will take you far), and we even got two new ent heroes in the new lineup! But even with the new additions, there really isn't a lot of variety in the faction, and what makes forests so interesting is their variety. It's what makes a forest look wild, and having some variety in the faction would be fantastic.

Naturally there are many ways to add variety, some of which may dramatically change the way the faction plays, so we will start by looking philosophically at what the faction should be, and then from there discuss a new set of upgrades to the basic Ent warrior, and then move on to three new profiles to further flesh out the faction.

I.  Philosophy: Options and Balance

To start with, the ents are the shepherds of the forest: they look after trees and huorns (awakened trees) and protect them from internal and external threats. They are not great in number (so you should be one of the smallest armies in a tournament - we will not be changing that) but make up for that with tremendous size and fortitude.

The ents dig deep, drinking water and eating earth for centuries as they pursue their calling: to guard what Yavanna made from the children of Aule and the peoples of Middle Earth that would threaten the beauty of the forests. But since they lost the entwives, they are running out of shepherds to patrol everything, and thus some question whether ents are even real, as they are so scarce seen.

(This also means don't get your hopes up for an "Entwife" profile later in this post. Yes, I thought of an idea. No, I didn't add it. Yes, if we do a First Age or Second Age supplement I'll note it there, but that would not be a traditional Fangorn army, so I'm not including it here. Suffice it to say, though, yes, the entwives do have a "Farming" and "Nut and Acorn" special rule that I'm very proud of, :P )

So from a lore perspective, we want to incorporate all of this. From a balance perspective, we also need to keep in mind that the current costs for heroes and warriors in this faction is basically perfect for most standard game sizes (as Jay Clare noted recently online), so we will not be adding point costs to any of the ent warriors. Instead, we will be offering a set of free upgrades to your ents that give both bonuses and penalties to keep the balance between styles of ents while also giving you some customization options to make your Fangorn army more unique and serviceable to meet other needs.

Fixing the Orc Fight Value Problem

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the TMAT blog! In today's post I'm going to address my overall annoyance at how good some of the Hobbit era orcs are at fighting, because it seems like in their haste to make the microcosm of the Hobbit line work thematically they inadvertently snubbed a lot of the best heroes across the three ages of Tolkien's primary history of Middle Earth. And today I'm going to recommend a simple fix that would solve this issue.

First we're going to build the case for a change, because I hate recommending changes to stats in profiles if I don't have to. Once we establish that, thematically within the world, the Fight Value of specific models is too high (and it won't just be orcs - we'll address some Forces of Good models as well), we will present a simple, semi-elegant way to fix this problem that is consistent with current rules in the game that will allow for those thematic battles between orcs and dwarves without encroaching on the territory of the likes of Elessar, Glorfindel, and some of the greatest elf lords in all of Tolkien's legendarium.

I.  The Problem: Why High Fight Values?

Let's start with the biggest perpetrators of "Fight Value Bloat," which is Azog and Bolg. First off, in Tolkien's world, Bolg is a scary dude (as is Azog in his day, to be fair): these guys are good fighters. But we have no indication that it would have taken a heroic feat involving one of the best elven lords of all time tying either of these guys in their fighting prowess, which is the current state of the models in our game.

Both Azog and Bolg are Fight 7, which makes them better than Imrahil (a half-elven descendant of both the Quendi and the Numenoreans, and among the strongest three warriors of his time), Elrond (herald of the Faithful and among their best warriors in the Second Age), Celeborn (another of the strongest elf lords that ever lived), and Aragorn (the best warrior of his time) to name a few. That...doesn't seem right to me, any which way you look at it.

Overly Pedantic Stats: The Ten WORST Slayers (Evil)

 Hey Reader!

In our last post we looked at the top ten worst slaying heroes for the Forces of Good. Since Rythbryt has taken his look at Jay Clare's list of the top ten slayers for the Forces of Evil and then did his follow-up post on the top three in greater depth, in the same vein as our last post we will be looking at something completely different: the absolute WORST evil slayers in the game. 

In this post we continue by looking at the stats to find the "top ten" worst slayers for the Forces of Evil. These models fall under the same parameters as our last post: the models must be capable of dealing wounds (which actually doesn't prevent anyone from making this list - I guess that makes sense for evil models?), the model must be a hero, and all troop types (siege weapons, monsters, etc.) are on the table. As you can imagine, no monsters made this list.

We will be looking at five categories for this, as we always do: hero slaying capabilities (to show how well you kill heroes), troop slaying capabilities (for how well you chew through armies), defensive capabilities (for staying power to keep killing things), support capabilities (for making it easier for people to kill around you), and mobility (to get into range to kill stuff, be that at range or in melee).

So with no further ado, the literal WORST evil killers in the game!

Overly Pedantic Stats: The Ten WORST Slaying Heroes (Good)

 Hey Reader!

We were blessed a few months ago with Jay Clare's thoughts about the best slayers in the game, and I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's take on it. Whether that's Rythbryt's analysis or Tiberius's analysis (both of which have good math and metrics behind them), or comments in Facebook groups and on YouTube, I've really enjoyed seeing the love shown to so many models in the game, and that just speaks to the quality of the models that have been made for our game. 

So a huge thank you to the team at GW for making all of this possible, :)

But some models suck at wounding, and since literally NO ONE asked for that, we're going to use some overly pedantic stats to bring to you the absolute WORST slayers in the game, starting with the Forces of Good.

We have two rules for this competition. First, you must be capable of wounding, so no, Frodo of the Nine Fingers, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Goldberry will not be doing a three-way tie for #1. You must be capable of wounding, but not be very good at it. 

Second, you must be a hero to be considered: we will not be looking at warrior models for this competition. This means we will be considering siege veterans, but the model must be a hero in order to count for the competition. No surprises to anyone, no monsters made this list, but we have left it open to hero monsters in case one of them was somehow atrocious at killing things.

We will be looking at five categories for this, as we always do, but a little different this time (as cost doesn't play as much into this equation): hero slaying capabilities (to show how well you kill heroes), troop slaying capabilities (for how well you chew through armies), defensive capabilities (for staying power to keep killing things), support capabilities (for making it easier for people to kill around you), and mobility (to get into range to kill stuff, be that at range or in melee).

So with no further ado, the literal WORST killers in the game!

Overly Pedantic Stats: Best Elven Faction?

 Hey Reader!

We're back with another episode of Overly Pedantic Stats, and this post was prompted by the fact that I'm revisiting Rohan, and as I started thinking through the Helm's Deep legendary legion, it got me to wondering whether it was worth it to purchase Lothlorien models, as I've never run Lorien before.

Now, in the last iteration of the game (and I've mentioned this in the past on this blog), I thought that the Galadhrim were a terrible model, failing to be as cheap as wood elves, as resilient as high elves, or as deadly as mirkwood elves. But with the newest iteration of the game where 1) the Galadhrim now have heavy armor instead of just armor, and 2) you can only get wood elves in a Lorien list or a Gildor Inglorien warband for Rivendell, I was curious to see how good Lorien is now.

And that meant it was time for overly pedantic stats analysis. We'll be looking at five elements of the army: killing power (both in melee and at range), duel winning ability, resilience to damage, mobility, and overall cost. Inasmuch as magic factors into these rankings (Blinding Light helping with resilience, Nature's Wrath helping with killing power as it deals wounds and traps targets that are on the ground, etc.) we have also considered magic, but do not have a dedicated "Magic" category, and that will highly favor the fleshed out army lists over the less fleshed out lists.

We will discuss each of them in order from weakest to strongest, looking at the following factions: Rivendell, Lothlorien, Halls of Thranduil, and the Helm's Deep Legendary Legion contingent of Galadhrim.

Overly Pedantic Stats: Improving Minas Tirith

 Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! I spent some time tracking the performance of Minas Tirith armies at our tournaments over the years, and it didn't surprise me to find that pure Minas Tirith armies (and even allied Minas Tirith + Fiefdoms armies) didn't perform well in our meta. So I got to thinking, "Why is that? Gondor is such a strong faction with so many options and lots of heroes to round them out, so why don't they win more often?" I can't chalk it up to lack of skill because the players who have used them performed well in other tournaments, so I my puzzlement grew.

And that's when I cracked out the overly pedantic stats spreadsheet, because that's what nerds do.

And would you believe it - I found some answers that might help. The purpose of this post is to help you think through how you can improve your Minas Tirith game purely based off of stats: strategy will matter as will objectives, but since those are intangible variables we won't be factoring those into the stats. Instead we will be looking at small changes you can make to increase the overall effectiveness of the profiles in your army to set you up for success.

And with that, join me in my descent into overly analyzed math.

Armies of Middle-Earth SBG: Angmar in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

Photo Credit: Game Art on Pinterest

Yes, we're back from hibernation with another Armies of Middle-Earth write-up! The Fall semester is usually pretty full for me (because life), so I wouldn't get your hopes up for more of these in the near-future. But I thought I'd make an exception for everyone's favorite faction to play against (just kidding): Angmar.

Those of you who have been following this series probably noticed that we skipped over Angmar when we did our cadre of evil army reviews last year. That was intentional, because my own experience in Angmar was... basically non-existent. And while there's a lot of stuff in Angmar that looks good on-paper, I had a suspicion that to truly appreciate what it can do, you had to experience it. So that's what I did, over the course of this summer, as I got ready for TMAT's THRO tournament (where I took an Angmar army). Now that the tourney is over--and armed with all the things I learned--I finally feel like I can do Angmar justice.

Spoiler alert: this army is crazy good, and I'm hardly the first person to say that. You'll find our standard list of recommended resources in the back, but I'll flag a few that I particularly liked--and used a lot when preparing my own Angmar force for THRO--here at the outset. Taylor over at The Nazgul Times has a great break-down of all the profile choices in the army. My take is slightly different than his on some things (mostly the Dwimmerlaik and Warg Riders), but his insights are fantastic. For a panoply of list-building ideas, check out Mik's Fog of War post on Angmar with Dave Nolan (Dave's instincts are more in-line with mine--WK and barrow-wight spam--while Mik loves the trolls, wargs, and especially Gulavhar that can make Angmar particularly scary). Tiberius posted his own thoughts on balanced Angmar lists last Spring in his Bare Necessities Series. Lastly, if you have painting projects and are looking for something to play in the background, I would highly recommend the Green Dragon Podcast's recap of Ardacon 2019's Masters Tournament (featuring Kylie's Angmar army), supplemented if you like by video coverage of three of her rounds courtesy of STF Wargaming Studio (though I don't know that you'll get much painting done if you have that on in the background). Tiberius, Centaur, and I also talked about Angmar quite a bit in our lengthy recap of the THRO tournament (complete with some battle reports), in the highly unlikely event you want to hear anything more from me. Edit: And, as a special treat, you can now listen to the Green Dragon's full faction break-down of Angmar. Plus a whole bunch of other links to other community resources at the end!

Alright, here we go... 

(although for full thematic effect, you'll have to run this music track in the background)

New FAQs hit... RIP Gamling?

Did you free-hand yours yet? Are you wondering if you wasted your life?

Photo Credit: The Hooded Goblin

How's that title for click-bait?

In case you missed it, the latest round of erratas and FAQs dropped over on Warhammer Community yesterday. Apparently the game state is much more balanced than it was last time around, so there are much fewer big-impact changes to report (at least we think so at this point). Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights):

• Gamling's Royal Standard of Rohan now only gives one Rohan hero within 3" a point of Might if they have none, as opposed to all Rohan heroes within 3". My own opinion is that this is definitely a nerf, since it was generally easy to get at least 2 free Might points out of the banner (Gamling + one random hero within 3", which is not hard to do, especially since heroes like the option of banner rerolls). Now it's just one, which means Gamling can still spam Heroic Moves, Marches, and Defense, but only if you're good with him consuming your free Might per turn. The banner is still good (any chance you can replenish heroic stats is good), but the question moving forward will be exactly how good? Is 50 points too much for a 3" banner and one Might per turn, especially when there are other 6" banners that confer bonus effects, which cost less? Time will tell.
• The other highlighted change involves Isengard Demo teams, which now have to have at least two enemy models within 2" of them before you can detonate them (to prevent players from intentionally blowing up half their army to achieve end-game in scenarios that end when one force is quartered). I'm indifferent to this personally, since Isengard is evil and evil has a reputation for killing itself with chariots, war beasts, and other shenanigans for precisely this purpose. But if it's posed enough of a problem in the competitive scene elsewhere to merit a specific call-out from the game developers, I'm not going to complain about it.In smaller FAQs, they also clarified that you cannot place a demo charge in a way that overlaps a model's base, you must drop it so that it touches both bomb carriers, you measure the 2" range from the edges of the demo charge, and you do in fact need one point of Fate for each wound dealt by a Demo charge (not sure why that was ever a question). Again, all this seems eminently reasonable to me.
• A sneaky small clarification that could end up being bigger (in the long term) than either of the above: you can no longer shield if you've been Immobilized or Transfixed (the same would be true of Commanded and Compelled, too, since you suffer the effects of Immobilize / Transfix at the end of being Commanded or Compelled). Transfix was already good against big heroes since it prevents them from making strikes if they win combats, so this makes it even more devastating against big heroes with shields.

The last FAQ I'll highlight is the only one that I'm not sure is quite as clear as it needs to be. Here's the question and answer:

Q: How are models that cannot normally be directly affected by Magical Powers that would prevent them from moving (such as Smaug or the Mumâk) affected by Special Rules that would make them suffer the effects of the Paralyse Magical Power, but that technically aren’t Magical Powers (such as a Mirkwood Spider’s Spider Web or Shelob’s Caught in a Web Brutal Power Attack)? (p. 194)

A: Models that cannot be prevented from moving (such as Smaug or a Mûmak) will be unaffected by Special Rules that make them suffer the effects of the Paralyse Magical Power.

I have some questions about this one, and I'm not sure what the answers are:

1. The question and answer reference Smaug and the Mumak as "models that cannot be prevented from moving." As far as I can tell, this is referring to the Immovable Object special rule for War Beasts (Rules p. 81) and Smaug (Armies of the Hobbit p. 129), but that's not exactly what Immovable Object says. Models with Immovable Object can't be knocked Prone, Hurled, be trapped, or back away (unless to another model with Immovable Object with a larger base size), but the rule doesn't say they "cannot be prevented from moving." In fact, we know that War Beasts can in fact be prevented from moving--if they're charged, for example (Rules p. 80). We also know that War Beasts can in fact be moved against their will--Stampede! may or may not be an example of this (depending on whether you think this is the war beast moving "against its will," or willing itself to run roughshod in the direction chosen by your enemy), but a Command or Transfix that is successfully cast on the driver certainly is. In fact, the language on Rules p. 81 describes these powers as "imped[ing] a War Beast model's movement (thereby causing it to remain stationary or take a move as described by the Magical Power)."
2. Where this could matter--and where I think the ambiguity may cause problem--is with models that don't have the Immovable Object rule, but do have rules that explicitly grant them immunity to magical powers that prevent them from moving or force them to move against their will. In other words, Ents with the Fangorn army bonus (Armies of the Lord of the Rings p. 90). Perhaps it was always understood that you couldn't Paralyze Treebeard, and I just missed it. Maybe that's a change. Either way, I think the FAQ as written would render Ents completely unaffected by Paralyze, which means Tiberius was right after all: Treebeard by far the best good Monster model in the game. 

Other random changes / clarifications that may interest only me: