The February 2026 Middle-Earth Battle Strategy Game FAQ

Games Workshop have released the first FAQ for the new Middle Earth edition that looks at Matched Play. It promises to shake up the meta a lot.

The Previous Meta

Tabletop Admiral has been collecting game results for a while, and for factions with more than 200 games played, the top five shakes out like this:

Middle Earth Top 5 Win Rates prior to FAQ - factions with over 200 games played - Source Tabletop Admiral

This puts Army of the White Hand handsomely in 1st place with a win rate over 60%. The Eagles are only a fraction behind, followed incredibly closely by Men of the West, with Depths of Moria and Buhrdur's Horde in the mid 50s.

So how did this translate to events? Here's the top five podium finishers for the Great British Hobbit League (the independent UK Middle Earth events group) for 2025.

GBHL Podium Finishes 2025 - credit Great British Hobbit League

So Depths of Moria was ruling the roost with almost double the number of podium finishes in the UK independent tournament scene than the second place faction.

So why were these so strong?

Into the Depths of Moria...

Why is Moria so damn strong?

Depths of Moria lists are generally either built around a Balrog or Watcher in the Water, plus goblins to hit the points limit, or an incredibly numerous goblin horde with perhaps a cave troll or two.

The Balrog is 350 points, but is very hard to kill -- it's a big monster with access to monster power attacks, it gets a free Heroic Combat every turn, causes Terror, is Dominant 10, has defence 9 and 10 wounds, is Fight 10, Strength 9 and has 4 attacks. It's incredible in combat. It also has the Dominion of the Balrog rule in Depths of Moria, which means that the army does not count as broken as long as the Balrog has more than 5 wounds, and goblins within 6" of it get +1 to their fight and automatically pass courage tests.

But that isn't the strongest thing about this list. That is the Drums in the Deep rule. In the Armies of Middle Earth book you can buy a Moria Goblin Drum for 75 points, but your opponent can kill it (or its crew) and it isn't as good as this special rule. Drums in the Deep gives all your Goblins +1 Courage, all your enemies -1 Courage, and all your Moria Goblins count as being within range of a banner. This means if your Goblins are fighting and lose they always get a reroll, with no limit for range. This is free, you don't pay any points for it, and it makes your 5 point Moria Goblin jobbers incredibly points efficient.

So in an army over 500 points, you are generally adding another dozen models per hundred points, and in high points games you might have 3 or 4 Moria Goblin Captains running around to act as Might batteries with the Balrog and a Troll or two to act as line breakers supported by an absolute horde of goblins.

This means you have the numbers to play objective control, along with the hitting power you get from monster lists. Even in 500 point games you are generally throwing around 20+ models (24 is the most you can fit in with a Balrog, Captain and 22 warriors) despite having one of the most expensive models in the game in your list, and you'll end up outnumbering plenty of the armies out there.

In low point games you aren't going to be encountering much that can fight the balrog on an even footing, and in high point games you've got millions of Moria Goblins to throw in the way of anything that could give the Balrog problems while controlling the rest of the board.

Men of the West

This puzzled some people, but Aragorn, King Elessar, has the special rule that while he is alive all friendly models pass all courage tests, meaning that breaking and running away or failing to charge a Terror-causing target are things that happen to other people's armies. He's also a banner to friendly models within 6".

Aragorn, King Elessar, is also a Mighty Hero, meaning he gets a free point of Might each turn; this translates into a bunch of free Heroic Marches until you get stuck in, which compensates for giving up horses if you want to take Eagles.

The list either has access to cavalry or flying monsters in Eagles, and has access to a pretty good and wide selection of heroes, with Gandalf the White, Eomer, Prince Imrahil, Gimli, Legolas, Elrond's Twin Sons, Beregrond, a bunch of different captains and finally Merry and Pippin. This gives you more hero options than most lists, including half a dozen solid gold characters.

Any model within 3" of a hero gets Dominant 2, which makes it much easier to play objective control, and a cheap hero (Merry and Pippin are both 25 points) is still a hero.

In horses vs Eagles you don't have any cavalry options, so we are only talking about horses for characters, and if you aren't taking Gandalf the White on Shadowfax, then it's a much easier decision to leave the horses at home in favour of flying monsters.

Generally the list is built around infantry blocks, and has both solid line infantry in Warriors of Gondor and good skirmish options in Warriors of Rohan with either throwing spears and shields or bows. Warriors of Minas Tirith go shoulder to shoulder to use Shieldwall, while the Warriors of Rohan skirmish and provide support, as Spear Mastery means that when it comes time to charge in they can spear support the Warriors of Minas Tirith in front of them.

It's an incredibly flexible list with access to great heroes, a solid statline in the warriors available, and access to Gwahir, a very nice flying monster, and Eagles, which are also quite points efficient flying monsters.

Uruk-Hai with Crossbows. Credit: Rich Nutter

Army of the White Hand

Would a wizard who loves birds so much ever be evil?

You give up berserkers and pikes in favour of Uruk Hai scouts, Wild Men of Dunland, Orcs and Warg Riders. And also Crebain. So many Crebain.

Crebain are 20 points for a flying Swarm with 2 attacks and 4 wounds which bypasses control zones and is great for surrounding enemies or pinning things down. At 20 points they are criminally undercosted for how useful they are, and while they are not the only reason this list does well, they are an important factor with how they buff Saruman.

Saruman is an incredibly nasty magic user and he can draw line of sight from Crebain, which means you can't hide from him when there are Crebain around and he can pick the choicest target he likes. Any friendly model that can see him gets +1 Courage, which is nice when taking Terror tests, and his Stand Fast bubble is 12" for when the army breaks.

In early turns the Voice of Saruman gives you some nice powers to use which don't use Will points, can't be dispelled as they aren't magic, and automatically succeed. Conjure Lightning is a nice area of effect weapon for hitting bunched up models and potentially killing horses characters are riding on. Summon Gale halves enemy movement for a turn, critical for games where you are racing to objectives. Call Thunder gives the enemy army Fearful, which means they have to pass a Courage test to charge, and which can completely screw up a big charge turn. And of course Saruman has the Palantir, which enables you to automatically win initiative one turn of your choosing, so you can get off your charges first. So Saruman has very nasty magic and abilities, made worse by the Crebain.

But what else does the list have, you ask?

Grima Wormtongue. He's pretty useless in a fight, but for 25 points you have a 6" bubble in your opponent's force which doubles the Might cost of any heroic actions they declare. So standard captains, with their two points of might, are out after a single Heroic March or Heroic Move, undermining the whole Might economy within the enemy army.

The Wildmen of Dunland are running around at 6 points a model with either a bow or a flaming brand to give them terror against cavalry and beasts and count as Dominant 2. The Wildman Oathmaker, at 55 points, gives Wildmen within 6" Fearless, and if Saruman is still alive all Dunlendings on the table reroll 1s when making strikes.

For mobility you have Warg Riders, for Fight 4 Strength 4 infantry you have Uruk Hai scouts. For monsters you have the Isengard Troll, which is pricey at 100 points, but is Fight 7, Strength 7, Defence 8 with 3 attacks and 4 wounds.

This means that the army has magic, mobility, board control, lots of tricks and some solid elite infantry. You can cram in a lot of shooting for fairly cheap with Wildmen as well.

It may not have many named captain level characters, like some armies, but it has one of the best wizards in the game. It can be built as a horde or a quite elite force, and players have played with the flexibility a lot. Saruman and his boys are also the main adversary in the first two Lord of the Rings films, which has helped with the sheer number of players.

The Eagles Are Coming

This is pretty straight forward. Monsters are very good in this edition. Flying monsters can bypass screening. This army is entirely flying monsters, led by a monster hero.

At 500 points, Gwahir, two Eagles and two fledgling Eagles is very effective, and the vast majority of podium placings for this list is at either 500 or 600 point events. A six model army isn't terrible to paint.

The whole army causes Terror and gets +1 strength on the charge. Fly means you bypass control zones, and a 12" move means you choose when to engage your opponent. The lowest Fight in your army is 6, and everyone has Monstrous Charge, meaning you Charge and win the fight you knock everyone prone and automatically dismount cavalry.

Gwahir is 150 points, and priced to move at that for a flying hero with Fight 8, 3 attacks, 3 Might, Will and Fate.

Gwahir also had the Piercing Cry ability, where once per game at the start of a Movement phase all enemy models within 6" are unable to move. This can prevent them surrounding you to murder Gwahir, or mess up their charge allowing you to assassinate a key hero, or prevent them moving onto the objective in the last turn.

Essentially this is an army that ignores a lot of the 'normal' play in MESBG, you bypass control zones when you move, you are faster than virtually every other army, you play a completely different game than most armies resolving combats as everyone has access to Brutal Power Attacks and you are pretty big and tough with it.

Gondor Battlehost - credit Games Workshop

So What Changed?

The FAQ homed in on a lot of the top tier armies and applied fairly specific nerfs. There's also a fair amount of clarifications and tidy up.

Depths of Moria

Drums in the Deep changed from being every turn for the entire game to just one turn. This is a massive change that makes it fairly likely we'll see Moria, with access to all the monsters, get some outings as people experiment with different Goblin based armies, and they'd actually have to pay for the Drum to get the effect every turn. Depths of Moria is still a very good list, and having hordes of goblins is still very effective at controlling the board, but it means they aren't statistically likely to beat elite infantry in one on one fights.

Men of the West

This is unchanged, and will continue to see top tables fighting a slightly nerfed Army of the White Hand and other contenders. It's an army with a really strong roster of characters and some reasonable jobber human infantry to back them up.

Army of the White Hand

This has been fairly light touch. The Conjure Lightning now can't target within 12" of friendly models including Grima (so you can't have Grima next to a group of expensive characters to mess with their Might use and also nuke them with Conjure Lightning).

Grima has been changed to make it easier to start whacking him, as now he can be targeted after Saruman takes an unsaved wound, not when he is slain. Grima now also can't be selected as a target in scenarios that select friendly or enemy heroes (so you can't have an assassination target you aren't allowed to attack). Grima also no longer blocks enemy movement while they consider him a friendly model, so he can't do things like block key points and prevent movement through them, or block charge lanes.

These are pretty small changes that don't, to my mind, greatly affect the power of the army, but people got pretty angry about Grima move blocking.

The Eagles

Gwahir's Piercing Cry ability was clarified to take effect for enemy models that start their movement within 6" of him, rather than when he declares it at the start of the movement phase (so he can move where it takes the most effect), which is significantly better. However it has been changed that affected models cannot declare a charge but can otherwise act normally (so they don't freeze and key models don't get surrounded and murdered by Eagles Barging and Hurling models around).

General Slight Nerf to Monsters

Barge was changed in the main rulebook. Previously models being barged Backed Away 3" and if a model had to Make Way for them they had to Make Way 3", and if they couldn't move the full 3" they were knocked prone. This movement was decided by the monster player, and it meant you could knock models prone if they were 2" away from a model Backing Away and there was something 2.5" away from them, which meant you could do all sorts of weird movement stuff to knock models over or dismount them from horses.

This has been changed to the model making way only has to move enough to Make Way, not a full 3", and makes this less of a complete nightmare of getting knocked down by objects or models several inches away from you when you lose the fight.

Monsters are still incredibly good though.

Other Changes

Army of Thror

This can now have 50% of the Warrior models armed with throwing weapons. This is because Grim Hammers have throwing weapons as standard, and meant that only 1/3 of the force could be composed of them, meaning 2/3 of the warriors had to be Erebor Dwarf Warriors.

Army of Thror had a 43.8% win rate on Tabletop Admiral and won no UK GBHL events in 2025. I don't think this will really move that needle much as Grim Hammers are still the Wish version of Khazad Guard.

Dragons

Dragons had Breathe Fire change from all models within 2" of the target being fired at take a Strength 10 hit to being Set Ablaze, but not automatically killed if wounded. This makes it less like Dragons are firing off mini nukes in the shooting phase, and may lead to people fielding dragons that aren't just flying artillery.

Road to Rivendell/Tom Bombadil

Hop Along My Hearties has been changed to let models only benefit from it once per turn, but since models only activate once in the movement phase I'm not sure why it needed to be spelt out. I would guess someone had rules lawyered a way to make it apply more than once but I'm not sure how they'd do it without it being obviously rubbish.

The Road to Rivendell list is sickeningly fast anyway as Aragon can call a free Heroic March each turn (+3" movement) and this stacks with Hop Along My Hearties (another +3") so Arwen on Asfaloth goes 18", and the Noldor Exiles go 14" if you are playing with Legends.

Lots of Small Changes

There's been lots of small changes to clarify things, like Shieldwall still being in effect when cavalry make strikes, and interactions between specific models and scenario rules.

So What Does It All Mean?

The Meta was dominated by Depths of Moria. That reign of terror is over now, as Depths move from incredible god-like tier to just really good tier (it's still a horde army that is super hard to break containing various monsters).

Monsters have been gently nerfed (I don't think it's a coincidence that all four top factions could take monsters, even if Army of the White Hand usually had better things to spend their points on).

In the meta there are a lot of factions bubbling under that big 4, and that's who to watch.

Factions with over 10 podium spots in 2025 - credit GBHL

In this wider pack we see things like Usurper's of Edoras, who've done really well as a control/horde list in 500 point events, various types of Elves (Halls of Thranduil, Lothlorien, Rivendell) and Elf/Human Alliances (Last Alliance, Battle of Fornost).

Good armies are much better represented, with Khazad Dum and Erebor Reclaimed appearing (though these really are the two Dwarf armies of note, Army of Thror is very not good).

Mordor gets a look in with Minas Morgul giving us a list that features Ringwraiths and Orcs, as otherwise Evil factions are dominated by Uruk Hai Scouts and Wildmen of Dunland (one or both are present in four out of six armies in this list).

Beornings is another list built around a really good monster, normally Grimbeorn, which does well in the 5-600 point range, where a lack of heroes is made up for by a big monster and 2 wound, 2 attack Burly infantry.

Reclamation of Osgiliath is a nice Gondor hero list.

There are a lot of lists that don't rely on monsters in this range, and

Some people feel the changes didn't go far enough, and Crebain should have eaten a points increase (I feel at 25 points a model the Army of the White Hand would be less oppressive). Men of the West saw no changes, but it really only has the army rule available as a change, and there aren't a lot, as the heroes are often in multiple lists, so changing say Legolas has a massive impact on the game.

There was also very little help for struggling factions. Changing some army wide rules, or some points for specific characters, would help lists like Army of Thror or Azog's Hunters or Umbar, who are all near the bottom.

The designer making these changes has laser focused them on what they regarded as most problematic and not applied a buff to the factions struggling to make any impact competitively. Including Legends, there are 105 army lists, so balancing this is a massive struggle, and some factions (Rohan, Isengard, Gondor, Mordor) are super popular (and have starter boxes from GW) while factions like Survivors of Lake Town see very little play and no competitive success.

In the context of 105 army lists, the changes in the FAQ are very minor to basically six lists, and a general mild debuff to monsters. I think this will open up the meta so there are 15-20 top tier lists as oppose to about 4, but it was not an ambitious FAQ.

The edition is solid at the moment, the rules work and the majority of changes so far have been correcting editing errors and clarifying rules rather than amendments for balance. It would be great is there were more top tier factions, but 15-20 is plenty for a healthy meta.

See you on the tables.

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Tags: Middle-Earth | FAQ | Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game | MESBG