{7th Edition} Armies of Middle Earth: Iron Hills and Erebor Reclaimed in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

Du Bekar!!! (Or something like that)

Updated: Seventh Edition (October 2025)

In the lore of Middle Earth, there are dwarves, and then there are the dwarves of the Iron Hills. Founded by Gror, the brother of Thror, the arrival of the Iron Hills have tipped the balance of many fateful battles: at Azanulbizar, routing the orcs when a young Dain Ironfoot slew Azog before the gates of Moria; at Erebor, when they stood against the forces of Bolg in the Battle of the Five Armies; and in the North, when they resisted Sauron in the War of the Ring.

In the Seventh Edition of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, the Iron Hills dwarves remain the pinnacle of dwarven military power and ingenuity. Their heroes have undergone some significant revisions (some improvements, some lateral, and some head-scratching), but their warriors remain both resilient and deadly fighters in close-combat; and their cavalry, crossbows and war machines still pose a threat to enemies who doubt the reach of their “stubby little legs.” In stubbornness and staying power, they are second to none.

Armies of Middle Earth SBG: Chart and Table Reference Guide (Updated 13 June 2019)

As one of TMAT's resident chart/table-guys, I figured it might be helpful to have a brief description of how to read the various charts and tables that I use. Below is a reference guide with some sample charts (and tables) that I've used in our series on the Armies of Middle Earth, what they're meant to convey, and how to read them.

I'll try to keep this updated as we progress, so all this information is accessible in one place. If you have any questions about any of these, or if there are charts or tables you'd like to see, please let us know in the comments!

It Has Come To Me - The One Ring: Thoughts on the Ring (and how it's changed)

Hey there readers,

I know I said that my next post would be on Minas Tirith - and I've almost got that one ready - but during the intervening time, I decided to do a little research on something I've been thinking about for a while...

A LONG time ago, I did a series of games where I played all six scenarios from the warbands sourcebooks with the Fellowship. Those were good times. During that time, I got to spend a lot of time playing around with the first Forces of Good team I ever owned (not hard, since they were in the starter set at the time): the Fellowship of the Ring. Within that force, I very quickly came to enjoy playing with Aragorn (AWESOME), Legolas (AWESOME), Gimli (AWESOME), and Boromir (AWESOME). Occasionally, I'd have the points for Gandalf, but we played at the 500-pt level back then and let's just say that with these four guys in your team, you're hard-pressed to get Gandalf in there too (even at 600-pts it's a bit of a stretch).

But during those games, the one model I enjoyed using (though I didn't think he was worth his points all the time) was Frodo. Yes, he had the Ring, but other than that, he was very expensive and wasn't good in melee.

But he had the Ring. And this made him awesome (for reasons we'll see a little later).

Fast-forward a few years and now we've got new rules. If you read through the rulebook as quickly as I did, there were a few things you skipped because there was no way they would change. And if you were like me, you probably assumed that the full-page rules for the One Ring didn't have any major changes either. Well, I was wrong. And THAT's what we're going to be talking about today - what the Ring used to be and what it is now. While some things haven't changed much, how you use the Ringbearer has changed dramatically.

Armies of Middle Earth SBG: Standard Infantry Formations

For those who couldn't tell, I find the probability side of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game fascinating. I also enjoy (probably to the point of obsession) list-building, and figuring out how changes and variations in lists impact how my army is likely to fare on the field of battle. Fight value, strength, defense, attack value, and wargear choices can make our troops more dangerous and resilient (or their opposites). 

In the run-up to TMAT's grand tournament, I ended up doing an inordinate amount of number crunching using Jeremy Hunthor's excellent duel and wound spreadsheets, which I've mentioned before. There's nothing special about what I've done (it just involves plugging lots and lots of numbers into the calculator, and then copying the results and recording them), but since I've already run a lot of calculations I thought I'd share some of the observations that I found particularly interesting, beginning with the strengths, weaknesses, and baseline probabilities behind five common infantry formations you'll see in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. 

Understanding how these formations work generally, and the probabilities behind them, can help us better understand why some formations work (or don't) against others, and help us to recognize strengths (and weaknesses) in our opponent's formations, so we can avoid (or exploit) them accordingly. They also give us a baseline for figuring out if a particular faction's take on one of these standard formations (say, a shield-spear shieldwall formation) is above average (Iron Hills dwarves) or below average (orc warriors backing up orc warriors) when it comes to their killing power and resilience.

(As always, maths ahead...)

Is Heroic Strike Good? (Part IV: The Probabilities (Plural) of Heroic Strike)

We come to it at last...

After a lengthy build-up breaking down all the components of a successful duel role, we're finally read to talk about Heroic Strike itself. When does it make sense? And when is it *gasp* a waste?

There's actually a lot to unpack here (far more than I thought there'd be when I originally started writing on it). We'll start by looking at the overall mechanics of Heroic Strike, mostly to understand exactly what benefits (and risks) it carries with it. It's that balancing of benefit and risk that makes it game-winning or worthless (and a lot in-between).

Because Blogger doesn't like long write-ups, this one is split into two parts. This section (part IV) goes over the three basic probability mechanics in Heroic Strike (the D6 roll to increase Fight Value, the "10" cap on Fight Value, and expected distributions of probable outcomes as dice scale upwards). Part V (which you can read here) applies those principles to a case study between two combatants (Faramir vs. Eomer), and also discusses an alternative use of Might ("boosting") and how that might--or might not--make Heroic Strike more attractive (sorry--those "might" puns were purely unintentional).

(Potential math overload ahead)