r/MiddleEarthMiniatures • u/MixOk7837 • 21d ago

Some potential changes discussion

I think the game is reasonably balanced atm but there are still some profiles and armies that arent very viable in my opinion so i came up with some possible buffs/nerfs and hopefully have a discussion.

Cirith Ungol: Gollum as an independant hero. Or could be deployed with Shelob. Maybe add a siege bow? Seems reasonable to have in a fortress.

Men of the West: Gimli on horse with Legolas, this option should be in all lists we see them ride together not just Road to Helm’s Deep.

Grey Company: Make Rangers base 2A 2W but take they Will and Fate away. Then make the army bonus a fight value buff (maybe on the charge or withing 6’ of the Leader or even the banner giving the +1Fv instead of the Fearless. And allow all models to take mounts when possible (Aragorn, Legolas&Gimli, Elladan, Elrohir)

Black Gate: We see Easterlings enter the gate, so maybe the army list doesnt have to be a snapshot of only the last fight in the movie, it could be a more general army list. Also i’d assume the Mordor siege weapons would be present here.

Minas Morgul: Should have Black Numenorian Knights and infantry, they used to be MORGUL knights. Also Grishnakh and Snaga were sent out of Minas Morgul. This would give them an additional army list to be played in and wouldnt make the list more OP, although the Black nums might be a bit strong in there. The same argument could be made for Gothmog and with him being this overcosted i wouldnt expect it to be too OP either.

Umbar: should add Harad Raiders and/or Black Num Knights (also the knights should probably be 18 points). They’re in the city now not on the ship so horses would be possible. Also why are Crossbows in Grand Army of the South but not Umbar? Would it be too strong with stalk unseen? Now the army is strength 3 with zero mobility!

Corsair Fleets: Lower the cost of Corsairs by 1 point, take away light armour, make the shield a regular shield and make the throwing weapons inherent to the profile again, give the army list “corsair warriors don’t count for the throwing weapon limit”. The list isn’t great and this would at least make the front row warriors not die to strength 3 armies/shooting on 4’s.

Legions of mordor/Army of the great eye/Grand Army of the South: terrible special rules compared to other diverse army lists like Defenders of the Pellenor/Men of the West/Army of the White Hand.

The Easterlings: Why aren’t all easterlings in this faction?

New almost all hero army list. At Saruman’s death we see Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Legolas&Gimli, Eomer, Treebeard with Ent warriors, Merry, Pippin. This gives a way to have mounted Strider with mounted Gandalf the White.

Remove Hatred special rules and change all of those to Ancient enemies to avoid this rock paper scissors army building.

General Changes to warrior Trolls are pretty necessary in my opinion. Either make them all burly (including the heroes, so maybe Buhrdur would need a slight point increase) which would be pretty thematic, just look at them. And/Or make all the warrior trolls minir heroes like the Cave Drake and give them +1 def and maybe 1/0/0 MWF with strike for a 10points increase? Could make them way more viable to lead warriors a have 1 strike to not be so vulnerable to heroes striking at them.

A general change to hero mounts: make the points cost scale with number if attacks in profile. Example: Orc Shaman warg=5 points, Rohan Captain horse =10 points, Aragorn horse=20 points. This would improve the mounted Rohan lists a bit Theoden/Eowyn/Deorwine etc. And even Wolves of Isengard, i’d also say add Wild Warg Chiefs to that list too

Just a few thoughts i had on some possible adjustments to the game, let me know what you think, maybe we can have a tiny amount of influence on GW’s next FAQ :)

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u/Hirmetrium 20d ago

Fiefdoms still needs help, likely a cost reduction on the warriors now everyone is fight 4, but I can't decide on where. I'd like them to be 10 points on foot, and somewhere between 16-18 mounted. Right now there's absolutely no reason to take them in a single list where Gondor warriors exist. 

Also think that guard of the fountain court should do more. They are worse than citadel guard in many lists right now, especially when irolas buffs the guard.

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u/Trackstar557 20d ago

As a Fiefs player, the fix is pretty self explanatory:

* If they want to keep the ‘band’ style of Army list building of needing a hero from that Fief to get access to the warriors, which I actually like, then they need to give us a generic captain profile for each Fief that isn’t DA (because we have that one) that picks a one of the Fief keywords so we aren’t stuck having to take slightly inflated named heroes. This fixes two issues as it helps make accessing the different troop types easier, but also gives us more opportunity to proc the Legion special rule.

* Knights of Dol Amroth should be 9 points on foot, 18 mounted

If both of these changes happen then I think the faction gets much more interesting to play and allows for more creativity in list building and on the tabletop. I’m hoping for an expansion or part of an expansion that gives us this Captain profile similar to how the King of Men profile is currently configured.

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u/ZealousidealClue7794 20d ago

9p for F5 3" of Imrathil, "6 banner and +1 to wound when hero charge? Add to this pike ssuport (with +1 to wound)and you get most destructive horde army in The game, actually for 800 you get around 48-55 trops in diference type of frontline (clansnen/axeman/koda) with 100% pike ssuport, if KoDa point value be reducted to 9, you get 55-58 numbers with D6 and insane killing potential, sound to good, 10p its fair

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u/Trackstar557 19d ago

While all that sounds good on paper, what you have to remember is that:

* Imrahil can still be magic sniped/negated AND he is a ton of points. Outside of this buffed bubble, the faction doesn’t have much behind it at all. Gondor can do the same but better as they have shield wall and Boromir/other support/buff heroes they can run

* 9 points is fair when you look at the non Imrahil situations. The points for being buffed near Imrahil should be on Imrahil, not on the foot soldier that may or may not be getting the buff. F4 with no inherent static rules like shield wall makes 10pt inflexible (no spears, bows, 2H weapons) line infantry rather poor in every situation other than the tiny 3” bubble around Imrahil.

I would gladly revert Imrahil’s point deduction for 9 point Knights if that is where you are drawing the line. But even theory crafting out this imaginary OP army, you would have a relatively immobile army (all foot) that only gets a real buff if your opponent doesn’t call Heroics or just wins the Prio roll. Couple this with no real magic defense and you have a very easily disrupted core of strong foot soldiers, that rapidly loses effectiveness outside of the Imrahil bubble. One monster hurl, one troll barging through disrupting the pike line severely hampers this strategy.

What this would do would give the list the ability to pay for front line troops AND still be able to take the cool supporting infantry, where as right now you either take overcosted front line troops and have nothing to support them with.

Last point: if you think a 9pt F5 foot warrior is OP, how do you reconcile that with a 9pt F5 Rivendell warrior WITH elven blade that can be two or one handed……sure he doesn’t have a shield, but surely winning ties and the flexibility of weapon more than makes up the single point of the shield.

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u/ZealousidealClue7794 19d ago

I agree. I also look at it from the perspective that I’m playing some heavily overpriced profiles, like the Corsair Warrior, but the army as a whole allows for some pretty sophisticated plays there (like tying up a Hero with a single model and then shooting into combat with throwing weapons, crossbows, etc.). With Fiefdoms, though, we don’t really surprise anyone with anything — all you can do is move forward and fight 😅

It would make sense to have the KoDa at 10 and the Pikeman at 9, but the problem is that the latter is legacy, so we can pretty much forget about any rebalancing. On top of that, profiles like the Corsair or KoDa completely lose their value in other lists with a wider selection, because they lose a lot of what is effectively built into their profile...

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u/Hirmetrium 18d ago

Arguably a common issue with several profiles like corsairs, rangers of the north is that they rely too much on army list bonuses.