Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game: The New Edition, One Year On

The New Edition

The new edition came out a little bit over a year ago, and brought a lot of small changes, and after some delays, we have the three army books (Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth) and matched play book (giving a suggested structure for tournaments and events).

Overall it's been a tidying up of the previous edition, with some major changes to monsters and some profiles and legendary legions to rebalance the game.

The new edition was marked by a new starter set, based around the War of the Rohirrim movie. There appears to have been a shift within Boxed Games and a decision made to do a new edition in 2022/23, and it appears supplements were delayed and cancelled, with the Rise of Angmar supplement coming out shortly before the new edition, and miniatures that would have fit with a Battle of Five Armies themed supplement and a Battle of Pelennor Fields themed supplement turning up after the new edition.

The new edition has seen a narrative supplement for War of the Rohirrim accompanying more plastic miniatures and a narrative supplement coming next year based around a new plastic Shelob miniature.

Jay Clare, the Middle Earth lead, has also announced he is moving on from Middle Earth to another studio role. Having written the very well received previous edition and supplements, and it's current edition, this will mark another big change. Jay regularly attended UK events and is very well liked in the UK community.

The previous edition saw releases around specific parts of the setting, often with accompanying miniatures and re-releases, with legendary legions. Now we have legendary legions in the sourcebooks, and the first narrative book has not added any more. Often there would be GW created characters, and a lot of these have been removed in the edition change, likely at the request of the IP holder.

While we can't judge what's happening in this edition based on one supplement, it seems like Embracer, who are actively working on new products in the IP (the Gollum Movie, based on the hit game of the same title), a new series of Rings of Power and other, as yet untitled movies. It's likely new miniatures will tie into the new IP, and this is likely up in the air to some extent.

The game is at this point complete, with hundreds of unit profiles and dozens of legendary legions, so new models and supplements aren't necessary for people to play the game. I'd love to see new figures and legendary legions, but this is because I'd like to see things like new plastic Riders of Rohan, new Orc infantry, etc.

The Changes

There are a lot of small changes in the edition, but there have been a couple of big ones to shake things up. Army selection is now purely legendary legions. This has ended the soup armies that turned up a lot in the previous edition, and made balancing the edition easier as a designer only needs to have each legendary legion be balanced, and doesn't have to worry about soup forces.

Monsters have been tuned up. Barge has significantly buffed them, and a number of the monster legendary legions have turned from fluffy bottom table armies to top table murder machines because of this. Barge means monsters are reliable line breakers if they can win the combat, and they tend to have better Fight values than even elite infantry.

Dominant has also really helped monsters, allowing them to count as more models for the purposes of objectives.

Uruk Hai for Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game - credit Thundercloud

The Meta

There are large numbers of small changes to units, and some units which have had big changes. With the buffs to monsters there are several lists that have jumped up the tables.

Eagles - Eagles have gone from a fluffy flock of lovingly painted minis to a terrifying air strike force. Monsters are good, and flying monsters that can pick where and when they engage, moving over control zones, and Gwahir's special ability makes them incredible.
Dragons - Dragons got some heavy buffs and a legendary legion where they're mixed with Cave Drakes. Again, flying monsters.
Trolls - this one box army has actually won some events. No, seriously, it has.
Beornings - these were decent before and are better now. Two wound two attack infantry with high strength, high fight and Burly are horrible to fight, and the bears have got better.
Buhrdur's Horde - able to mix Hill Trolls with Wargs, Orcs and Warg Riders, along with a pretty good rule in Ambush, this is a mean list to fight at lower point values.

The usual suspects (Rohan, Minas Tirith, various Orc based Evil lists, etc) are still solidly competitive, but there's been a big shake up.

It's very likely that there'll be some FAQ regarding monsters to tune them down a little bit, or specific list adjustments (thinking of Eagles that benefit from having Fly, Monster abilities and Gwahirs ability). Specific list adjustments for the overtuned monster lists is likely the better solution, and likely to take place after even more feedback is received on games

There is some anti-monster balance built into the matched play scenarios as some give you victory points for having banners surviving at the end of the game, but this hasn't been as big a negative factor for monsters as the designer may have planned.

However after a year in the wild Eagles have moved away from dominating the top tables, in favour of legions like Men of the West, Army of White Hand and Moria lists (whether with a Balrog or a Drake and/or Bats list). Character heavy lists like Breaking of the Fellowship are also doing well in the hands of skilled players.

Gothmog. Credit: Fowler

The Release Schedule

This is the major source of player complaints. The big delay between the launch, with the new starter and Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books, and the release of the Matched Play and Armies of Middle Earth, was a major sore point in the community.

It seems like the current release model is a scenario/hobby narrative based supplement plus miniature release for a while, depending on what additional miniatures will be released as part of the IP. The Gollum movie is currently scheduled for release December 2027, and that will be the first new live action movie under the Embracer banner.

So potentially there are more things coming, but it's uncertain when and what the deal between GW and Embracer would commit them to. It may be we are in for two years of narrative supplements and older miniatures being converted to plastics.

As it is the range is complete; the only issue is how much is in finecast and how old some of the rank and file sculpts are. The new Warriors of Rohan and Tribesmen show what GW can do with their current level of sculpting, and I wouldn't shed any tears if GW did a Last Alliance book for example and gave us new Numoreans, 2nd Age Orcs and Elves and retired some of their oldest infantry kits.

We don't know what the state of things is with Embracer, and what the currently unannounced new movie projects are, particularly if Embracer want to build a Marvel style cinematic universe in their pursuit of all the money in the world. GW have the wargaming licence, and may be required to produce tie in miniatures for any movies Embracer produce. This may also explain the edition change and the sheer number of plastic character models produced for War of the Rohirrim.

So what releases we'll get are uncertain. I would have put money on more Dunlendings and plastic Riders of Rohan being released (potentially all the units for Rohan except command and characters ending up in plastic), as there are things in the War of the Rohirrim film that haven't appeared as miniatures, like the Dunlending riders. That hasn't been the case though, and the next release is plastic Shelob.

Middle Earth Morannon Orcs - credit Thundercloud

Conclusion & The Future

The first year since release has been a bit rocky, almost entirely due to the release schedule. It has settled down though, and there are plenty of events going on.

The game is in a good place, the miniatures range is complete if a little old, and made to orders are injecting new casts of some of the older/hard to get figures into circulation. GW didn't take my advice to just check ebay every now and then and do made to orders of anything getting to silly prices, but they are bringing back some fan favourites like Bill the Pony.

At this point it looks like we'll see hobby/narrative supplements accompanying refreshed minis in either plastic or Forgeworld resin, until we get either tie-ins for Rings of Power or the Gollum movie.

If we get a 48 page supplement and a plastic kit every six months, that's a reasonable release schedule until new series/movies are released. What level of quality these releases are will be interesting, as it's unlikely Peter Jackson will be involved, and Rings of Power, due to it's licencing, has largely avoided anything in the Silmarillion and doesn't reflect the amount of money Amazon has spent on it. Almost half a billion dollars was spent on filming season one of Rings of Power, and the production values are a lot more like BBC1's Merlin as oppose to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings.

Middle Earth, with the Silmarillion, as actually fairly suited to a cinematic universe, but the amount of creativity and skill that would be needed to pull it off well is not something seen often. For every Fallout we've seen more than one Rings of Power or Section 31 or Halo. The quality to crap ratio has not been favourable.

What Embracer will do is something they may not even know yet, let alone have communicated to GW as a licensee. I recall that the Warlord Doctor Who game was dropped, not because it struggled to function as a tabletop game (I had a bunch of complaints about the rules and balance of it, though I rated the miniatures highly), but because BBC licensing would take months upon months to give approvals and it was impossible to run a product line like that.

Licenced properties add an additional layer of risk out of licensees control, and already almost all GW created characters and factions have been discontinued from production and removed from the books (though GW have given us the Legendary download so we can keep using them). GW won't have volunteered to do that.

I'm provisionally hopeful. Even if the Gollum movie is as good as the Gollum game, if it leads to new plastic Orcs then I will just not watch the movie, the same as I didn't play the game, and buy and paint the models.

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Tags: Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game | MESBG