I can’t fathom the reasoning behind removing special strikes. When I started learning the game I just looked over special strikes and went “Oh, these look cool, but they’re optional, I’m just going to skip them for now.” Then a while later when I’d gotten the basics down and wanted something more to push the gameplay I read how special strikes worked and it added an interesting new aspect for me. That was it. it was like, what, 2 pages of rules I can ignore if it’s too complex? Who did they do this for?
Because a majority of the special strikes are trash and the only weapons worth “converting/swapping” are axes. Why bother remember the numerous rules for whips or staffs or how to use stab? *eye roll.* There wasn’t even an order of operations for their implementation until the FAQ. Their utility is nice, but their implementation was clunky, and unnecessarily slowed the game down splitting dice. What it’ll likely be replaced by is a all encompassing rule that allows anyone regardless of weapon to “reckless strike.” Reckless strike: -1 to your duel roll (but you receive a +1 to wound/or/reroll 1’s to wound).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with nesting various Special Strike rules into the profiles instead of the current ridiculous blanket application where hobbits and big burly warriors can both "piercing strike" with an "axe".
My wife plays Rohan. In her FIRST game the E'owyn rule came up. Poor Theoden fell to a Troll, E'owyn stayed near him, fought the troll for several rounds always made her courage, and finally killed the Troll. So, it DOES come up. lol.
I'm still pretty excited myself - I'm one of those people who never really used any of the special strikes (I initially got into the hobby like 15 years ago when they didn't exist yet and they never really stuck with me when I got back in and actually started playing a lot this year) so I'd love to see them reworked into model profiles. I also own the Legions of Middle Earth book and I can really see the potential with combining them with the LL concept going forward. Armies like Minas Tirith which currently covers like four(?) different times in the story being split up into a bunch of different, more focused lists do sound cool to me. If they also include the ally lists I think it won't limit army building as much as people fear (though this might just be hopium talking). The legends bit I'm more worried about. Not so much for the rules as I don't foresee the group I play with banning legends, but models becoming even less available is going to suck. Granted, they might still do the occasional MtO run and 3D modelers will likely fill in any gaps that are left but it's still a shame. Overall, though, without knowing any specifics of how these things will be implemented it's all guesswork, I suppose. Or hell, if the upcoming movies do well we may get additional stuff for underdeveloped factions anyway. All I'm saying is please GW finally gimme a list representing Gilmi becoming Lord of the Glittering Caves featuring old school dwarves and Rohan models.
Also, 2 thumbs up for scrapping special strikes. Keep the good often used stuff but remove the rest to make space for new mechanics. A good game makes tough decisions
My guess is that special strikes will be added to certain profiles as special rules. As a newer player im excited for the new edition so hopefully it lands well with the community.
Another great chat. A bit worried it might divide the community. I play mainly historical games and there are some sets where gamers are using different versions of the same rules so some are on version 1 and others are version 3, and they can't play each other. I would suppose that competitive gamers will have to use the new rules, and I can understand why you are worried. And you are going to have to buy four new books. At the moment I'm thinking that since I only fight maybe six games a year I might as well stick with the rules I have. We don't play all the rules, especially special strikes, and never use LL. In fact our army building is very random. Does make me wonder who GW think their target market is.
In my Eastern Canadian region between London Ontario to Quebec City I'd say there are just over 200 tournament active players, the majority likely being casual non competitive. One league for each province; Quebec and Ontario, with each league having several tournaments of their own. This is spread across 6 or 7 cities with 3 of them being major. So it kind of paints the picture that the game is very niche and very much casual in my region
Still remaining optimistic. I am okay with the move away from the alliance matrix. Even with the loss of choice. Other games dont really have mixed faction lists, and MESBG was always more a thematic game to me. There is still too much we dont know. And having someone so invested personally in the game leading the charge with new rules means a lot.
I don't think they will squat entire armies just because they are not in the movies or books, when one of their most popular armies, Easterlings, is 90% made up by GW
Having book-centric creatures and armies IS what makes the game for me, and I think extends the reach of the game. Plus, it’s too limiting not to include book lore.
Easterlings has some quite good plastic models, even pretty new sculpts comparatively, so a good guess is theyre staying. If nothing else just for the ”easy money”. Khand and far Harad on the other hand is way more likely to got he way of the dodo. Imho anyway..
I think concerning the legendairy style approach: this gives the chance instead of the army bonus, to add alot of special legion like rules to the armies we all know and love, meaning everyone gets pimped to level it all out more , because the legendairy legions had alot of power creep, and you will still be able to do alot of alliances thru what is allowed
I'd just point towards classic space marines... Nice GW talking being clear about shelf life of Angmar, but surely they could have updated Angmar for the new rules before release. It's not models that require long tooling times, surely they could have simply updated the rules before printing.
I think it's likely due to things like the added new edition stats, ex. intelligence. So if they wanted to release Rise of Angmar before the new edition, they kind of have to do it this way otherwise some of the stats may not make sense.
Very well thought out discussion on what could happen. Hopefully GW continues to release articles providing more clarity every week or two, but I think we can all agree that we trust the mesbg game designers. The new edition will be different, but who knows, it could be even more fun. Staying positive until we know for sure :)
It's a shame about the Rise of Angmar book being released just before the new edition, as an Angmar player I would've jumped on this book. Alas I'll wait until the new edition and or free PDF.
All I really want from this edition, is for GW to give us more Khazad-Dum dwarf minis and expansions. Khazad-Dum is such an awesome faction and while it doesn't suffer from having too few minis like other mega ignored factions have, I still think Khazad-Dum dwarves can be expanded and imporved. Also, it would be so cool to have a Gimli Glittering Kingdom faction. Would definitely love to see that, but very unlikely.
I play the game casually at tournaments. I have no problems with Special Strikes even though I ever only used one, Piercing, I can appreciate the depth in tactics added. I agree as well that Feint is cheesy because of no downside to it.
Some very reasonable insights. I get the outrage from the competitive folks. This is a huge deal to you and it’s a bummer that so much is changing because of the effort you’ve put into learning and honing your experience….But as a casual person…..more invested in the creative (converting etc) side of the hobby… I don’t find spending hours “optimizing a list” fun. I’m terrible at the game, I know it. I just want to see some cool models, check out cool terrain and roll some dice. The new army choice style sounds like it will help me and other casual folks simplify the process a bit. Also seeing simply can / can’t ally on a miniatures profile etc may actually help some people consider different options that they don’t see before because they didn't spend much time familiarizing themselves with the old matrix. I know “git gud” is a fair argument when it comes to playing / knowing all the ins and outs of the game…. But a lot of folks just won’t. The same goes for “special strikes,” unfortunately I’m one of those “I forgot / never use them” type of people. So for me… nothing is lost there. I would get stuck reading about them every time 🤦🏼♂️ My concern is just how much “book stuff” will take a back-seat to movie stuff. I love so much of the content that didn’t make it into the movies and hope it is t treated too differently. But it’s always hard to be given something and then see it taken away. I hope you fellas have enough left to still enjoy the activity. Thanks for making the content that you do.
Thanks for your perspective, very reasonable as well for the other side! What you're saying is one of the positives we brought up after the call, hopefully the new edition is very easy and digestible for new players and we do see a boom in this game we all love (in different ways)! -Richard
Not a fan of a lot of the changes, that being said we will see. The thing that brought me to the game is that GW did not mess with it much so that time has ended
Intelligence for monsters will be like blood bowl big guys. Before they can move they have to make a test. Hill troll intelligence will be a reroll or something like this
@intothewestpodcast by the way I recently moved to Vancouver and am looking for places in the city to play MESBG, do you know of a discord/facebook group I can join?
Welcome to our scene! You can join the West Coast Hobbits League on Facebook and ask to join the Facebook chat and discord. The most regular weekly gaming is done at MTMPrintworks out in Langley every Wednesday but there's groups that play at Strategies LGS in Vancouver once in a while. We also have monthly tournaments in the greater Vancouver area (and Washington/Oregon which is part of our regional league)! Looking forward to meeting you, I'm sure we'll talk more soon :) -Richard
@intothewestpodcast thanks for the info, unfortunately MTM printworks is too far for me for regular gaming, though strategies is closer. I'll definitely come to MTM at some point though (and probably end up a lot poorer, their models look amazing)
Wonder if getting rid of special strikes will increase the role of two handed models to help leverage damage? Also, if they have generic lists that can ally x hero with y hero from other lists because they make sense, and hit hard as a combo it absolutely makes sense to give pure themed lists a boost so theyre incentivised. Why the hell was galadriel floating around with lake towners 😅 I get the notion of list building to power up your gaming, but the skill should be with the armies and not just the best combos. You can see it in the dragon emperor LL, where the undercosting made a list too efficient and therefore average players got a huge advantage because they had a spare goldmine, rather than because they found a list they loved and honed it to perfection themselves after grinding out all the errors that they made on a strategy level.
I'm okay with a more thematic vibe actually, my argument was more for flexibility in list building so if they can achieve both, I'll be happy! -Richard
Had the same idea with two-handed weapons. But i still wish they make the regular Two-handed weapon a bit better. Eather give them the Lamedon clansmen ruel (nat 6 does not get -1) or just make them a "change hand-weapon to two-handed weapon for free", so they are at least cheaper.
I think instead or special strikes I would enjoy seeing them add baseline rules to the different weapons, like +1 str -1 defense for axes, reroll 1s for swords, knocking down for hammers, +1 to wound vs trapped for dagger etc. Something like that even if it's not that exactly. Also if they also remove shielding there's a possiblity that even if they don't do anything else games will still go faster even without strikes.that being said I do like special strikes as an idea but imo their current iteration was poorly balanced and not that well executed.
Most of all, thanks for the breakdown. When just starting with MESBG during the pandemic I built a Hobbit army, which was problematic, relied upon special strikes, and was just a numbers game I soon tired of. If this new edition makes armies like that viable vs the F5 meta we’re in, I’m all for it. As for the Legacy, sometimes less is more. When you’re either paying too much on ebay or to a 3d printer somewhere for that rare model, this well be better. Like Girion was essential to a whole way to play Dale, and he was never available. I only worry for the constant churn of AOS/40K being introduced more heavily into the game vs the subtleties we have now.
The lack of miniatures availability is an artificial problem, though, isn't it? GW intentionally chose to just not make the models, in spite of a demand being there. Rather than just making the models that only they (or recasters) produce and solving the issue that way, they're just going to drop them entirely. I've little doubt many models are going to get dropped just so they can produce new ones with profiles that make the previous miniature almost worthless as they are; like what they do now with 40k and AoS. Not to mention the scale creep, which would take us from 25mm to god only knows what.
My D8 Iron Hills shield wall rejoices at the end of special strikes...my Orcs not so much. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Intelligence rolls will be this editions rule no-one remembers.
Pretty new to the game and i learned to special strike with my lorien elves and angmar (feint, piercing strike).. its somewhat a miss for me here. As i started the game i was very annoyed that you cant get some models anymore beside ebay (shade, gulavhar, tracker, black nums,..) and profiles with horse. Its also bad to get new players into the game so i can really see the argument of the legends book.. since i really like lothlorien, i am not that pissed to ban yellow soup lists, because i am more the themey guy, but i can really understand the less option opinion.. some LLs really built themself. Overall i guess it will be good to get new players into the game
My timing is unbelievably bad. I've been thinking about getting into MESBG for years. I finally do it and a week after I pour through the army profiles and over half the rules, I find out the biggest changes ever made to the game are supposed to drop any day now. They said "in the coming weeks about 8 weeks ago" that's 2 months where I'm from.. 😅 Also seems ironic to me that they talk about being truer to "narrative" play in regards to the movies. Meanwhile the hobbit invented characters like tauriel that never existed in the true narrative to begin with. I personally wouldn't want to play heroes like azog or bolg or radaghast or tauriel or even Thorins company because they remind me of how they screwed up Tolkien's lore to try and copy the LotR trilogy, and made the dwarves a bunch of battlefield goofballs. 😅
i'm thinking of getting into mesbg, but this new rulebook talk makes me wanna hold off till then, (Also why all the cool iron hills units have to be out of stock T_T)
I totally understand but there's plenty of resources online to start learning the rules in the meantime, the core of the game won't change that much! Just hold off from buying any books for now :)
I'm a casual returning player. Teaching new players, you skip special strikes. There is a risk to using them. But judicious use you can turn a losing position into a winning one.
its fine teaching to new players not using special strikes. but you also dont use heroic actions and magic as well for new players. those rules are for when you have more experience under your belt.
i see my self casual that likes to dabble in the tourneys here in Australia. but i dont like them removing special strikes. it was a nice addition that braught a way what weapons troops are using matter. i dont understand why people ignoring them. in places i have played they were not ignored. i also dont like what i have read about being more narrative play. if thats the direction they are going in match play to be narrative play i feel like this is going to start killing the game. also if i wanted narrative play, i would be playing the senarios that have the battles from the movies that are in basicly every army or rule book. there all rdy in the game people just don't play them regularly.
I agree wholehartedly - taking away choice is not a good thing. But nothing compelles us (as TOs) to have to follow these new rules. We can choose to run army building «open» for our players.
Yes, but the problem is the game is not that popular, wargame are pretty niche , there isn't thousands of players locally, often not even a hundred, and mesbg is a niche in a niche, if you divide a small community into even smaller community, that's even less players
I really hate LLs because I've found them either super no skill (which I do admit I sometimes enjoy) or without any variety, so unless GW makes the new edition not like LLs I'm going to be sad. I do however really enjoy the removal of special strikes, just because I no longer have to convert weapons!
While I understand that people get worried about changes to a game they love, I do wish people would take a positive attitude until proven otherwise. I have been seeing so much speculation being thrown around as fact, and assumptions based on zero evidence. Right now we know pretty much zero about how anything is going to work in the new edition. As such I find negative attitudes and speculation to not be super helpful. People are entitled to hold whatever opinions they like of course, all I would like is that there was more positivity and/or lets wait and see what the rules actually are, rather than all the gloom I see floating round right now. I speak as an experienced competitive player in the UK scene. Love the videos though guys, always excited when a new one pops up, keep up the good work :)
About the list-building. I get it, it's scary, I want my freedom but there are things I don't like in current edition. Gil-galad in Rivendell, company dwarves in Moria, yellow alliances and god the useless trolls. There are many things that could be better, but GW better not fix it by destroying theory crafting. And I don't think they will.
I’m a long term LOTR fanatic and a massive fan of Warhammer. I play 40k but I’m desperate to get into MESBG. The big question is, is now a good time to delve in? Or is the game on its way out?
With a new edition dropping any month now, the game seems guaranteed to have Games Workshop’s support, at least for the next few years. It’s a great time to get started!
@@intothewestpodcast thank you for your reply! This is great news. I’m torn between armies but I think the value gained from the Osgiliath box is too good to turn down. I can get it for £100 still here in the UK. My main decision is between Minas Tirith, Elves, Isengard or Mordor.
The Osgiliath box is great value, just bear in mind the rulebook will only be valid for a few more months. We have a video called Top 8 Beginner Armies that dives a little deeper into those armies you mentioned that might give you some useful information!
My guess for their primary goal for this edition is to grow with the release of new media again. MESBG was the best selling GW game when the Lotr movies were being released, since Return of the King the game has been in slow decline because the interest just isn't there. The Hobbit movies bumped it a bit but not much and again the game went into decline in popularity despite how nice the models are and how clean the rules are. So they want to build the game up and bring in new players, with the revamp of the PJ Tolkien cinematic universe. So we're getting the War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum and if they are good movies, they might re-ignite interest in the game. What they don't want then, is a bunch of new people coming to the game against veterans of years gone by, who know the ins and outs of complex rules like special strikes, because gating the game behind higher tier players, who the majority of those who still play the game will be, will just discourage new players. All PvP style games that are old have this issue, the vets are not willing to give new players the breathing room because they are desperate for games themselves, and ultimately do more harm to the game than good. The other thing they want to avoid is a bunch of armies these movie going audiences have never heard of, all over the table putting them off, or not attracting their interest. So the purge of unrecognisable armies and the levelling of the playing field with rules trims are needed if they want the game to be more newcomer friendly.
May be it was the best selling game (if it was, wich im not sure) because the older versions were excellent; minis were cheap; game was funny; it wasnt all that unbalanced, unlike WH; game was fast to play; easy to learn; etc
@@AlexAlex-zt3hi More than just their best selling game it pretty much saved GW from going under. No one was interested in 40k and especially fantasy at the time. This was way before GW fleshed out the 40k universe and turned it into its own money making franchise with novels and other extended merchandise. Old 40k players will even tell you that the game used to be about making your own story on the table with your own chapter of space marines led by your own commander. When the lore around the game got fleshed out more GW pivoted hard into memicing that experience on the tabletop, making it more about the named lore characters and less about having fun in the sandbox and that worked catapulting 40k to the top of TTWG.
@@hurmet Played/collected 40k since 3rd Ed, Fantasy since 6th Ed, Lotr since The Two Towers, and almost every specialist game since I was 10. Cant talk about RT or earlier versions of Fantasy. Im not sure abbout your claim of LOTR saving Gw, what saved it was when it went into the stock market, wich marked the ruin of the systems/service for the clients. 40k was rocking it worldwide; Fantasy was underselling, except in Spain and Italy, and thats why they fleshed the game later. Lotr had a source of players because the movies were pretty recent, and they even made a magazine that sold the minis EVEN cheaper than the very own GW! But after The Return of the King the game nearly died...and if you remember well, in one of the LOTR iterations they turned the individual minis game into an unit system, with those bases with circles to put the minis in. Where you are right 100% is in the part of the named characters, when I got in the game you couldnt use them unless your opponent gave you permission. And they were quite weak...untill they made overpowered. For example, in Fantasy, Teclis was a "normal archmage" with some shenanigans in 6th Ed, but in the 7th Ed/New "codex" they made him so stupidly broken that he was a must in the list, no matter what. If I dont remember bad, hell I can even check the books later, he was even cheaper than the normal archmage. The books where there from the beggining, and a lot of the characters of the time too. They probably learnt that it was bad to make a "named character" (the first Sicarius, the captain with double lightning claws from the campaign where they sold the Vostroyans) and then erase his gaming profiles, because, well, you know, people wanted to use that "new shiny mini" they purchased a few months earlier! (Valten could be another good example, from the Empire from Fantasy; or Eltharion the blind from the High Elves)
I'm a new player, and personally if I can't ally to make my dream army i'll just drop the game, playing only with legendary legion dont interest me at all, and from all the fuse online i'm not the only one who don't want le creativity of the list building gone
The thing about this game i love more then anything else, is rocking up to an event with a crazy army centred around a niche gennerally disregarded unit or character and try and make them work (all cav easterlings, golfimbull angmar) but this hange to army lists has kneecapped me. My most recent project was to make the dragon work, and what ive been working on is a list running him with easterlings as brorgir has the only fury ive seen that isnt given the key word (mitigating the dragons weakness in survival instinct) and then fill out the rest of the list with eaterling black dragons or even drakes for theme if you dont mind losing. but now that wont be allowed or possible and neither will a million other combinations we make up in our minds
That’s a cool and creative combo! Agree, it’s unfortunate we probably won’t have the freedom to build lists like that soon. Hopefully you get a chance to play that army still, before the new edition!
As a long-time Warhammer Fantasy fan, and someone that's been playing 40k since 5th, there is no reason to feel anything other than dread when GW announces new rules. They're always written in the most convoluted way possible, taking a paragraph to say something that could be said (and was in previous editions said) with just few sentences, and often times you have to read them over repeatedly just to follow their train of thought. The current (or I guess now previous as of the Vespid Stingwing and Scion box) edition of Kill Team is one of the most impermeable rules systems I have ever read in my damn life, and several of my friends have dropped that game before ever playing a single match because of the confused way they've written those rules. They also love absolutely gutting systems, overhauling them completely from systems that have been in place for roughly 20 years, purely (I believe) because the current developers absolutely do not understand the games they're writing for. They don't get it, they don't understand the direction and the premise men like Rick Priestley, Tuomas Pirinen, Andy Chambers, or even Alessio Cavatore, had in mind for the systems. They're awful at writing tabletop games and instead constantly try to make turn-based video games that are played on the tabletop, totally missing the point of why people play(ed) these games in the first place. They'll just keep ripping pieces out until it doesn't work at all, then put in all new systems to fix problems that they created; like removing 'wargear' points costs in 10th edition 40k, and ending up with problems like Crisis suits being "difficult to balance around their strongest wargear options", so they have to split Crisis suits into three different teams when they'd never have had the damn problem in the first place if they hadn't removed points costs. GW reminds me a lot of Blizzard Entertainment. I used to absolutely adore the games they produced, but once all the old guard left, the new blood seemingly had no clue what they were doing and little respect for what came before, tearing down what once was- and what ostensibly got them interested in working there in the first place- to create a lifeless, 'streamlined' husk built to sell product and satisfy the legal department and the shareholders, and not to be a fun game. My take, anyway. I don't trust GW any farther than I can throw them, which is not at all. Excuse the language, but I really don't think GW can not fuck things up at this point. Top that off with so many of their new models looking like ass nowadays, and you've got a product that's going to leave a very bitter taste in a lot of peoples' mouths and invariably see many quit. Not that GW will care.
@@TheGreySpectrum oof that's a very strong statement that we hope doesn't come to pass. Of course, I do respect your opinion and can see that as a possibility, however, my hopes lie in the fact the current rules writer is a competitive player in the GBHL... But we shall see... What is the specific change(s) for you that would entirely ruin MESBG for you?
@@intothewestpodcast Apologies for the delay in response, and for how wordy this ended up being. One of the major rules writers for 40k is, as I understand it, a top competitive player in the UK. In spite of that, we've seen a gradual breakdown in the pre-existing structures meant to balance the game, like 'wargear' points values and the Force Organization chart that stopped the game from just being Monster Mash or Oops! All Tanks. We've also seen a lot of the flavor and minutia gradually cut out of the game in the name of 'optimization'. That does lead me into my answer to your question, though. I wont enumerate these, because I don't think I can assign them primacy over one another, but the three things that would completely ruin the game for me are the loss of weapon and gear options, the death of army building, and 'squat'ing models and potentially whole ranges so they can re-sell you your army. Both AoS and 40k have numerous examples of all of these, and it is from witnessing GW do this with both of the games that I believe GW will attempt it. Almost everything in AoS and 40k that's from about 2018 onwards is monopose and is intended to be built precisely how GW tells you to build it, thus depriving us of options by simply not creating any for new miniatures. Army building today, in both AoS and 40k, is just the old Power Level system but rebranded as 'Points', using bigger numbers. It is extremely simplistic and can be done with very little effort, which along with the loss of options has completely- and I do mean "completely"- gutted the opportunity to spend time finely crafting an army that was uniquely yours out of the game. Really don't understand who at GW thought this was a problem and not a feature, or why they thought as much, but I digress. The last one, dropping models and ranges just so they can re-sell you what you already have, is something we've seen happen incrementally. With Warhammer Fantasy, we saw them drop Fantasy miniatures and slowly replace them with AoS-exclusive miniatures that tend to be noticeably larger, causing LoS issues that demand you either chop up and convert or otherwise alter your model so as to make it more inline with the current miniature it was replaced by, or just go buy the new one. Not to mention the rebasing you'd had to have done. They'd also completely change up the loadouts in some instances, causing similar issues to what I just covered, but also another more subtle problem. Currently, GW is phasing out regular Space Marines in favor of Primaris; although you can still buy and use Tactical Marines and Devastators, needing a Legends profile for neither, one is complete trash and you'd simply never take the other over the alternative options available to you. Options which are all, conveniently, Primaris. In this way, GW has been sabotaging models via the game to discourage people from buying them and people from using them, artificially creating the impetus for them to get rid of them entirely, and the impetus for you to buy up a whole new army instead of using the one you currently have. Considering those new Blood Angels we just got, and that golden Captain Underpants Coteaz, I don't much look forward to GW replacing a lot of our old Perry sculpts that have so much character to them, either.
@@intothewestpodcast For as little as I trust GW, I hope the same, too. I guess as an old WHFB fan, if I can say anything it's this; the MESBG community needs to consolidate if the worst comes to pass. People need to unify under the banner of this current iteration we have, and we'll need community leaders and big names on our side. If MESBG fans can do that, they can hold something together even after GW stops supporting this game as it is now. Don't be like us. Don't fracture into a dozen little factions that take years to coalesce into proper camps with some sort of structure. But, we'll see when we get there. Hope for the best, but expect the worst, yeah? I swear I'm not always so cynical, by the way; it's really just a GW (and Blizzard) thing.
'Simplifying and streamlining' is practically always synonymous with 'lowered skill ceiling' so I kind of expected all the tournament winning players to frown at it. Hopefully skill in the fundamentals and using the new individual special rules of profiles still translate to more wins so everyone feels its worth it to prove their tactical mettle. What were y'all playing a Howdah as for In The Ways? Flimsy fences? Sturdy fence? Purpose Built fortification? I asked that on FAQ all the time. I am also hoping that Intelligence lets you learn more and better manipulate order of events. Stuff like the lower Intelligence heroes having to have called Heroic Actions earlier than high Intelligence heroes that get to know the board state before they do (resolving tied Intelligence calls by priority). So you could imagine Boromir has to decide to roll his Heroic Strike first before the higher intelligence Sauron decides what heroic action they want to declare. Maybe Sauron doesn't need to Strike because Boromir still has lower Fv than him after his roll was a 1. He gets to see it and make a more informed decision of how to spend his Might. If Boromir was in a nearby combat and decided he didn't want to call a heroic, Sauron can declare Heroic Combat and now Boromir is in a dangerous situation because his opportunity was passed. This could lessen the effectiveness of cheap Might spam and instead help the super expensive army lists who are really low on Might be more economical with it, by exploiting decision making to their benefit. (Bonus mechanic idea, Elrond could spend Foresight to boost his Intelligence to use whatever these mechanics are. He might opt not Heroic at his typical I7, wait for Saruman's I7 to commit himself to something THEN raise his Intelligence to 8 using Foresight and counter call his planned action.) Affecting the actual roll-off of Heroic Moves and Heroic Combats might also benefit the more expensive lower Might models if they have more Intelligence, but is far more volatile and just leans more into RNG and not decision making. Some people were very opposed to this suggestion in Discord, concerned that the Orc heroes will just lose roll offs 67% of the time vs the average Man hero due to the bias to thinking orcs are dumb.
This will be the 3rd Edition of the Game: Return of the Theme. 😂 There is massive cope and fear taking over the community right now. It’s really not that deep. 1. Follow the $. 2. Follow the spirit of the game. I don’t think this game was ever supposed to be super competitive. Definitely more of a fun time with friends, drinking a beer and rolling dice. I can’t imagine the amount of times where Jay was reading FAQs going, “Jesus, this is nasty work. I never intended for this to be so gamey.” Regarding #1: How many times have we seen someone say, “I’m trying to figure out what army to play, but the options online seem very limited.” Boom! Let’s get rid of that hurdle, kill the bloat, then really focus on the models we actually plan to produce/sell. OOP, let’s move those to legacy. If people want to 3D print that stuff anyways, fine. But it won’t be playable in the new edition. Boom! Sales go up for the models that remain. Regarding #2: Notice the trend? If it feels like an Uber competitive community creation, let’s toss it, and get back to having a good time drinking beers and throwing dice. Special strikes, weapon swapping to use special strikes, yellow alliance/non themey loophole armies, In the Way manipulation. Think back to the Flying Monster FAQ. Using an Orc to screen/manipulate an In The Way for your Fell Beast = Gamey. Not aligned with the spirit of the game.
I don't think you're wrong with point #1 and it's absolutely valid - definitely geared more for new players rather than older players with a bigger collection but that's not a bad thing, so thanks for bringing that up. I do want to push back about making it more of a beer and pretzels style game, I think that can be dangerous as the uber competitive folk tend to be the ones that are more heavily invested into the game. I personally don't think the game will be as popular long term if they disregard the competitive aspects and focus on catering to the narrative/casual side, whether or not that was the original intention of the rules writers. I just think we have a great balance now with people being able to play thematic as well as go a bit crazy with list building; everyone has a different way to have fun with this hobby. -Richard
@@intothewestpodcast Hey! I’m trying to be compassionate and understanding here. 😂😂😂😂😂 I do agree it can rub the more competitive players wrong. I also know a guy who is close to Jay, who has every army and been a supporter since the origin, who is completely turned off by the game as is. I imagine that has to feel weird to Jay as the rules writer. I think the competitive players will still get their rocks off with the new edition. It’s what we do. We’ll still try and find the best armies, combos, special rules, and the cream will rise to the top. Cheers to whenever we play. I’ll bring the beer and pretzels 😂
I disagree about list building and armies on the table top. The game is currently “boring” to make lists and feels formulaic the entire process is 15min at a time compared to 40K or The Old World which actually has choice dichotomy and character customization of 30min or a hour. Each of those games lists playing completely different even with the same models except for character items. . . Ultimately, there shouldn’t be a “fluff” reason to take soup armies. Yellow alliances are largely a bane of the game. Soup alliances not only mostly look terrible like taking a cowboy Thorin on Goat or Gwahir in a Loth/Riv alliance + Numenor or even a Laketown army with your Saruman/Radgast just feels like a power game move for competitive balance specifically -fluff can’t argue it away. Forcing players to take a particular list, that has deficiencies (which is supposed to be apart of the game, every legion/army is supposed to have an obvious weakness) is not a bad implementation of force selection rules or game mechanics. It’s intrinsic in every war game. So when games skirt these frameworks it just makes it harder to balance and or boringly ubiquitous.
They are probably doing this to make everything easier for new players. No special strikes, no alliances and combining of different lists, in the way, and so on. All to jump on the hype train of the Ride of the Rohirrim that’s coming out. Which I understand, but I don’t like how they cater to much towards the new players and not towards the current loyal players that kept the hobby going for 20+ years. Building funny thematic lists with yellow alliances was fun. But everything because one big pool of LL’a now. Although it may help with people one dropping the Witch King or Sulladan into random lists. But that can be fixed in other ways. I get that some special strikes were being abused like quartering yourself with stabbing to get a win if you are holding certain objectives or maybe even the whole spear support thing. Where you could lower the fight value the front rank because it wouldn’t matter anyway due to a spear support. But here are other ways to fix that too. But then again it wouldn’t surprise me if a few years when all the new players are in they’ll say ‘look we introduced a cool new method where you can have different strikes depending on your weapon’. And ket’s be honest here the new book is just to sell you yet another book.
My son and I talk about list building a lot, I chat online with hobby friends about list options... if its just a cookie cutter way to rinse and repeat certain armies it will take away half our fun out of the hobby... so whilst excited, im a little concerned as they could so easily F this up on arrival
I played back in 2001-2006; all in the way were 4+, no special strikes; and I rediscovered the game last year; I feel like the new cool stuff are taken away from me. (And I'm a bit like gosh, I'll have to buy an new book after two years, is this WH40k or what ?)
If alliance matrix is gone that's genuinely going to drive some players away. Like 90% of my listbuilding is yellow alliances 😅. Cant imagine being stuck with just bland limited LLs, crikey.
@@Pabloski072037Its not about power obviously. For a long time LLs and some pure armies like Goblin Town have been the most successful ones. Its just interesting for listbuilding to make yellow alliances where you combine the strengths of different profiles. Like Khazad Dum dwarves and Arnor spearmen. Or Khandish chariot in Easterlings. Some of my favorite things have been frankly kinda bad like Isengard+Moria, but they've been super fun to play.
Removing special strikes suck because it defeats the purpose of kit bashing and now we can't use up those last 3 points in a 600 pt list that is at 597
I don't get people saying they dont mind special strikes leaving the game because they didnt use them. Less freedom is never good. You can't say you didn't lose anything. You lost the ability to choose.
To be honest this sounds a**. And the inclusion of the intelligence stat means that newer profiles such as the upcoming Arnor and Angmar can't be easily used for the old edition. Which might be its major purpose.
So my Witch King can only be killed by Eowyn now is that correct? I hate Lore nerds in MESBG and GW community they can complain about beardy gamers all they want they are the most toxic self imposing freaks in gaming - trying to impose their way they think things should be: Often reducing complexity so scrubs can feel like they are good at the game. You can take that as an Ogeetomo hot take if you wish 🙃 Sounds like my Mordor Stocks might be going up. Gothmog at fight 6 potentially and a pelennor fields army that actually has Ringwraiths (and near immortal Witchking), also potentially not having to fight eagles allied into every second good list. I think it's time the Wizard models got a revamp so I'm looking forward to that, maybe I will rebuild my tincan army from 2008 with Gandalf and make a Theoden/Rohan detachment and play both sides of the pelennor fields (mordor and minas Tirith/Rohan).
Removing special strikes is HUGE imo. It was ruining game balance where silly gobiln could kill elf warrior clad in full armor on 5..? Like really? Some elite troops were not elite at all because of this.
@@intothewestpodcast ruining was too big word actually it introduced imbalances that could be exploited by troops that normally would not stand a chance against better troops
Special strikes being removed is 🤌. Calling a special strike and rolling more dice for reroll 1s or losing armor or stabbing yourselves etc makes fights take so much longer
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I can’t fathom the reasoning behind removing special strikes. When I started learning the game I just looked over special strikes and went “Oh, these look cool, but they’re optional, I’m just going to skip them for now.” Then a while later when I’d gotten the basics down and wanted something more to push the gameplay I read how special strikes worked and it added an interesting new aspect for me. That was it. it was like, what, 2 pages of rules I can ignore if it’s too complex?
Who did they do this for?
Because a majority of the special strikes are trash and the only weapons worth “converting/swapping” are axes.
Why bother remember the numerous rules for whips or staffs or how to use stab? *eye roll.*
There wasn’t even an order of operations for their implementation until the FAQ. Their utility is nice, but their implementation was clunky, and unnecessarily slowed the game down splitting dice.
What it’ll likely be replaced by is a
all encompassing rule that allows anyone regardless of weapon to “reckless strike.”
Reckless strike: -1 to your duel roll (but you receive a +1 to wound/or/reroll 1’s to wound).
My headcanon is that some purple haired secondary had a short glance at it and didn't understand it right away which is why it was scrapped entirely.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with nesting various Special Strike rules into the profiles instead of the current ridiculous blanket application where hobbits and big burly warriors can both "piercing strike" with an "axe".
they did it for me. i am glad they are going away
@@andrewhetes1623 Found the competition gremlin. Why don't you go do something actually challenging like chess or something?
My wife plays Rohan. In her FIRST game the E'owyn rule came up. Poor Theoden fell to a Troll, E'owyn stayed near him, fought the troll for several rounds always made her courage, and finally killed the Troll. So, it DOES come up. lol.
That's awesome!!
My biggest worry is that the armies are going to lose a huge amount of troop and hero variety, moving GW profiles into a 3rd book/legacy.
I'm still pretty excited myself - I'm one of those people who never really used any of the special strikes (I initially got into the hobby like 15 years ago when they didn't exist yet and they never really stuck with me when I got back in and actually started playing a lot this year) so I'd love to see them reworked into model profiles. I also own the Legions of Middle Earth book and I can really see the potential with combining them with the LL concept going forward. Armies like Minas Tirith which currently covers like four(?) different times in the story being split up into a bunch of different, more focused lists do sound cool to me. If they also include the ally lists I think it won't limit army building as much as people fear (though this might just be hopium talking).
The legends bit I'm more worried about. Not so much for the rules as I don't foresee the group I play with banning legends, but models becoming even less available is going to suck. Granted, they might still do the occasional MtO run and 3D modelers will likely fill in any gaps that are left but it's still a shame.
Overall, though, without knowing any specifics of how these things will be implemented it's all guesswork, I suppose. Or hell, if the upcoming movies do well we may get additional stuff for underdeveloped factions anyway.
All I'm saying is please GW finally gimme a list representing Gilmi becoming Lord of the Glittering Caves featuring old school dwarves and Rohan models.
Also, 2 thumbs up for scrapping special strikes. Keep the good often used stuff but remove the rest to make space for new mechanics. A good game makes tough decisions
Great point!
My guess is that special strikes will be added to certain profiles as special rules. As a newer player im excited for the new edition so hopefully it lands well with the community.
Another great chat. A bit worried it might divide the community. I play mainly historical games and there are some sets where gamers are using different versions of the same rules so some are on version 1 and others are version 3, and they can't play each other.
I would suppose that competitive gamers will have to use the new rules, and I can understand why you are worried. And you are going to have to buy four new books.
At the moment I'm thinking that since I only fight maybe six games a year I might as well stick with the rules I have. We don't play all the rules, especially special strikes, and never use LL. In fact our army building is very random.
Does make me wonder who GW think their target market is.
In my Eastern Canadian region between London Ontario to Quebec City I'd say there are just over 200 tournament active players, the majority likely being casual non competitive. One league for each province; Quebec and Ontario, with each league having several tournaments of their own. This is spread across 6 or 7 cities with 3 of them being major. So it kind of paints the picture that the game is very niche and very much casual in my region
Still remaining optimistic. I am okay with the move away from the alliance matrix. Even with the loss of choice. Other games dont really have mixed faction lists, and MESBG was always more a thematic game to me.
There is still too much we dont know. And having someone so invested personally in the game leading the charge with new rules means a lot.
I don't think they will squat entire armies just because they are not in the movies or books, when one of their most popular armies, Easterlings, is 90% made up by GW
I hope the same, though easterlings were somewhat in the movies... At least moreso compared to Khand and Far Harad.
Having book-centric creatures and armies IS what makes the game for me, and I think extends the reach of the game.
Plus, it’s too limiting not to include book lore.
Agreed. If they go by only whats in the movie then The serpent Horde will only contain Haradrim warriors and Mumakil which I can't see happening.
Easterlings has some quite good plastic models, even pretty new sculpts comparatively, so a good guess is theyre staying. If nothing else just for the ”easy money”. Khand and far Harad on the other hand is way more likely to got he way of the dodo. Imho anyway..
I think concerning the legendairy style approach: this gives the chance instead of the army bonus, to add alot of special legion like rules to the armies we all know and love, meaning everyone gets pimped to level it all out more , because the legendairy legions had alot of power creep, and you will still be able to do alot of alliances thru what is allowed
I'd just point towards classic space marines... Nice GW talking being clear about shelf life of Angmar, but surely they could have updated Angmar for the new rules before release. It's not models that require long tooling times, surely they could have simply updated the rules before printing.
I think it's likely due to things like the added new edition stats, ex. intelligence. So if they wanted to release Rise of Angmar before the new edition, they kind of have to do it this way otherwise some of the stats may not make sense.
Very well thought out discussion on what could happen. Hopefully GW continues to release articles providing more clarity every week or two, but I think we can all agree that we trust the mesbg game designers. The new edition will be different, but who knows, it could be even more fun. Staying positive until we know for sure :)
Also do not get to doom and gloom, because its not out yet….im very exited for it all, especially my not legendairy legions getting boosts
Your not legendary legion will become a legendary legion 😂
It's a shame about the Rise of Angmar book being released just before the new edition, as an Angmar player I would've jumped on this book. Alas I'll wait until the new edition and or free PDF.
I would like to challange you on a list of expeted Legacy units. Looking forward to more content. Cheers!
All I really want from this edition, is for GW to give us more Khazad-Dum dwarf minis and expansions.
Khazad-Dum is such an awesome faction and while it doesn't suffer from having too few minis like other mega ignored factions have, I still think Khazad-Dum dwarves can be expanded and imporved.
Also, it would be so cool to have a Gimli Glittering Kingdom faction. Would definitely love to see that, but very unlikely.
It appearts that they took the new edition article down. It is no longer on the website, so maybe they are going back on these changes.
I play the game casually at tournaments. I have no problems with Special Strikes even though I ever only used one, Piercing, I can appreciate the depth in tactics added. I agree as well that Feint is cheesy because of no downside to it.
Some very reasonable insights.
I get the outrage from the competitive folks. This is a huge deal to you and it’s a bummer that so much is changing because of the effort you’ve put into learning and honing your experience….But as a casual person…..more invested in the creative (converting etc) side of the hobby… I don’t find spending hours “optimizing a list” fun. I’m terrible at the game, I know it. I just want to see some cool models, check out cool terrain and roll some dice. The new army choice style sounds like it will help me and other casual folks simplify the process a bit. Also seeing simply can / can’t ally on a miniatures profile etc may actually help some people consider different options that they don’t see before because they didn't spend much time familiarizing themselves with the old matrix.
I know “git gud” is a fair argument when it comes to playing / knowing all the ins and outs of the game…. But a lot of folks just won’t.
The same goes for “special strikes,” unfortunately I’m one of those “I forgot / never use them” type of people. So for me… nothing is lost there. I would get stuck reading about them every time 🤦🏼♂️
My concern is just how much “book stuff” will take a back-seat to movie stuff. I love so much of the content that didn’t make it into the movies and hope it is t treated too differently.
But it’s always hard to be given something and then see it taken away. I hope you fellas have enough left to still enjoy the activity.
Thanks for making the content that you do.
Thanks for your perspective, very reasonable as well for the other side!
What you're saying is one of the positives we brought up after the call, hopefully the new edition is very easy and digestible for new players and we do see a boom in this game we all love (in different ways)!
-Richard
Not a fan of a lot of the changes, that being said we will see. The thing that brought me to the game is that GW did not mess with it much so that time has ended
100% agree, though I'm still holding on to some hope!
-Richard
@@intothewestpodcast agreed! It's not all doom and glume!!
Intelligence for monsters will be like blood bowl big guys. Before they can move they have to make a test. Hill troll intelligence will be a reroll or something like this
Hope not. I don’t think Monsters need to be nerfed, given how bad they already are…
oh god please no. that will make monster unplayable.
As long as they dont add command points ill be happy
All I know is this is from 40k and I'm afraid to know more... 😬
-Richard
@intothewestpodcast command points are trap card/gotchas and are definitely not in the MESBG spirit
@intothewestpodcast by the way I recently moved to Vancouver and am looking for places in the city to play MESBG, do you know of a discord/facebook group I can join?
Welcome to our scene!
You can join the West Coast Hobbits League on Facebook and ask to join the Facebook chat and discord. The most regular weekly gaming is done at MTMPrintworks out in Langley every Wednesday but there's groups that play at Strategies LGS in Vancouver once in a while. We also have monthly tournaments in the greater Vancouver area (and Washington/Oregon which is part of our regional league)!
Looking forward to meeting you, I'm sure we'll talk more soon :)
-Richard
@intothewestpodcast thanks for the info, unfortunately MTM printworks is too far for me for regular gaming, though strategies is closer. I'll definitely come to MTM at some point though (and probably end up a lot poorer, their models look amazing)
When it comes to casual play, since I am only a casual player, I just ignore the special strikes.
Wonder if getting rid of special strikes will increase the role of two handed models to help leverage damage?
Also, if they have generic lists that can ally x hero with y hero from other lists because they make sense, and hit hard as a combo it absolutely makes sense to give pure themed lists a boost so theyre incentivised. Why the hell was galadriel floating around with lake towners 😅 I get the notion of list building to power up your gaming, but the skill should be with the armies and not just the best combos. You can see it in the dragon emperor LL, where the undercosting made a list too efficient and therefore average players got a huge advantage because they had a spare goldmine, rather than because they found a list they loved and honed it to perfection themselves after grinding out all the errors that they made on a strategy level.
I'm okay with a more thematic vibe actually, my argument was more for flexibility in list building so if they can achieve both, I'll be happy!
-Richard
Had the same idea with two-handed weapons. But i still wish they make the regular Two-handed weapon a bit better. Eather give them the Lamedon clansmen ruel (nat 6 does not get -1) or just make them a "change hand-weapon to two-handed weapon for free", so they are at least cheaper.
I think instead or special strikes I would enjoy seeing them add baseline rules to the different weapons, like +1 str -1 defense for axes, reroll 1s for swords, knocking down for hammers, +1 to wound vs trapped for dagger etc. Something like that even if it's not that exactly. Also if they also remove shielding there's a possiblity that even if they don't do anything else games will still go faster even without strikes.that being said I do like special strikes as an idea but imo their current iteration was poorly balanced and not that well executed.
Whats going to happen to easterlings? Arent they only seen marching and not fighting in the movies lol.
They are seen in the siege of the Siege of Minas Tirith, just usually behind an orc. They're good.
Get ambushed by Faramir ranger force too.
Most of all, thanks for the breakdown. When just starting with MESBG during the pandemic I built a Hobbit army, which was problematic, relied upon special strikes, and was just a numbers game I soon tired of. If this new edition makes armies like that viable vs the F5 meta we’re in, I’m all for it.
As for the Legacy, sometimes less is more. When you’re either paying too much on ebay or to a 3d printer somewhere for that rare model, this well be better. Like Girion was essential to a whole way to play Dale, and he was never available.
I only worry for the constant churn of AOS/40K being introduced more heavily into the game vs the subtleties we have now.
The lack of miniatures availability is an artificial problem, though, isn't it? GW intentionally chose to just not make the models, in spite of a demand being there. Rather than just making the models that only they (or recasters) produce and solving the issue that way, they're just going to drop them entirely. I've little doubt many models are going to get dropped just so they can produce new ones with profiles that make the previous miniature almost worthless as they are; like what they do now with 40k and AoS. Not to mention the scale creep, which would take us from 25mm to god only knows what.
My D8 Iron Hills shield wall rejoices at the end of special strikes...my Orcs not so much. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Intelligence rolls will be this editions rule no-one remembers.
Have the basic game and add in other advanced elements as wanted.
Pretty new to the game and i learned to special strike with my lorien elves and angmar (feint, piercing strike).. its somewhat a miss for me here. As i started the game i was very annoyed that you cant get some models anymore beside ebay (shade, gulavhar, tracker, black nums,..) and profiles with horse. Its also bad to get new players into the game so i can really see the argument of the legends book.. since i really like lothlorien, i am not that pissed to ban yellow soup lists, because i am more the themey guy, but i can really understand the less option opinion.. some LLs really built themself. Overall i guess it will be good to get new players into the game
My timing is unbelievably bad. I've been thinking about getting into MESBG for years. I finally do it and a week after I pour through the army profiles and over half the rules, I find out the biggest changes ever made to the game are supposed to drop any day now.
They said "in the coming weeks about 8 weeks ago" that's 2 months where I'm from.. 😅
Also seems ironic to me that they talk about being truer to "narrative" play in regards to the movies. Meanwhile the hobbit invented characters like tauriel that never existed in the true narrative to begin with.
I personally wouldn't want to play heroes like azog or bolg or radaghast or tauriel or even Thorins company because they remind me of how they screwed up Tolkien's lore to try and copy the LotR trilogy, and made the dwarves a bunch of battlefield goofballs. 😅
i'm thinking of getting into mesbg, but this new rulebook talk makes me wanna hold off till then,
(Also why all the cool iron hills units have to be out of stock T_T)
I totally understand but there's plenty of resources online to start learning the rules in the meantime, the core of the game won't change that much! Just hold off from buying any books for now :)
I'm a casual returning player. Teaching new players, you skip special strikes. There is a risk to using them. But judicious use you can turn a losing position into a winning one.
its fine teaching to new players not using special strikes. but you also dont use heroic actions and magic as well for new players. those rules are for when you have more experience under your belt.
i see my self casual that likes to dabble in the tourneys here in Australia. but i dont like them removing special strikes. it was a nice addition that braught a way what weapons troops are using matter.
i dont understand why people ignoring them. in places i have played they were not ignored.
i also dont like what i have read about being more narrative play. if thats the direction they are going in match play to be narrative play i feel like this is going to start killing the game.
also if i wanted narrative play, i would be playing the senarios that have the battles from the movies that are in basicly every army or rule book. there all rdy in the game people just don't play them regularly.
Broo, we 100% agree with this... So glad someone on the more casual side has a similar perspective!
I agree wholehartedly - taking away choice is not a good thing.
But nothing compelles us (as TOs) to have to follow these new rules. We can choose to run army building «open» for our players.
💯
Yes, but the problem is the game is not that popular, wargame are pretty niche , there isn't thousands of players locally, often not even a hundred, and mesbg is a niche in a niche, if you divide a small community into even smaller community, that's even less players
I really hate LLs because I've found them either super no skill (which I do admit I sometimes enjoy) or without any variety, so unless GW makes the new edition not like LLs I'm going to be sad.
I do however really enjoy the removal of special strikes, just because I no longer have to convert weapons!
While I understand that people get worried about changes to a game they love, I do wish people would take a positive attitude until proven otherwise. I have been seeing so much speculation being thrown around as fact, and assumptions based on zero evidence. Right now we know pretty much zero about how anything is going to work in the new edition. As such I find negative attitudes and speculation to not be super helpful. People are entitled to hold whatever opinions they like of course, all I would like is that there was more positivity and/or lets wait and see what the rules actually are, rather than all the gloom I see floating round right now. I speak as an experienced competitive player in the UK scene. Love the videos though guys, always excited when a new one pops up, keep up the good work :)
About the list-building. I get it, it's scary, I want my freedom but there are things I don't like in current edition. Gil-galad in Rivendell, company dwarves in Moria, yellow alliances and god the useless trolls. There are many things that could be better, but GW better not fix it by destroying theory crafting. And I don't think they will.
Not sure if you guys set them, but I was getting ads like every 3 minutes. Makes it really painful to watch.
Its youtube, its either non stop ads or no ads
I’m a long term LOTR fanatic and a massive fan of Warhammer. I play 40k but I’m desperate to get into MESBG.
The big question is, is now a good time to delve in? Or is the game on its way out?
With a new edition dropping any month now, the game seems guaranteed to have Games Workshop’s support, at least for the next few years. It’s a great time to get started!
@@intothewestpodcast thank you for your reply! This is great news. I’m torn between armies but I think the value gained from the Osgiliath box is too good to turn down. I can get it for £100 still here in the UK.
My main decision is between Minas Tirith, Elves, Isengard or Mordor.
The Osgiliath box is great value, just bear in mind the rulebook will only be valid for a few more months. We have a video called Top 8 Beginner Armies that dives a little deeper into those armies you mentioned that might give you some useful information!
I hope this means Sam is S tier with his frying pan
My guess for their primary goal for this edition is to grow with the release of new media again. MESBG was the best selling GW game when the Lotr movies were being released, since Return of the King the game has been in slow decline because the interest just isn't there. The Hobbit movies bumped it a bit but not much and again the game went into decline in popularity despite how nice the models are and how clean the rules are.
So they want to build the game up and bring in new players, with the revamp of the PJ Tolkien cinematic universe. So we're getting the War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum and if they are good movies, they might re-ignite interest in the game.
What they don't want then, is a bunch of new people coming to the game against veterans of years gone by, who know the ins and outs of complex rules like special strikes, because gating the game behind higher tier players, who the majority of those who still play the game will be, will just discourage new players. All PvP style games that are old have this issue, the vets are not willing to give new players the breathing room because they are desperate for games themselves, and ultimately do more harm to the game than good. The other thing they want to avoid is a bunch of armies these movie going audiences have never heard of, all over the table putting them off, or not attracting their interest. So the purge of unrecognisable armies and the levelling of the playing field with rules trims are needed if they want the game to be more newcomer friendly.
May be it was the best selling game (if it was, wich im not sure) because the older versions were excellent; minis were cheap; game was funny; it wasnt all that unbalanced, unlike WH; game was fast to play; easy to learn; etc
@@AlexAlex-zt3hi
More than just their best selling game it pretty much saved GW from going under. No one was interested in 40k and especially fantasy at the time. This was way before GW fleshed out the 40k universe and turned it into its own money making franchise with novels and other extended merchandise.
Old 40k players will even tell you that the game used to be about making your own story on the table with your own chapter of space marines led by your own commander. When the lore around the game got fleshed out more GW pivoted hard into memicing that experience on the tabletop, making it more about the named lore characters and less about having fun in the sandbox and that worked catapulting 40k to the top of TTWG.
@@hurmet Played/collected 40k since 3rd Ed, Fantasy since 6th Ed, Lotr since The Two Towers, and almost every specialist game since I was 10. Cant talk about RT or earlier versions of Fantasy.
Im not sure abbout your claim of LOTR saving Gw, what saved it was when it went into the stock market, wich marked the ruin of the systems/service for the clients.
40k was rocking it worldwide; Fantasy was underselling, except in Spain and Italy, and thats why they fleshed the game later. Lotr had a source of players because the movies were pretty recent, and they even made a magazine that sold the minis EVEN cheaper than the very own GW! But after The Return of the King the game nearly died...and if you remember well, in one of the LOTR iterations they turned the individual minis game into an unit system, with those bases with circles to put the minis in.
Where you are right 100% is in the part of the named characters, when I got in the game you couldnt use them unless your opponent gave you permission. And they were quite weak...untill they made overpowered.
For example, in Fantasy, Teclis was a "normal archmage" with some shenanigans in 6th Ed, but in the 7th Ed/New "codex" they made him so stupidly broken that he was a must in the list, no matter what. If I dont remember bad, hell I can even check the books later, he was even cheaper than the normal archmage.
The books where there from the beggining, and a lot of the characters of the time too. They probably learnt that it was bad to make a "named character" (the first Sicarius, the captain with double lightning claws from the campaign where they sold the Vostroyans) and then erase his gaming profiles, because, well, you know, people wanted to use that "new shiny mini" they purchased a few months earlier! (Valten could be another good example, from the Empire from Fantasy; or Eltharion the blind from the High Elves)
I'm a new player, and personally if I can't ally to make my dream army i'll just drop the game, playing only with legendary legion dont interest me at all, and from all the fuse online i'm not the only one who don't want le creativity of the list building gone
The thing about this game i love more then anything else, is rocking up to an event with a crazy army centred around a niche gennerally disregarded unit or character and try and make them work (all cav easterlings, golfimbull angmar) but this hange to army lists has kneecapped me.
My most recent project was to make the dragon work, and what ive been working on is a list running him with easterlings as brorgir has the only fury ive seen that isnt given the key word (mitigating the dragons weakness in survival instinct) and then fill out the rest of the list with eaterling black dragons or even drakes for theme if you dont mind losing.
but now that wont be allowed or possible and neither will a million other combinations we make up in our minds
That’s a cool and creative combo! Agree, it’s unfortunate we probably won’t have the freedom to build lists like that soon. Hopefully you get a chance to play that army still, before the new edition!
As a long-time Warhammer Fantasy fan, and someone that's been playing 40k since 5th, there is no reason to feel anything other than dread when GW announces new rules.
They're always written in the most convoluted way possible, taking a paragraph to say something that could be said (and was in previous editions said) with just few sentences, and often times you have to read them over repeatedly just to follow their train of thought. The current (or I guess now previous as of the Vespid Stingwing and Scion box) edition of Kill Team is one of the most impermeable rules systems I have ever read in my damn life, and several of my friends have dropped that game before ever playing a single match because of the confused way they've written those rules.
They also love absolutely gutting systems, overhauling them completely from systems that have been in place for roughly 20 years, purely (I believe) because the current developers absolutely do not understand the games they're writing for. They don't get it, they don't understand the direction and the premise men like Rick Priestley, Tuomas Pirinen, Andy Chambers, or even Alessio Cavatore, had in mind for the systems. They're awful at writing tabletop games and instead constantly try to make turn-based video games that are played on the tabletop, totally missing the point of why people play(ed) these games in the first place. They'll just keep ripping pieces out until it doesn't work at all, then put in all new systems to fix problems that they created; like removing 'wargear' points costs in 10th edition 40k, and ending up with problems like Crisis suits being "difficult to balance around their strongest wargear options", so they have to split Crisis suits into three different teams when they'd never have had the damn problem in the first place if they hadn't removed points costs.
GW reminds me a lot of Blizzard Entertainment. I used to absolutely adore the games they produced, but once all the old guard left, the new blood seemingly had no clue what they were doing and little respect for what came before, tearing down what once was- and what ostensibly got them interested in working there in the first place- to create a lifeless, 'streamlined' husk built to sell product and satisfy the legal department and the shareholders, and not to be a fun game.
My take, anyway. I don't trust GW any farther than I can throw them, which is not at all. Excuse the language, but I really don't think GW can not fuck things up at this point. Top that off with so many of their new models looking like ass nowadays, and you've got a product that's going to leave a very bitter taste in a lot of peoples' mouths and invariably see many quit. Not that GW will care.
@@TheGreySpectrum oof that's a very strong statement that we hope doesn't come to pass. Of course, I do respect your opinion and can see that as a possibility, however, my hopes lie in the fact the current rules writer is a competitive player in the GBHL... But we shall see...
What is the specific change(s) for you that would entirely ruin MESBG for you?
@@intothewestpodcast Apologies for the delay in response, and for how wordy this ended up being.
One of the major rules writers for 40k is, as I understand it, a top competitive player in the UK. In spite of that, we've seen a gradual breakdown in the pre-existing structures meant to balance the game, like 'wargear' points values and the Force Organization chart that stopped the game from just being Monster Mash or Oops! All Tanks. We've also seen a lot of the flavor and minutia gradually cut out of the game in the name of 'optimization'. That does lead me into my answer to your question, though.
I wont enumerate these, because I don't think I can assign them primacy over one another, but the three things that would completely ruin the game for me are the loss of weapon and gear options, the death of army building, and 'squat'ing models and potentially whole ranges so they can re-sell you your army. Both AoS and 40k have numerous examples of all of these, and it is from witnessing GW do this with both of the games that I believe GW will attempt it. Almost everything in AoS and 40k that's from about 2018 onwards is monopose and is intended to be built precisely how GW tells you to build it, thus depriving us of options by simply not creating any for new miniatures. Army building today, in both AoS and 40k, is just the old Power Level system but rebranded as 'Points', using bigger numbers. It is extremely simplistic and can be done with very little effort, which along with the loss of options has completely- and I do mean "completely"- gutted the opportunity to spend time finely crafting an army that was uniquely yours out of the game. Really don't understand who at GW thought this was a problem and not a feature, or why they thought as much, but I digress.
The last one, dropping models and ranges just so they can re-sell you what you already have, is something we've seen happen incrementally. With Warhammer Fantasy, we saw them drop Fantasy miniatures and slowly replace them with AoS-exclusive miniatures that tend to be noticeably larger, causing LoS issues that demand you either chop up and convert or otherwise alter your model so as to make it more inline with the current miniature it was replaced by, or just go buy the new one. Not to mention the rebasing you'd had to have done. They'd also completely change up the loadouts in some instances, causing similar issues to what I just covered, but also another more subtle problem. Currently, GW is phasing out regular Space Marines in favor of Primaris; although you can still buy and use Tactical Marines and Devastators, needing a Legends profile for neither, one is complete trash and you'd simply never take the other over the alternative options available to you. Options which are all, conveniently, Primaris. In this way, GW has been sabotaging models via the game to discourage people from buying them and people from using them, artificially creating the impetus for them to get rid of them entirely, and the impetus for you to buy up a whole new army instead of using the one you currently have.
Considering those new Blood Angels we just got, and that golden Captain Underpants Coteaz, I don't much look forward to GW replacing a lot of our old Perry sculpts that have so much character to them, either.
@@TheGreySpectrum thanks for the in depth response. It sounds absolutely horrible and I really truly hope what you've listed does not come to pass....
@@intothewestpodcast For as little as I trust GW, I hope the same, too.
I guess as an old WHFB fan, if I can say anything it's this; the MESBG community needs to consolidate if the worst comes to pass. People need to unify under the banner of this current iteration we have, and we'll need community leaders and big names on our side. If MESBG fans can do that, they can hold something together even after GW stops supporting this game as it is now. Don't be like us. Don't fracture into a dozen little factions that take years to coalesce into proper camps with some sort of structure. But, we'll see when we get there. Hope for the best, but expect the worst, yeah?
I swear I'm not always so cynical, by the way; it's really just a GW (and Blizzard) thing.
Tell me you don't know SBG without telling me you don't know SBG.
Go back to the shadows (40K and WHFB) and take your needles negativity there
This whole change is simply to justify reworking Orophin and dont you take that away from Lothlorien players.
'Simplifying and streamlining' is practically always synonymous with 'lowered skill ceiling' so I kind of expected all the tournament winning players to frown at it. Hopefully skill in the fundamentals and using the new individual special rules of profiles still translate to more wins so everyone feels its worth it to prove their tactical mettle.
What were y'all playing a Howdah as for In The Ways? Flimsy fences? Sturdy fence? Purpose Built fortification? I asked that on FAQ all the time.
I am also hoping that Intelligence lets you learn more and better manipulate order of events.
Stuff like the lower Intelligence heroes having to have called Heroic Actions earlier than high Intelligence heroes that get to know the board state before they do (resolving tied Intelligence calls by priority). So you could imagine Boromir has to decide to roll his Heroic Strike first before the higher intelligence Sauron decides what heroic action they want to declare. Maybe Sauron doesn't need to Strike because Boromir still has lower Fv than him after his roll was a 1. He gets to see it and make a more informed decision of how to spend his Might. If Boromir was in a nearby combat and decided he didn't want to call a heroic, Sauron can declare Heroic Combat and now Boromir is in a dangerous situation because his opportunity was passed. This could lessen the effectiveness of cheap Might spam and instead help the super expensive army lists who are really low on Might be more economical with it, by exploiting decision making to their benefit.
(Bonus mechanic idea, Elrond could spend Foresight to boost his Intelligence to use whatever these mechanics are. He might opt not Heroic at his typical I7, wait for Saruman's I7 to commit himself to something THEN raise his Intelligence to 8 using Foresight and counter call his planned action.)
Affecting the actual roll-off of Heroic Moves and Heroic Combats might also benefit the more expensive lower Might models if they have more Intelligence, but is far more volatile and just leans more into RNG and not decision making. Some people were very opposed to this suggestion in Discord, concerned that the Orc heroes will just lose roll offs 67% of the time vs the average Man hero due to the bias to thinking orcs are dumb.
This will be the 3rd Edition of the Game: Return of the Theme. 😂
There is massive cope and fear taking over the community right now. It’s really not that deep.
1. Follow the $.
2. Follow the spirit of the game.
I don’t think this game was ever supposed to be super competitive. Definitely more of a fun time with friends, drinking a beer and rolling dice.
I can’t imagine the amount of times where Jay was reading FAQs going, “Jesus, this is nasty work. I never intended for this to be so gamey.”
Regarding #1: How many times have we seen someone say, “I’m trying to figure out what army to play, but the options online seem very limited.” Boom! Let’s get rid of that hurdle, kill the bloat, then really focus on the models we actually plan to produce/sell. OOP, let’s move those to legacy. If people want to 3D print that stuff anyways, fine. But it won’t be playable in the new edition. Boom! Sales go up for the models that remain.
Regarding #2: Notice the trend? If it feels like an Uber competitive community creation, let’s toss it, and get back to having a good time drinking beers and throwing dice. Special strikes, weapon swapping to use special strikes, yellow alliance/non themey loophole armies, In the Way manipulation. Think back to the Flying Monster FAQ. Using an Orc to screen/manipulate an In The Way for your Fell Beast = Gamey. Not aligned with the spirit of the game.
I don't think you're wrong with point #1 and it's absolutely valid - definitely geared more for new players rather than older players with a bigger collection but that's not a bad thing, so thanks for bringing that up.
I do want to push back about making it more of a beer and pretzels style game, I think that can be dangerous as the uber competitive folk tend to be the ones that are more heavily invested into the game. I personally don't think the game will be as popular long term if they disregard the competitive aspects and focus on catering to the narrative/casual side, whether or not that was the original intention of the rules writers.
I just think we have a great balance now with people being able to play thematic as well as go a bit crazy with list building; everyone has a different way to have fun with this hobby.
-Richard
@@intothewestpodcast Hey! I’m trying to be compassionate and understanding here. 😂😂😂😂😂
I do agree it can rub the more competitive players wrong. I also know a guy who is close to Jay, who has every army and been a supporter since the origin, who is completely turned off by the game as is. I imagine that has to feel weird to Jay as the rules writer.
I think the competitive players will still get their rocks off with the new edition. It’s what we do. We’ll still try and find the best armies, combos, special rules, and the cream will rise to the top.
Cheers to whenever we play. I’ll bring the beer and pretzels 😂
I disagree about list building and armies on the table top.
The game is currently “boring” to make lists and feels formulaic the entire process is 15min at a time compared to 40K or The Old World which actually has choice dichotomy and character customization of 30min or a hour. Each of those games lists playing completely different even with the same models except for character items. . .
Ultimately, there shouldn’t be a “fluff” reason to take soup armies. Yellow alliances are largely a bane of the game.
Soup alliances not only mostly look terrible like taking a cowboy Thorin on Goat or Gwahir in a Loth/Riv alliance + Numenor or even a Laketown army with your Saruman/Radgast just feels like a power game move for competitive balance specifically -fluff can’t argue it away.
Forcing players to take a particular list, that has deficiencies (which is supposed to be apart of the game, every legion/army is supposed to have an obvious weakness) is not a bad implementation of force selection rules or game mechanics. It’s intrinsic in every war game. So when games skirt these frameworks it just makes it harder to balance and or boringly ubiquitous.
They are probably doing this to make everything easier for new players. No special strikes, no alliances and combining of different lists, in the way, and so on. All to jump on the hype train of the Ride of the Rohirrim that’s coming out. Which I understand, but I don’t like how they cater to much towards the new players and not towards the current loyal players that kept the hobby going for 20+ years. Building funny thematic lists with yellow alliances was fun. But everything because one big pool of LL’a now. Although it may help with people one dropping the Witch King or Sulladan into random lists. But that can be fixed in other ways.
I get that some special strikes were being abused like quartering yourself with stabbing to get a win if you are holding certain objectives or maybe even the whole spear support thing. Where you could lower the fight value the front rank because it wouldn’t matter anyway due to a spear support. But here are other ways to fix that too.
But then again it wouldn’t surprise me if a few years when all the new players are in they’ll say ‘look we introduced a cool new method where you can have different strikes depending on your weapon’.
And ket’s be honest here the new book is just to sell you yet another book.
MESBG-players: We want stuff like 40K or Age of Sigmar (constantly). Now GW removes all old books... be careful what you wish for :)
😬
Getting your army squatted means the game finally made it
I stopped playing those games for that reason and now it’s happening :(
who the f was asking for MESBG to be like 40k or age of sigmar? were on the earth are they saying that?
@@TheBronf I think they mean that players have been longing for more releases than just tiny titbits here and there over the years
My son and I talk about list building a lot, I chat online with hobby friends about list options... if its just a cookie cutter way to rinse and repeat certain armies it will take away half our fun out of the hobby... so whilst excited, im a little concerned as they could so easily F this up on arrival
100% our sentiment as well!
I played back in 2001-2006; all in the way were 4+, no special strikes; and I rediscovered the game last year; I feel like the new cool stuff are taken away from me. (And I'm a bit like gosh, I'll have to buy an new book after two years, is this WH40k or what ?)
If alliance matrix is gone that's genuinely going to drive some players away. Like 90% of my listbuilding is yellow alliances 😅. Cant imagine being stuck with just bland limited LLs, crikey.
Lol, im curious why is that? There're a lot of meta/top armies pure or green alliance.
@@Pabloski072037Its not about power obviously. For a long time LLs and some pure armies like Goblin Town have been the most successful ones.
Its just interesting for listbuilding to make yellow alliances where you combine the strengths of different profiles. Like Khazad Dum dwarves and Arnor spearmen. Or Khandish chariot in Easterlings. Some of my favorite things have been frankly kinda bad like Isengard+Moria, but they've been super fun to play.
Yellow soup enthusiasts and special strike spammers in shambles
I wish the designers would remove the bow limit rule. It’s arbitrary.
Now that's a hot take!
Removing special strikes suck because it defeats the purpose of kit bashing and now we can't use up those last 3 points in a 600 pt list that is at 597
I don't get people saying they dont mind special strikes leaving the game because they didnt use them. Less freedom is never good. You can't say you didn't lose anything. You lost the ability to choose.
To be honest this sounds a**. And the inclusion of the intelligence stat means that newer profiles such as the upcoming Arnor and Angmar can't be easily used for the old edition. Which might be its major purpose.
So my Witch King can only be killed by Eowyn now is that correct? I hate Lore nerds in MESBG and GW community they can complain about beardy gamers all they want they are the most toxic self imposing freaks in gaming - trying to impose their way they think things should be: Often reducing complexity so scrubs can feel like they are good at the game. You can take that as an Ogeetomo hot take if you wish 🙃
Sounds like my Mordor Stocks might be going up. Gothmog at fight 6 potentially and a pelennor fields army that actually has Ringwraiths (and near immortal Witchking), also potentially not having to fight eagles allied into every second good list.
I think it's time the Wizard models got a revamp so I'm looking forward to that, maybe I will rebuild my tincan army from 2008 with Gandalf and make a Theoden/Rohan detachment and play both sides of the pelennor fields (mordor and minas Tirith/Rohan).
Hahaha always appreciate your perspective, man! You always bring the heat, that's for sure!! 🤣🤣
-Richard
@@intothewestpodcast 🌶☕ Still really think there is potential for something great in Jay we trust.
They are turning miniature games into card games by "killing" miniatures.
Removing special strikes is HUGE imo. It was ruining game balance where silly gobiln could kill elf warrior clad in full armor on 5..? Like really? Some elite troops were not elite at all because of this.
I definitely don't think it ruined the game balance but yes I agree factions spamming piercings often made things unrealistic at times.
@@intothewestpodcast ruining was too big word actually it introduced imbalances that could be exploited by troops that normally would not stand a chance against better troops
Special strikes being removed is 🤌. Calling a special strike and rolling more dice for reroll 1s or losing armor or stabbing yourselves etc makes fights take so much longer