/mesbg/ Middle-earth Strategy Battle Games

funny, because not placing your ordering is actually the trick to avoid disappointment

>tfw you can still buy this
>tfw this mini was so much better
>tfw this is probably right too

>Want to buy one to have a goofy out-of-the-box army and a plastic Gandalf
>No SBG players within a radius of 100 km
>My GF is still painting her AoS army so she feels no need to buy more plastic crack
Life is suffering

buy and play against yourself you miserable fuck

I have about 150 models already - I can proxy this whole box to play against myself. Spending about $100 to play demo solo games seems to be a higher level of autism imo

I'm more of a hobbyist than a list builder, So anons, what should i put in a Rohan battle company?

post perry twins LoTR minis are so sad.

>Post OT movie Perry twins are so sad
ftfy

I think that with some arm swaps they could be used as Black Numenoreans, maybe a bit of greenstuff on the face to add visors or mail ventails instead of spooky wraith nothingness. Too expensive for me to bother, but it's what I would do if a little old lady gave me the boxes as a gift for carrying her shopping.

I'd need to see them in the flesh, but they shit all over the old ones IMO. Poses are quite boring however

Subjective opinion is obviosly subjective, but if you actually think the Perry's Thranduil and Dwarf ranges are better quality than FW's then I don't know what to say. Gundabad creatures are what they are, but you can only polish a turd so much

I have a theory that the later perry stuff for LOTR is a bit shit for three reasons .
ONE:the perrys by that time has established themselves independent of GW and were working on their own lines and so didn't have as much motivation to focus.

TWO:Consistent changes from new line meant hasty resculpts as the movie designs were altered without warning.we know this is why smaug was delayed, new line kept altering his design which meant GW had to hold off on sculpting it.

THREE:I think whoever was in charge of transferring the perry sculpts into production masters didn't have much experience with adjusting sculpts for casting, so they overdid it when it came to filling undercuts ect, which makes the figures look flt and lumpy.

These are my theories and I refuse to change them ,no matter what hard irrefutable evidence you provide me to the contrary.

I like ents and eagles. How do they play? As standalone armies and just added into another army. I have not played the game yet so just in general.

they are monsters like trolls so they have a special attack called hurl which can knock down entire battle lines so they can cause a lot of chaos and nobody wants to let them close to blocks of infantry. at least that's how i use my troll in my mordor army. all hero/monster armies have low model counts which is bad for you

They’re best used as additions to forces, but I’ve seen them used to good effect in tournaments a few times. Eagles armies are getting a welcome buff in ME:SBG too, although the points often don’t work out nicely when your cheapest unit is so expensive.
Monster lists have to abuse the Brutal Power Attacks. Main weakness of monsters is that you can just ignore them and kill the rest of the army. A monster list negates that as it forces the opponent to have to deal with you. Tangentially; the balrog is considered pretty bad as it is too slow to catch anyone. I was playing one game before where the other monsters in the list just hurled my heroes and models towards the balrog to allow it to gobble them up.
The ultimate monster list obviously is just Smaug. Any game I’ve seen him in has just been brutal

Is it worth to use the Goblin Scribe? I can run 36 goblin warriors with a two-handed axe each but still have spare 20pts to fill with something (and I don't really have anything to use) or drop 25 axes and the captain's axe to fit this dude

Goblin King [120]
12x Goblin Warriors [4] with a two-handed axe [1]
Total: 180

Grinnah [40]
12x Goblin Warriors [4] with a two-handed axe [1]
Total: 100

Goblin Captain [35] with a two-handed axe [5]
12x Goblin Warriors [4] with a two-handed axe [1]
Total 100

So 380/400 right now (I see that most new people are playing 400pts games).

the extra gobbos have to walk from the board edge. it takes forever for them to reach anything with their 4", depending on the scenario of course

they move 5"

He's worth what, 10 goblins? Do you think he'll summon more than that over a course of a game, and are they likely to get anywhere relevant?

Imo I'd rather just take the extra dudes, or something else.

12 goblins even

or 10 with two handers

Yeah, you have a point. Anyway, I heard that goblin town heroes will be able to lead up to 18 warriors per warband with the next update or something like this. Is it a new rulebook-telated rumour or maybe I get confused?

>Imo I'd rather just take the extra dudes, or something else
I want to get the goblin town box so I don't really have any more dudes to use. I wouldn't drop goblins themselves - just most of their two-handed axes

How many of these fucking things do you think they have left? Who on Earth would buy them?

>The Virgin Uruk-Hai vs The Chad Rohirrim

Do you mean in an army? Because if you're talking about the new Battle Companies expansion, the starting rosters are fixed, and reinforcements are randomly rolled.

Is Bash useful? It sounds nice to have on paper, but how does it fare when the dice hit the table?

Never played Hobbit/LotR/WotR/whatever.
How do I start? Which one rules are the people use? How do I build an army? Will it be possible to play using all of the Nazgul? Will it be possible to use all of them at the same time?

>How do I start?
Get a rulebook, a friend and a handful of minis (ideally from the same faction)

>Which rules are the ones people use?
The Hobbit rulebook is the most recent, though the editions haven't changed so much as they've been added onto, so even a Fellowship rulebook will teach you the basics. War of the Ring is a system for much larger battles than what the core rules are ideal for, and is pretty much a dead game now. In short, The Hobbit.

>How do I build an army?
Honestly, army building is just a few steps shy of "anything goes", given that all Good or Evil army lists can co-mingle with no penalties. The core of it though is that you compose Warbands of 12 guys maximum (or 6 cavalry), who must be led by a Hero model, either a named character or a generic captain from the same army book the warband is from. You buy them points per model and spend more points to add wargear just like in Warhammer.
You're not required to give a hero a warband to lead, and some heroes have a Loner rule that forbids them from leading a warband, but you can't have a warband without a hero leading it. Army books will have a page with a more detailed summary of list-building and allies.

>Will it be possible to play using all the Nazgul?
Yes

>Will it be possible to use all of them at the same time?
Yes, but it will almost certainly cost you an absurd number of points, and may well be your entire list. Likewise with a list running the full Fellowship or the White Council.

Orc captain with shield - 45
6 orcs with shield - 36
6 orcs with spear - 36

Uruk-hai siege captain - 85
Uruk-hai ballista - 65
6 orcs with shield - 36

Vrasku - 60
12 uruk-hai with crossbows - 66

Orc captain with shield - 45
4 orcs with two-handed weapons - 24

498 points
41 models
21 breaking point
Trying to be both be as cheap a bitch as possible and use the ballista because it's a cool model.

Oh, and another point as to army building, the bow limit.
Unless your army has a special rule saying otherwise, you can't have more than a third of your models armed with bows. If you notice that most of the plastic kits have 4 swordsmen, 4 spearmen and 4 bowmen, that's why.
And really, since the game tends to work well on smaller levels, one plastic box and a hero model is a good army to learn on.

I do this.
A lot.

>not leaving your models unmodified and referring to your army list for their actual wargear
>not banking on your opponent forgetting you don't play WYSIWYG to sneak in some equipment you didn't pay the points for for a turn or two

you cunt

Nice against mounted units. Nothing quite as satisfying as dismounting a fell beast

I always run the heroes as they are. No modifications

Well, its a pretty good value box.

>Warbands of 12 guys maximum (or 6 cavalry)
i don't think there was a limit like that for cavalry. for war machines there was

Except those aren't the old ones.

These are.

...

These are really cool

Those are the named LotR Ringwraiths.
Thematically, aesthetically, and in gameplay the new Nazgul are named Castellans

...

I guess. It’s a shame Hobbit Nazgul were the way they were although I can understand why they were used.
In the books they were all in Mordor warring with Gondor at the time? Or did that come after?

Why is the Tainted so shit lads?

It’s annoying how inconsistent the rules writers are in that kinda thing. A lot of named orcs can slap a shield on their model for no other reason than gameplay, but others don’t get the option. Same with options for horses on some Captains and the like

Grishnakh vs Gorbag? The eternal debate.

Why did you give him an axe?

Knight of Umbar is the best one

It wasn't me it was some guy on YouTube

And obviously he wanted to use the superior piercing strike power attack that axes get, since the rules just say you go by whatever the model is armed with

imo, thats just WAACfagging. Just use the model as it is ffs.

Yea thankfully the newer profiles seem to mostly denote what hand weapon the guy comes with

This wasn't a problem until special strikes were invented.
If you wanted uruk-hai with looted axes or corsairs with hook hands it was all the same and was only done for aesthetics.
Now if your men get broken and all you have left to fix them are hirdmen axe arms then you're in a precarious position.

AoS fags on suicide watch as sigmar is loosing shelf space to the Hobbit.

Hi !
I want to go back in the game but have a few reservation about the warband rule aspect. I read in the last thread (or the one before) that you can only take 6 cavalry and not 12 like foot model. I can't go to the closest GW shop to ask for confirmation atm but didn't see anything about that in the pdfs. What's your take on this ?
Also I dug up three black numenorean, nothing stop me tu use them as marshal to start a mordor army, right ?
And last, being very poor, what are good alternative to GW paint ?

Thank you and sorry for bad english.

Nah, that user was misinformed.
Nothing stops you from using them as a Marshall. Might want to paint him differently or do a weapon swap if you’re using others as regular troops.
Couldn’t advise on alternate paints sorry

>99% plastic game loosing the shelf space for store exclusive resin kits

No, gonna use all three of them as marshal, unless I have missed new model.

Thank you for your input !

I wouldn't have minded AoS as much if the rules weren't just 40k dumbed down to the point of absurdity. Or had killed the old world.
Or had space marines.

>if the rules weren't just 40k dumbed down to the point of absurdity
>meanwhile the 40k is using revised AoS ruleset
I always wonder how many of whiny bitches actually played the AoS

I do, I play AoS, and it's a shit game with shit lore. It's only fun for rolling dice mindlessly on a table. I have had a regional manager of GW even tell me, that GW refers to it as Warhammer for kids.

Are Battle Companies advancements based on current or initial equipment? Does bought equipment that the promoted guy can use carry over?

i.e. if I gave a Mordor Orc with a bow a two hander, would he turn into a tracker or could I choose a warg rider since he has both?

If I gave a spear orc a shield, would he keep the shield when he became a morannon orc with spear?

>I'm playing a game I don't like
>Also my dad is working for Nintendo and he told me stuff and things

That sends me back, I still have my heroscape templar on my bookshelf.

No one needs to lie to shit on "4+/4+/4+" the game.

Yea, you tell em. Roll off/6+ the game is way more nuanced.

>4+/4+/4+

An elf who moved shooting a goblin that's in the second rank?

Actually it's "roll off, and then roll 4+ because one of you faggots is piercing striking".

Take it to your containment board guys
Current. In the situation that he has both I would play it that he gets to choose. We would need to wait on an FAQ to be certain but in the meantime just find out how your own playgroup rules it.

Shit good point

From a pure WAACfag perspective, consider the Morgul Knights kit. The Black Numenoreans would still be useful as dismounts, but the armoured horse will make the unit more effective. Just noticing that Marshall’s can’t get lances wtf

No clearly it's a charging dwarf ranger throwing an axe at a hobbit with a fate point

>We would need to wait on an FAQ to be certain Do you think that GW will FAQ it? It seems that GW is releasing skirmish supplements for each of their games just to drop them in a week after the release

Can anyone tell why is everyone hating Hobbit starter?

It’s a Limited Edition box that went on sale like half a decade ago. It’s actually not a bad purchase if you are interested in either of the forces included

Deluxe limited edition with exclusive mini that is still available in plentiful numbers many years after its release.
I don't hate it (has a poop bucket), but it's quite easy to mock.

It's mostly laughing at the fact that they've still got plenty of their "limited edition, buy this now because it'll be gone forever soon" set left in stock, owing to the movies being shit and melty goblins looking like total ass

It's a fine place to start if you want a melty-town army but they released it expecting huge popularity and it just fell flat because the movies are garbage

As a newbie interested with Hobbit I find it boring desu. I would rather buy a box with two "real" armies rather than a bunch of heroes versus a horde army. Two armies of 2 full warbands per player would be a better product for new players imo

Battle of Azanulbizar is what they should have done.

Imagine something like AoS. As much I hate it it did make some good decisions.
So a $40 starter that is just 9 warriors vs 6, then the $80 adds more warriors and introduces heroes, then the shifty $160 version that doesn't need to exist for this type of game.

>not Mirkwpod elves vs spiders

Azog, Bolg and 24 Gundabad Orcs vs Thorin, Thror and 24 Dwarves. I'd go for that.

Thats for when sales begin to drop off. Not enough movie characters to sell sets of of them.

>all that resin in a starter set

morgul knights aren't waacfag tier though? too expensive

Obviously alternate starter set is an alternate material.
If you’re requiring him to stick to existing models then Hunter Orcs work just as well. Similar to the Moria goblins in the Last Alliance box

They aren’t, but considering how he wants to use them they are. Unless your hero is Thranduil, if you can take a mount, you take the mount

What could have been. We got fucking refugee dwarves, yet no plastic evil forces from the prologue

People might hate AoS for whatever reason they want but the newbie-friendly system is great. That's why GW copied it to 40k.
The $125 box has everything you need for a "real" game but not enough for the lowest tier of legal point-based games. Two armies of 2 warbands with a captain model and a named model each would work here.
Too poor for the biggest box or you have it already and want to expand it? Buy the medium one for $80 with a warband and a captain for each player and call it a day
If you want to just give the game a try buy the box for $40 with 6 models per player. You can use them to play demo games, learn how to paint them etc.

The secret of keeping the game alive are bundles like this - people want to buy their shit with a discount and that is the whole trick

But we have whole warnings for $65! That's even cheaper than start collecting!
Granted, they're the same model count as a much cheaper plastic box, and they have no heroes, and most aren't even in stock, and they're online only. But it balances out.

Special strikes were a mistake.

Middle-axe strategy battle game

Agreed

because it is a good looking model.

in GW it often goes like this: bad rules = good models, ugly models = good rules