The Citadel of the Stars, Part I: The Defence of Osgiliath

Good morning gamers,

Centaur and I are pleased to be bringing you another campaign series this year, running on alternate Thursdays through the rest of the year! While we've done Fantasy Fellowships as well as the Scouring of the Shire, we decided this year to show off the Kingdom of Tor Ithilas terrain that I picked up last year and play through eight scenarios centered around the city of Osgiliath (home of the Citadel of the Stars). Three of these scenarios will be from the old Gondor at War supplement (including today's scenario), four will come from the Battle of Osgiliath starter box, and we'll be replaying the Osgiliath scenario from Quest of the Ringbearer as well.

Normally, we follow the scenario participants list closely, but we decided to have some fun with this and a) use the new ruleset instead of the old one, and b) use the scenario participants to provide a baseline for two game-legal army lists from the new edition. As such, the models we'll be using might change slightly from the original list - but where we could stick to what was originally given to us, we have. Let's see who we have for the Fall of Osgiliath scenario!

The Defence of Osgiliath (Gondor at War, p. 8)

We've decided to use the following models in today's game:

• Forces of Good: The Garrison of Ithilien
• Faramir, Captain of Gondor
• Madril, Captain of Ithilien
• Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien
• 6 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 6 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• 8 Rangers of Gondor
• 4 Rangers of Gondor with spears
• Forces of Evil: The Army of the White Hand (I know, right?)
• 3 Orc Captains
• 12 Orc Warriors with shields
• 12 Orc Warriors with spears
• 6 Orc Warriors with two-handed weapons
• 6 Orc Warriors with Orc bows

The board is a 48"x48" setup, with the Orcs within 12" of one side of the board, and the Gondorian models within 6" of the center of the board. There are three objectives that the Orcs are going to try to destroy (in base contact without fighting or shooting) before 10 turns have passed - one objective is set up in the center and the other two are space equidistant from the center objective and the left/right board edges:

Damrod is up on the second level of the building near the center (this was a mistake - I forgot he had 2 Attacks!), Faramir was right in the center, and Madril was over to the left, ready to lead some of my troops towards that objective. Centaur deployed his Orcs with the majority in the middle, but a solid hit-squad of guys ready to attack each of the side objectives (the Captains don't have the whispy bases). The Orcs can come back in this scenario on a 5+, so the model disparity is going to be seriously high by the end! With the units deployed, we started Turn 1!

Turn 1: Priority Good

I had three of my Rangers stand and shoot while the other units began to fade towards the side objectives. I don't have any cover near the center objective, but I'm counting on those bows not being very effective. Centaur pushed up the board but didn't March towards me.

I shot a lot of bows (15 in total) and killed . . . two guys. Not bad, all told, but . . .

. . . those dang Orc bows hit with like four guys (out of SIX!) and killed two of my Rangers in the middle . . . not what I wanted when starting this game! Without any fights to resolve, we moved to Turn 2!

The New Age Is Begun: The Legions of Mordor Army List

Good morning gamers,

In the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, there are some army lists that have only a few available profiles (like the Harad list we looked at last time or the Depths of Moria list we looked at the week before). The list we're looking at today is not like those lists. There are other army lists that have quite a few profiles to pick from, but they're all limited to a single faction (like the Minas Tirith or Kingdom of Rohan lists). This list is . . . not like those either.

There are a few army lists that serve as a union of what would otherwise be two different army lists, preserving most of their unit choices and hence giving you a really solid list of profiles for both heroes and warriors (like the Defenders of Erebor or the Men of the West). This list . . . isn't like those lists either. There are, finally, a few - very, VERY few - lists that serve as a melting pot of three or more army lists . . . and standing at the very top of all of those lists is the Legions of Mordor army list. That's the one we're talking about today - and frankly, I thought about tackling it AFTER I talked about all of its component parts, but I also think this is a really strong list and so I wanted to give it attention ahead of the other Mordor, Harad, and Easterling lists.

This is one of the few Mordor lists that has really captured my imagination - and that shouldn't be very surprising, since it has such a wide variety of options. I also think this is one of the few Mordor lists that's actually competitive that few people appear to be playing (as of today, September 8,  2025, there were only 102 games logged in Tabletop Admiral with this list and it had a 41.2% win rate with 42 wins and 60 losses - which is higher than the 37.8% win rate back in mid-June when I originally wrote this article). Like the Mordor army lists of yore, part of the reason for this sad win/loss ratio might just be that there is an incredible amount of variability in how these list can be built. As a result, this post will be less of a deep-dive into the army list itself (now that we have several Easterling lists, every unit will have a deep-dive of its own in a different article in this series), but will rather look at the trade space we have to work with and what different units are bringing to the table.

Take a deep breath, guys - I tried to keep this short-ish . . . and I failed miserably.

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.

Announcing the TMAT THRO 2025 Tournament!

2025-09-19, NOTE: this post has been updated with the tournament lists!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time of year - The Hunter's Red October will be hitting the TMAT community again (but in September this time, not in October). The tournament will be held in Purcellville, VA on September 20, 2025. This will be our first tournament under the 2024+ rules set (now that we have a complete set of profile supplements), which I think is pretty exciting! Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

The ruleset we will be using is from the most recent Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual (the Fellowship walking one). The supplements for the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, the Armies of the Hobbit, the Armies of Middle-Earth, and the Legacies of Middle-Earth will govern the profiles and army lists being used. Any GW errata for these books will take precedent over the printed text of these documents.

2) Thou Shalt Honor Thy Alliance

This tournament follows the alliance "restrictions" provided in the main rulebook - players will pick one army list from one of the four GW-issued supplements for this edition and follow all requirements for that army list.

Quick Starter Armies with the Armies of Middle-Earth Supplement

Good morning gamers,

We've looked at the Battle of Edoras Box Set, the Armies of the Hobbit, and the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplements in this series so far, so it makes sense to tackle the last sourcebook in the list, the Armies of Middle-Earth. This supplement (and the Legacies documents, which I will not be covering in this series) were greatly awaited by us here at TMAT - a good number of our local players had lynchpin characters in most of their lists in one or both of these releases, so we're very happy to finally have "the completed set" for list building.

As has been noted in every post in this series, 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!

List building on a budget THIS time is going to be tricky, since we're assuming that you're spending $60 on a rulebook, $50 on either the Armies of the Hobbit or the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, AND you're spending $50 on the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, which means that we'll be looking for armies that you can get for $50 to $350 more (between $200 and $500). As always, I'll provide additional thoughts on how to save money along the way - which with this lot has led to a few conversions that aren't hard. With that, let's start with the Good armies . . .