The Ultimate Middle-Earth SBG Thread

I'm finding GW's latest Middle Earth releases to be getting more and more tiresome, in that by-and-large they are extremely focused on humans, whether Gondorians, Rohirrim, Dunlendings, Men of Dale or Easterlings. Only two Dwarf characters, no Elves, the occasional Ent or Hobbit and very few Orcs have been released since the new edition of the game. My one point of complaint about the story of Lord of the Rings is that it becomes increasingly focused on humans as it goes on, and don't like to see GW doing exactly the same thing - if I want wall-to-wall fantasy humans Game of Thrones has plenty and is almost devoid of any form of fantastical creature. Have the Middle Earth team run out of ideas for making anything truly fantastical?

(@Imrahil I know you're a fan of the human factions, it's great you like them and I'm not ranting at you in particular, this is a general comment).

Regarding your question, I would have thought they would release a set of Black Dragon archers as well, that might be previewed later on in the coming weeks. It would be daft if they gave you the option of upgrading your Archers to be Black Dragons but avoided making models for that particular upgrade, because it'd force the player to ditch the Archers' bow and replace them with a halberd or hand weapon, which would eliminate the point of them upgrading Archers to Black Dragons in the first place when they could just upgrade warriors with hand weapon and shield or halberd and shield.

 

No offence taken

I feel your point as well. They can very much more diversify the new releases.
It was not part of todays reveals though, who knows.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Beornings are emerging from the trees, I assume as a faction in their own right:



Shame that these will probably yet again be Forge World, how on Earth will anyone be able to make an affordable army out of them, even if they are going to be more points a pop than the average warrior?

 

Came across this twitch snapshot on Instagram:



Did any of you have seen this as well? Or know about it?

Pretty much the same pose as Elrohir in elven cloak.


Grrr, Imrahil

 

I certainly hope they don't replace the plastic Galadhrim Warriors with those, and that these are just additional sculpts, because the Galadhrim models are pretty new and detailed in comparison to some of the other Middle-Earth plastics, and reducing them to a fewer number of sculpts behind a Forge World paywall would be a horrible move.

 

It is more likely that this is a captain or new named hero for Lothlorien. Double handweapons is not an option for the Galadrim warriors IIRC.

The 2 models in the back are the regular Galadrim and Wood elf warrior.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Yes it could well be a named hero. I don't think it would be a Captain because the Galadhrim already have these two Finecast Commanders sets:

 

Well that went quick... the Easterlings mounted command is already "temporarily out of stock online"

I hope I can get around to order them before they disappear again.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

The Black Dragon Warriors are up for Pre-Order and it is just those six models



Archers will have to be kitbashed/converted
The arms seem to be adjustable so replacing them with the arms of an archer might be quite easy.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

That is a bit poor of GW, including an option for elite archers but not models for them - they haven't done that sort of thing since the Fantasy days, when some options in the 7th and 8th Edition books suffered from this.

But as you say, it's not too much of an obstacle for a converter if they have some spare Easterling archers they are willing to sacrifice.

 

And here you go: two new named heroes for Lothlorien:



Grrr, Imrahil

 

I found this image on the Warhammer Community Instagram page, It is not yet online on their website.

Rumil and Orophin are both brothers of Haldir and are (the three of them) the ones that encounter the Fellowship when they first set foot in Lothlorien.

- Rumil

- Orophin

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Last Monday was Game Night and as mentioned in my personal blog we played a custom Scenario "capture the flag".
The idea from this scenario came from my brother after just three times playing the game, together we finetuned it a bit more.

I attached it here. Use it if you like and I am curious to know what you guys think of it.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

McDougall designs presents the fantasy releases for Medbury miniatures. Added to my webstore for your purchase of licensed 3d printed models.

There are a few model releases I have to catch up on. I will be adding more models throughout the day, to which i will either add to this post or, if the thread has been replied to, I will make any further release its own separate post.

These may be of use to the lotr community

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-armored-wood-elves-with-spears

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-wood-elf-equerry

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-wood-elf-tuathal-warden-of-gwyrdgalas

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-wood-elf-tuathal-hero

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-wood-elf-captains

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-woodsmen

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/products/medbury-miniatures-wood-elfs-with-bows

 

Finally North Star have decided to give us a preview of their plastic Orcs for Oathmark, which are due to arrive next month:















These chaps look substantially bigger, bulkier and less hunched than North Star's earlier Goblin sculpts, which themselves still make good alternative Mordor Orc sculpts:



Meaning the new Oathmark Orcs above could easily make great Mordor Uruk Hai, which currently are only available as a pack of six metal models from GeeDubs:

The sprue contains enough weapons to equip all the models with bows or hand weapons and shields (I'm unsure if spears are an option for Mordor Uruks, but if they are then there's enough of those on the sprue too), plus plenty of banners if the option is available, and while the two-handed mace option is not present in the box set, the Oathmark Dwarf Heavy Infantry have a lot of two-handed weapons, some of which are hammers, that can be pillaged to give to some of your Uruks a bit more oomph. Additionally if you can find some Warlord Games Roman scutum shields, these chaps will make more convincing and formidable Black Guard of Barad-dur conversions in the style of the original idea I posted here. And of course the value of this kit will go without saying - you'll most likely get 6 of these sprues in the box if the other Oathmark infantry boxes are anything to go by, so 30 models, for only £1 more than buying the 6 metal models from GW.

All in all, a kit with real potential for Middle Earth players and another very welcome addition to the Oathmark range.

 

Well the site's being irritating right now and not displaying most of those pictures, at least from my end, most of which are from Facebook and GW which I have been able to display pictures from successfully on here before. What's even more daft is that the one picture that has been shown is from the same site as one of the pics that isn't being shown .

@The Red Devil our glorious leader, is there anything you might be able to do about this?

 

That sure is some good news, they look very compatible with MESBG indeed.

(I learned from @Lizards of Renown that you can see the pictures if you hit the reply button )

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Yes, that's much better!

Thanks for sorting it out, what was the issue?

 

If I can get oathmark in stock, you can bet I'll have these available