There is quite a lot of news coming from the biggest MESBG convention in the world today. At ArdaCon, GW announced some new Army of the Dead models including the king and heralds pictured below. The level of detail on these new sculpts is impressive and while I don’t know if I’ll ever buy or own Army of the Dead minis as they aren’t one of my favorite parts of the books/movies, I would certainly be more likely to pick them up with these fantastic minis leading the way! I should also add that there will be some themed glow in the dark dice for this army as well so that is also a fun addition for fans of this army.
That is not all! GW is releasing cards to help you track your heroes more easily. While I like this idea, I’m not sure how convenient it is for narrative players who may own a wider range of heroes and need to buy many more cards than say someone who just plays one or two armies. I would like to have the regular warriors in an army covered too even if I know that would mean even more cards are needed but my impression is that GW is not doing that with these new cards for now anyway. I think for people who play in tournaments, these will be very popular and a helpful resource. It could be more useful than I think for narrative players but I want to see more info before I make that judgement. I will say that the new magic cards are great for everyone and will absolutely be useful as it is one less thing to have to look for in the rulebook when playing.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that a huge Made to Order weekend is coming up! No less than nine sets of minis are returning. Here is a quick look at them:
While most of these minis are not very useful for scenarios, some like the Goblin King are so rare and hard to find that it is difficult not to want to order it. The casualties for various armies is much the same way. It is pretty rare and expensive and certainly has its uses for basing other minis. The only minis on this list that I think aren’t too hard to come by are the Kings of Men and Dwarf Kings but they are still nice sculpts and well worth owning. I think it is fair to say that many MESBG fans are going to be a little less rich after next weekend!
If that isn’t enough, GW teased that the next supplement will be Rohan at War. This is what many people expected instead of Scouring of the Shire and I think many people will be pleased with this next release. I’ve never had a strong affinity towards the Rohan miniatures but I really like the newer characters like Theoden so I’ll be curious to see what other models GW releases. It would be great to see some troops get redone as the Rohan ones are very old now and could probably be improved. I’m excited for fans of Rohan and I expect this will be another awesome release.
I’ve shared my thoughts on the news and now I’d love to hear yours. What excites you in all this news? Which Made to Order minis will you be ordering and why? Let me know in the comments below!
Kuribo's Painting 
That’s a nice looking King of the Dead – a little cartoony in the face perhaps, but a good looking model nonetheless. I also really like those standards. Just a shame they’re a FW product, and will probably be priced as such. Ill have to wait and see on those.
Pass on the M2O models, though. I’ve already got the ones I’m overly interested in. Models like the metal orcs are very nice, but kinda redundant to get. I wasn’t a huge fan of The Hobbit and it’s Goblin King, so I’m good with the plastic one that’s still unpainted. The boxed set came with a GK, didn’t it? (still unopened…)
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I would have to agree on the dead models. I would say that the Scouring Hobbit minis that are coming out are up for pre-order and I think they’re fairly priced which is not something I often say about Forge World products.
I’m interested in several of the M2O including Gandalf and Bilbo and the Goblin King. Escape From Goblin Town comes with a different sculpt of the Goblin King which is very good so you don’t need this one. One of the Goblin King’s abilities is to hurl a goblin so I find this one to be very thematic. I had a blast painting the first Goblin King too and I’d love to take a crack at another. The Mordor Orcs do look nice and the casualties would be fun to have so those are maybes for me. The rest I’ll probably skip as they aren’t useful for almost any scenarios. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It is always fun to hear what others think about things like this 🙂
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Understandable – back in the LotR heyday I did tend to get all (or almost) all of the alternate sculpts of the different characters, but fell out of doing so, and the pricing for The Hobbit was just silly by comparison, so that was pretty much a burned bridge. Stuff like the Mordor Orcs are models I kinda wish I’d picked up originally when the Fellowship game came out, but I’m just not willing to pay today’s GWAU prices for them…
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I wouldn’t have guessed you collected all of the sculpts. You must have quite the collection!
I may have been a bit over-enthusiastic at the time/assumed the prices would be more reasonable as I balked at many of them and only got Gandalf and the Goblin King from this go-round. $50 is way too high for the novelty casualty minis. The other old metal minis looked awesome but I just didn’t have the cash for them. GW rarely gives you a good deal but I felt they were moving back towards Hobbit prices with these special items. I guess it worked out because I ended up spending way too much on the Forge World Made to Order that probably ended today for some rare Hobbit minis 🙂
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Call me medium excited. It’s all good stuff but I’ve only played one scenario from the Gondor at war book so far so rushing out to pick up the next one seems silly. But the Rohan book might finally get me to start that Rohan army that I’ve always wanted. 😀
On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 8:48 PM Battles in Middle Earth wrote:
> Kuribo posted: “There is quite a lot of news coming from the biggest MESBG > convention in the world today. At ArdaCon, GW announced some new Army of > the Dead models including the king and heralds pictured below. The level > of detail on these new sculpts is impressive an” >
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I share your feelings on Rohan at War. I’ll buy it but I have no idea when I would play through the scenarios. The only advantage it has is that I think I can use a lot of the terrain I’m making now on a Rohan board which would save me time. If I had to pick between the two, I’d much rather play Gondor at War than Rohan at War. That is just one selfish reason why I look forward to more hobby progress and battle reports from you 😀
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