TOP 10 Armies of 2023 - Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game | MESBG

[@GollumGamers]

Thank you for having me on! Very interesting to see what armies ended up where at the end of the year - and which of my co-hosts ended up in which tier 😁🤣

[@mikecollett4861]

Sam destroyed my beornings with laketown at our local club

[@ZedLeppelin1989]

Definitely love the sound of your own voice, huh?

[@Lerbrandt]

Great content. Fun edits, keep it up.

[@Corppi22]

Were LLs counted as separate entities from the core faction? Because that definitely explains Rohan's absence. I'd bet if just top 3 Rohan LLs were compiled that'd bump it to the top 10 easily. Rohan has so many ways to run it so its easy to see the stats get "diluted" if counting separately.

[@intothewestpodcast]

Good point! And yes, LL are counted as separate entities.

[@mountainboardwales]

Good my first GBHL 100 this weekend in Cardiff Wales :D

[@NowForWrathGaming]

Great episode as always. Really insightful to see hard data backing gut feelings. Surprised by some of these rankings!

[@davygravy2]

Thanks for doing this guys! Really interesting My only really minor critique is that when you manipulated the data to put the Dragon Emperor LL in the Top 3 in the interest of fairness you should have just combined Mordor & Harad as well. Would be interesting to see what would be the other list that makes the Top 3 then

[@intothewestpodcast]

Thank you! Haha that's a fair critique. To answer your question (which would show my agenda even more lol), AuHD is actually tied with DE at 8/25 podiums for GBHL 100s (ranked #14 total podiums). -Richard

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

I have been playing mordor for 2 years, and never realised that the WK sully list was so common! I always liked pure mordor more because I always thought that a strength of Serpent Hoard was the bow damage, and mordor makes that basically non-existant, while mordor synergies with mordor, like the named capitains working together and ringwraiths working together. I am also surprised barad dur was not seen massively at the cassual games. (Cheap to collect, fun to play but actually being decent, Sauron hard counters elite lists ect.) Great vid by the way! Really interesting.

[@muesliman100]

Barad-dur is just really hard to win any objective games with and you re bound to come up to at least one such scenario in a tournament.

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

If a tourney is 5 games long that's still 4/5 and a scenario like lords of battle would be a very major victory. but yea, I get that may lock them out of many podium spots

[@adampaul677]

Hahaha love the tier list @gollumgamers! Great job Elliot! The irony is I’m half Canadian so I guess that got me to silly nervous on ITW 🤗 WK sully counters will be everywhere in 2024, let’s see what people can cook up! Adam

[@robertstephens3847]

Great video. My only point for Dragon Emperor using the easterlings is I have is str 3 troops and I struggle with killing models even with f5 and three attacks on one model. So overall most armies have weapons to kill troops with str 4 troops.

[@intothewestpodcast]

True, they are mostly stuck at Strength 3, unless you take war drakes or put axes on Acolytes. -Charles

[@GollumGamers]

Or axes on your entire Easterling front line as I did for many events this year! Works great

[@doubleoblit]

We need to stop with this ludicrous myth that the DE LL struggles with killing power. It doesn't. Yes, it's S3. You also win an overwhelming amount of fights and can easily have 3 to-wound dice, one of which can feint. A list that routinely out-attritions the enemy does not lack killing power. You can't just focus on the fact that you need 6's to wound. You also need to consider how often you win fights, and how many dice you get to throw per fight that you win.

[@AleInBywater]

Love it! Great episode! Hope WK never gets nerfed😅 The FAQ on monster made the fell beast option nerfed already. Btw it would be good with an episode on podium % of total numbers per army/LL, which would give more insight on the competitiveness of each army/LL.

[@intothewestpodcast]

Thanks! Agree, I wanted that stat too but I don't think the GBHL collectively keeps all that data and if they do, I wasn't able to locate it 😕

[@AleInBywater]

@@intothewestpodcast Aha, understand. Nevertheless, great episode! Always enjoy your content!

[@DarkhorseOldWorlders]

Awesome pod as always lads. We seem to do things very different here down under, our top 10 wouldnt match I dont think (its the wild west over here 😎😆)

[@intothewestpodcast]

Haha so I have heard, that probably makes the tournaments matchups a lot more exciting! To be fair, this is the UK - we don't see as much WK Sully in NA.

[@siremilcrane]

As someone who has played a lot of minas tirith I would say they function as a good "gatekeeper" army, like if you cannot deal with a decently piloted boromir MT list you probably won't do well in competitive MESBG, and I think that shows in MT doing well in the 80 and 90 tournaments. The combination of a F7 hero with 6 might, F5 high defense troops, and big numbers absolutely crushes lots of less competitive armies

[@intothewestpodcast]

Interesting way to look at it, I can see that being the case!

[@mountainboardwales]

How did you work out what faction a list was ? Just who was leading it or which part had the most points spent on it ? Also could a SH Mordor list be in both ?

[@intothewestpodcast]

A SH Mordor list would count for both.

[@AngmarCaptain]

Is the ranking of Serpent horde just included in any games they are played? just curious as they seem to be used as a just bring Suludan with a mordor list half the time or more making it feel like its not really serpent horde getting the rank if thats how it is. lol. I don't know though if thats factored in or not

[@intothewestpodcast]

The ranking is based on how many podium finishes total. The Serpent Horde podiumed 31 times, and yes, most of them being alliance lists (28/31), and 3 pure Serpent Horde lists.

[@AngmarCaptain]

Yeah i imagined it was something like that so basically Sully should be ranked 2 bahahaha. I do love their army but they definitely dont see much action in a higher capacity. @@intothewestpodcast

[@sog242]

I most admit. It is difficult to get in to this game. I don't know which books contain the latest rules for units and I'm not sure which units can ally with others. I am gearing up for painting 9 Nazguls but what can I use them for. Can't even find them in the ally matris. Is there a resource like wahapedia for SMEBG?

[@intothewestpodcast]

Welcome to MESBG! We have a video called “How to Play” that should help explain which books you need to get started. The alliance matrix can be found in either of the two army books: Armies of LotR and Armies of the Hobbit. The Nazgûl can be found in Armies of LotR. There’s an option to play the Nine as their only army, called a Legendary Legion, but to start I’d recommend picking up Armies of LotR as that contains almost the profiles that you need.

[@mackyd955]

@Richard, you from Da'Burgh area. Heard you say yinz

[@intothewestpodcast]

Lol sorry never been to Pittsburgh before, had to google "yinz". I think I just misspoke 🤣

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

WK Nerf idea: crown of morgul, 20 points, but it totally loses its re roll magic. BUT there is another gear upgrade for 10 points that re-rolls magic, HOWEVER: you cannot take them both. I feel like this would also make the WK into a model that can be taken uoitsode of 3/14/3 crown + horse and mabey as an interesting support caster.

[@intothewestpodcast]

Great idea, I like it! However, 10 points might still be too good for the magic reroll, maybe 15 or 20.

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

The reason I think the magic re rol has to be so cheap is because the WK without crown is a TERRIBLE leader. A 1 attack model with super unreliable defence is just not good, but if it is a super cheap, super reliable caster he would be in a GREAT position to be a Mordor leader at super low points, but I have never actually used 1 attack WK so I may just have got it completely wrong!

[@lukesenyshyn4886]

Wow tbh don’t think I’ve ever even played against witch king and sully!

[@intothewestpodcast]

Definitely not as rampant in NA from what I've seen!

[@timelwess7787]

Crown of morgul to add one attack, or two if on fell beast. Then let it keep the reroll BUT it costs a point of will to do so. My thought for 2024 wk magic hat nerf.

[@intothewestpodcast]

That would be a significant nerf for sure. I was thinking maybe nerf by changing the rerolls to rerolling 1s only. -Charles

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

Just make it 35 points. Or nerf the WK

[@ErkenbrandsTopGuy]

Out of curiosity how well does Rohan do in Tourneys? I play pure Rohan mainly and have just got started playing against people other than my best friend.

[@intothewestpodcast]

Pure Rohan is defnitely still viable but as another comment suggested, due to the number of legendary legions available, which allow a wide variety of playstyles you don't see pure Rohan as often. It's now relegated to a more skirmishing style with all mounted or an Eorl list.

[@maxgorthor6251]

i'm french, someone can explain what is GBHL 100/90/80 ? ty

[@intothewestpodcast]

100s are the most competitive tournaments (meta lists), 90s are semi-competitive, 80s are more casual/narative focused

[@maxgorthor6251]

@@intothewestpodcast ty :)

[@johnuke_]

No dwarves of any kind?

[@intothewestpodcast]

Just barely missed the cut, there was one dwarf faction that made the top 15 :)

[@grimgrauman7650]

I think the best way to nerf the witch king is just make the crown more expensiv. That said, he not like overpowerd, just strong. He still is only F5 with only 1 wound.

[@grimgrauman7650]

I wish that the flail of the witch-king would be better. I think it could be cool if it is masterforged but only when he is an infantry model.

[@intothewestpodcast]

Great change suggestions! And I agree, I don’t think WK is overpowered. Just the lists that used to counter them were all nerfed. -Charles

[@chriskay284]

Eliott can't say he had the record for tournaments, and then not say how many ? Gee that's cruel. Come on put me out my misery.

[@intothewestpodcast]

😂😂

[@GollumGamers]

So in 2022 I went to 21 which broke the 2021 record - then in 2023 I beat my own record and went to 23! But a friend of mine that same year also broke the record and went to 27 😁

[@eddiespectral]

Why so much hate to Rohan armies?

[@intothewestpodcast]

No hate, they just haven't performed the best in the current meta!

[@eddiespectral]

@@intothewestpodcast They need another supplement.

[@mountainboardwales]

First :D looking forward to this :D

[@ric1194]

The games supposed to be played more thematic, Gandalf the white can work perfectly well, especially considering no one expects you to take him it's easy to catch alot of people off guard and win. Same with Aragorn. Best hero's for MT in order are Aragorn Bozza Gandalf

[@tinyninja4]

"the games supposed to be played more thematic". Dude what? Gandalf in the top 3 MT heroes? DUDE WHAT?

[@lutzeichmeyer9338]

King ellesar is not that good. You do not know pain until you play ellesar and come up against a magic caster like a ringwraith.