Hi All,

Next month will see the release of a new sixth edition of our beloved game, Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, with a new 208-page Rules Manual and a companion volume entitled Armies of the The Lord of the Rings containing all the profiles for "the various forces of Good and Evil during the War of the Ring." Presumably this second book will be a replacement for the current 5 LoTR sourcebooks, and also include revised versions of the experimental army lists featured at the 2017 Throne of Skulls event at Warhammer World.

With a new age of SBG upon us, what are some of the things you are hoping to see? What rules and profiles do you think will be changed and how? What do you think will stay the same?

Link to Warhammer Community Blogpost:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/201 ... ge-post-1/

There was already a thread discussing this announcement. Since you are interested chiefly in speculation rather than discussing the contents of the box set I suppose this is not unnecessary duplication.

That said. I hope that warbands bites the dust and that the older profiles get reworked to create a power curve in line with what was in the hobbit. I would very much hope that the end of warbands with restore the old limitations on magic with the natural counter of infantry spamming. But I will settle for a warbands patch I suppose. I would also like to see all the profiles for the future releases listed out in this book so I don't have to buy new source books every time a new model comes out. Something like was present in the legions book and There and Back Again would do nicely I think.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

I'd like to see the Warband rules adjusted so that different tiers of heroes have different model limits for their warbands. For example, 'king/ruler/general' tier heroes (e.g. Théoden, Witchking, Saruman, Suladan, Gothmog) can bring 24 models, 'prince/colonel' tier heroes (e.g. Eomer, Legolas, Lurtz, Balin) can bring 18, 'captains' (e.g. Gamling, Ugluk, Gorbag, Haldir, generic captains) can bring 12, and 'sergeant' heroes (e.g. Beregond, Hama) can bring 6.

I also want to see Special Strikes adjusted slightly so that they're more balanced.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

I wouldn't mind seeing special strikes removed entirely.

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My Lotr backlog: 305/952[][][][][][][][][][]32% completed
Painting Lineup: Mumakil x2, Rohan Heroes x8, Haradrim, SKoDA

Do you think we'll get all the profiles for upcoming models with it (e.g. catapult troll so we know it's coming)?

I would love to see that as well! Although I doubt it...

LOTR was always friendly game for me and I am glad I don't meet all those converted full-axe forces one can see on the internet.

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My This and That Again WIP blog: viewtopic.php?t=25598

Well, I think that if the Special Strikes were amended, so that they were more balanced, then we wouldn't see those cheesy armies with mass conversions.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

I personally would like to see some of the rules come back that were dropped in the hobbit edition. Volley fire for archers, some of the more complex rules for sieges and fighting in fortifications, drop the -1 to shooting for moving at all, drop or at least re-work special strikes and go back to the old, pre-channeled version of spells. Just my thoughts.
Better profiles for numenoreans, more troop options for numenoreans and high elves, some rebalancing of STR amongst the profiles. Again, just my opinions.

My favourite type of rules that hopefully we will get more of are the ones which affect troops too. In the stream they mentioned Ingold had a shield wall ability that extends to his allies within 3", that sort of thing makes for an immersive rule for me.

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Soon Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves! Roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone!

I was looking online at an unboxing, bell of lost souls specifically. Im pretty certain -1 from shooting is gone, you just can't shoot if you also jumped, climbed, swam ect.

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I miss colley fire... It gave meaning to my Mordor Orc archers.

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By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, men of the West!

Have been looking through the new Lord of the Rings armies book, which I got in the post today. First of all, it's a very nicely produced book. Looking forward to trying out some of the new profiles ... Isengard has some nice new additions, including for scouts and berserkers (I won't spoil the rules here). I like the way the rules are not just re-balancing the game, but trying to make the game feel more like the films too.

Worth noting that the new release models that we've seen recently from Forge World (eg. Guritz and Gothmog's enforcer, and Ingold, captain of Minas Tirith outer walls) aren't in this book, and must be in the Gondor in Flames book that's coming out.

The White Council profiles that were in the old Free People sourcebook aren't in the book either. I guess that means that White Council will only have versions in the updated Hobbit army book when that comes out later in the year.

Made me wonder which Galadriel models I can now use ... there isn't a profile for the "warrior" version in the book, so can I use the armoured model to represent unarmed Galadriel?

Spotted some changes in the webstore again too ... Young Dwalin has gone off sale in the last couple of days (I was thinking of ordering one!) But maybe it will come back repackaged with Young Thorin or something.

I also spend the last couple of days going back and forth in the new armies book and while doing so I found to odd things:
- When going through the numenor army list, I noticed the mentioning of anárion. He is the son of Elendil and younger brother of isildur ...
So, last alliance supplement confirmed??
- When looking at the Angmar list, I noticed that the cave troll has burly. A quick search showed that no other troll has that. Not only does this seem strange flavor wise seeing how the cave troll is the smallest troll in the lord of the rings range. It also creates the strange situation where a mordor troll has to carefully decide when he uses his hammer as two-handed while the cave troll, who also has a hand-and-a-half hammer option, can spam the two-handed mode since he won't get the penalty.

Could be a mistake or something. Did his point cost go up from 80, though? I feel as though it would have to.

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By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, men of the West!

Well spotted. Made a post in the GBHL Facebook group, hopefully Jay or Adam will chime in on the issue.



Nope, in fact it went down in points (unless you buy the one-and-a-half hammer, in which case it stays its original point value)

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Anyone got 20 Cave Trolls with hammer and a half for sale in that case? LOL

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By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, men of the West!

Anyone else get the feeling that this edition just wanted to turn everything up to eleven and see what happened? I mean, there are an awful lot of both defense, fight value, and strength buffs being handed out here. So much so that it seems like they will wind up canceling each other out in a way. Or we have just gotten a version of the game were everything dies a lot faster than it used to.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

Very interesting. I'm really excited for a return to the Last Alliance. Maybe a mounted version of Elendil after all these years (there is an unofficial version of him...) The next book is strongly rumoured to be "Gondor in Flames" 2.0. The original is one of my favorite. I'm hoping Osgiliath sneaks its way in there sometime too.

So far, I'm really happy with the new rules. They just seem really streamlined and simplified. The old version seemed kind of clunky and difficult to understand. I have the original rules in several different versions, but have always been a painter much more than a gamer. My niece is finally the right age to start playing in earnest, so I'm excited to have a user friendly version.

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

Its probably to bring the Hobbit and LotR lines to the same level. LotR gets buffed and Hobbit nerfed.

A couple of interesting things:

The Mordor shaman lost fury. The only way to get fury for Mordor orcs is Kardush (sp?).

Named Ring wraiths have to spend will to use their special ability.

They added cool random rules to heroes. Sharku, of all characters, has a rule that any hero that strikes him- I think he has to be on his warg- but fails to wound takes a str 4 hit. That’s for each failed wound. That is a pretty cool rule.

The beast of gorgoroth is now a mini mumack. It lost some of its rules, and stampedes like a mumuk. But it also tramples like a mumack and comes with a courage 4 orc Captain (namely to help offset the stampede rule). I think the price went up to 150. It was really under costed last eddition. All beasts like this are considered “war Beasts” and all of the rules are standardized. It also looks like howda bow shooting is back to being model by model true line of sight. They also clarified that models in a howda do not take the -1 to shooting for moving.