The New Age Is Begun: The Erebor and Dale Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're looking at an army list that's in a bit of the dumps right now. This hasn't stopped us here at TMAT from looking for good things to like about them, but after playing a few games with this army list . . . it could use a face-lift when the next set of erratas drop. The list is Erebor and Dale - while the Garrison of Dale is seeing a lot of time in the sun and the Army of Thror might see more play now that there's an updated Matched Play guide to make their army bonuses useful, this list . . . is basically at its zenith already and is STILL not valued very highly. Let's see how this list has changed and what's to like about the list!

Erebor & Dale: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The profile selection hasn't changed much - we have almost all of the same units we always had (no windlances or Knights of Dale - the windlances would have a place in this list, I think, but I'm not sure about the Knights given that we have D7 Erebor Dwarves for the same cost). What has changed, however, is our ability to use the army rules that were available in the Army of Thror and the Garrison of Dale factions:

• The army bonuses that used to be active with a historical alliance were useful - getting a 3+ shoot on all of your Dale models was good, as was a 6" banner for Thror (even though it didn't count as an "actual banner"). So long as you had 33% of your Dale guys with Esgaroth bows and 67% of your Dale guys with shields and spears (and possibly spears on those bowmen), you could get 10 (or 15) spears in your list to back up Guardians of the King who were protecting Thror's flanks (getting a banner reroll and an extra die - two-handing, anyone?).
• There used to be no limit on how many Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King in the old edition - that means you could have 33% of your Dale contingent with bows (5 guys and Girion if you just take and fill Girion's warband) and all of your Dwarf warriors could be Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King. I don't know if you've fought against a D7 throwing weapon army before, but it's scary - it's really scary! And then you throw in the power heroes of Thror, Thrain, and a Captain of Erebor (or Grim Hammer Captain) for March? Yikes!

In trade for these two things (army bonuses and minimal limits on our shooting options), we got some new rules. We'll look at those now, since they're the primary changes that have happened for the army list.

Army List Bonuses

Let's begin with the biggest gotcha in the room: your bow limit and throwing weapon limit is likely to be lower in this list than in other lists. Wait a minute, you say, I thought this was supposed to be higher? Yeah, me too at first blush. The numbers you see are "50% bows" and "50% throwing weapons", but these are actually limited to "50% of Dale Warriors can have bows" and "50% of Erebor Warriors can have throwing weapons." Since both factions can have one or the other (bows/no throwing weapons for Dale, no bows/throwing weapons for Erebor), we get a sliding scale that might or might not be better in one (but not the other) than if we ran an allied list previously.

Let's look at an example of what I mean: because you round up with bow limit, you can take 6 Esgaroth bows if you have 11 Warriors of Dale in your list. Additionally, you can have 6 Grim Hammer Warriors if you have 11 total warriors in your Erebor contingent. This gives you 22 models, 6 of which have bows and 6 of which have throwing weapons . . . or less than 33% bows (27%) and less than 33% throwing weapons. Yes, half of our army can shoot - but a standard army list that smashes multiple army lists together with normal list building constraints (like the Men of the West, Legions of Mordor, or Defenders of the Pelennor) can get to two-thirds shooting capacity if they want to.

Updated Armies of Middle Earth (Mordor and Khand)

Photo Credit: Warhammer.com

Good morning gamers,

Just a short interruption on this off-week Thursday to let you know that Rythbryt is finally working on those Seventh Edition updates to our Armies of Middle-Earth Series. :-P The format has had to change slightly, because traditional "factions" have gone away, giving way to multiple army lists (and for some/most of these lists, you need 2 army books plus maybe a Legacies PDF to get the entire roster of profiles that each can take). Plus, you know... some profiles have changed and stuff. :-P

First up this week are Mordor and Khand, which you can access via their old links here:

• {7th Edition} Mordor in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
• {7th Edition} The Variags of Khand in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

Each write-up has been updated to include the complete roster of all profiles that have the "Mordor" and "Khand" faction keywords (respectively), complete with a unit-by-unit summary of which lists can field these models now, what benefits the model gets (if any) from being taken in that particular list, and where you can find the original profile as well as the army list (Armies of the Lord of the Rings, Armies of the Hobbit, Armies of Middle-Earth, or Legacies). In addition, we've updated the general strengths/weaknesses of the "faction" as a whole, and updated our final section to talk (briefly... or at least briefly-ish) about why you might prefer one Mordor list over another, and which lists lean heavily into a specific theme, allow you to replicate older alliances, etc.

As with everything we do, this is a work in progress--and it turns out that updating some of the larger write-ups takes some time when you need to sort through three books (and occasionally an army builder) to get the whole picture (the Mordor update alone took about 10 hours... hopefully the rest will be faster, now that we've ironed out the process some). Still, we hope this proves useful to you as you begin to navigate the new edition. And don't forget, you can also catch up on our profile reviews for the new edition over on this page.

Finally, as always, please let us know in the comments if there's anything we've missed or can improve (or if there's a particular faction you'd like Rythbryt to prioritize next--rumor is that he's looking at dwarves, camels, and fellows if left to his own devices ;-) )!

The New Age Is Begun: The Numenor Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're tackling a hidden gem (I feel) in MESBG today: Numenor! Yes, the Last Alliance gets a lot of press. Yes, the Realms of Men SHOULD get a lot of press. Yes, Numenor can't get banners anymore and that might put them behind in VPs. But this is a list that isn't hard to collect because EVERYONE and their brother is selling unused Warriors of Numenor on eBay because they wanted the Rivendell Warriors that came in the box (and with a little kit-bashing, it's not hard to make the three warrior types or generic captains that you need to make the list work). It's also got a lot of strength in the new edition and not a lot of rules if you are new to the game and looking for Elves-light to start off with. So let's see what's in store for one of my favorite factions in the game - specifically, how they've changed and how to run them in the new edition.

Numenor: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Like last edition, Numenor has four profiles: Elendil, Isildur, Captains of Numenor, and Warriors of Numenor. As we walked through in our First Impressions article, however, these profiles have all seen some changes (more on those later). While I've extended this section in our previous posts in this series, I'm not going to belabor it here - we have four profiles available to us and if we want more, we need to run the Last Alliance or the Realms of Men instead (both of which are excellent lists and very well might be better than this list on paper, if not in practice).

Okay, let's dig into the army bonuses for this army list and how it changes the units you field.

Quick Starter Armies for the Battle of Edoras Box Set!

Good morning gamers,

The new edition has been out for just over 6 months, and while we don't have all of the models that are in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit supplements, we do have enough to get started in the game. As I did with the Battle of Osgiliath box set, I'll be looking today at the very practical question of how to turn your collection of models from the Battle of Edoras starter set into an actual army on the tabletop at different price points.

Before we dive in, I'd like to reiterate something that I do from time to time on this blog: 

GW is not sponsoring us here at TMAT. 

I get no kickbacks from the way you spend money, I don't have affiliate links, and I'm not associated with a webstore or physical store of any kind. We here at TMAT are just a bunch of gamers trying to play with toy soldiers on a budget. As a result, the recommendations I provide here are the result of much thinking and planning - mostly for myself and maybe my musings and plannings will help you too! With that, let's start by looking at the Forces of Good from the starter set . . .

400-point Army of Edoras for $200: The Battle of Edoras Box Set

Our first stop is . . . well, just the contents of the box set. This is technically more than $200 USD in the GW store, but it's less than $200 if you buy it from an independent retailer - it also isn't going to be a great army, but it can be yours with just the purchase of the box set (which not only gives you the rulebook and a cheat sheet of the profiles for the units in the box set, but also gives you some terrain, some dice/measurement sticks (get a tape measure, of course), and a paper mat to put on your table . . . all good things).

The list writes itself since we only have two heroes and 24 Warriors of Rohan - all of which we can field at 400pts:

Haleth is a good beater hero, though a bit fragile. Hama is . . . fine as a shooting hero, but probably a bit overpriced. Still, they're yours and they will get you into the game with enough of an experience to help you figure out what you want - exactly what a starter box should do.

Now as we add some money to our price point, we can get an "actual" army . . .

The New Age Is Begun: the Road to Rivendell Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're delving into another army list today and this one I'm SUPER excited about. Why? Because the Road to Rivendell army list (our topic for today) is a list that I have been running for AGES. I've run them as:

• A battle company (the Wanderers in the Wild);
• A low-points level historical alliance between the Fellowship and Rivendell;
• A mid-points level historical alliance between the Fellowship, Rivendell, and Lothlorien;
• A mid-points level convenient alliance between the Fellowship, the Shire, and the Wanderers in the Wild (Barliman and Bill); and
• A high-points level convenient alliance between Rivendell (Glorfindel, Gildor, Arwen), the Fellowship (Aragorn, Hobbits), and the Wanderers in the Wild (Tom and Goldberry) . . .
• . . . oh, right, and I made up a custom legendary legion for them a few Christmases ago.

Yeah, I've played this list kind of a lot. When I saw that it was becoming its own thing, I was both very excited AND very pleased that this list got Gildor and Noldorin Exiles from the Legacies document and picked up Tom Bombadil and Goldberry from the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement! All told, this began as a low-points level, all-hero list and with the two newest adds, it can now reach high points levels too! Let's see what's new in 2025 with this army list . . .

The Road to Rivendell: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

Five of the heroes in this list have already been reviewed not once, but twice in the Fellowship and Breaking of the Fellowship articles - check those out for the full run-down. One other hero has been reviewed once, and the remaining three profiles are "brand new". Here's how the profiles have been adjusted without rehashing all that I've written there:

• The list is focused on the Fellowship coming to Bree, leaving Bree, and journeying to Rivendell - so naturally, we have Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin with very little gear available. Amazingly, Frodo has access to Sting and the Mithril Coat, which he certainly didn't have in the films (Weathertop would have gone VERY differently, I think, if there was Mithril between Frodo and the Morgul Blade - or was it a spiritual piercing?);
• You also have Aragorn in the list, which is good because without him, you couldn't kill much of anything with this list (one model excepted);
• From the Bree contingent, we have Barliman Butterbur, Harry Goatleaf, and Bill the Pony - all of which were either previously in the Fellowship army list or were part of the Wanderers in the Wild list and historical allies with the Fellowship;
• We have Arwen, who was both historical allies with the Fellowship in the Rivendell list and was later errata'd to be part of the Fellowship list if you had Aragorn in the list:
• New to the scene are Tom and Goldberry, who were Convenient Allies with everyone in the old edition - they were an expensive dynamic duo, but oh so much fun; and 
• If your tournament setting allows the Legacy documents, you have access to Gildor Inglorion and up to 12 Noldorin Exiles (because they are the only Warrior models in the list, if you have at least 10 of them, you can have 4 with bows and 4 with throwing weapons).

The original nine characters come in with all their available upgrades (bow for Aragorn, Sting and Mithril Coat for Frodo) at a tidy 500 points, but Tom and Goldberry allow you to hit 700 points and Gildor and Company can hit 222 (very satisfying) with a banner, 3 Wood Elf spears, 4 throwing daggers, and 4 Elf bows.