Castellan of the Ring

In this new series, I wanna share with you my thoughts on developments in our hobby and try to philosophize about future things that are yet to come. And to start it off, I took a great motivation from the discussions about the most recent news and releases for our system. And I will explain why I think to know, what our next expansion will be about + what I predict and want to see in it. I did not write anything regarding the many news our hobby enjoyed over the last couple of months. A new expansion released with great success. We had our very first dedicated live-stream (!) - something that was unheard of so far. We will receive a new starter-set and battle hosts for the four most common armies. Shadows from a far away past But it were two smaller miniature announcements that caught my interest. The new Glorfindel and even more important, the new plastic Elrond set. Glorfindel is a gorgeous model and it was about time he received an update and a mounted version. But the new Elro...

On the 12.2.2022 I attended my second tournament. It was hosted in Groß-Enzersdorf (AT) by the Wulperteringer Spieleverein . It consisted of three games, the general point limit was set to 750 and no alliances were allowed. Here is a detailed explanation of the tournament (sorry only in German) but to make it short: Their aim was to provide a special experience and be different from plain tournaments.  The main goal of every scenario is the same - to capture and hold target markers (differently deployed every time - I will add images for each game). But not only did they happen on beautifully prepared game tables, there was another twist: Holding a target requires not one but at least three health points AND every player chooses three secondary missions from from five different categories (taking more than one category was forbidden). These missions could be things like scoring a point for every successful magic cast, enemy models failing courage tests on your units, killing b...

This fall the day finally comes: The big budget LOTR show from Amazon will be released. Regardless of the show being good (i have my fears but I try to stay optimistic) or not, it could mean big releases and changes for MESBG. Or does it? I spent some time thinking about it and realized, things might not be so easy as they seem. Will Gamesworkshop strike a deal with Amazon? Firstly it would of course require that GW has actually an interest to buy a license from Amazon to be able to use the material for MESBG.  Now you might say - how can I even question this? Potential for a lot of new miniatures, campaigns, expansions etc - the possible Euro signs for GW are written all over a deal with Amazon. And I agree - it is quite unlikely that they won't even try. There is however one reason I thought of, why GW might not have any interest: GW in the beginning of the system, was hardly limited in what they could release, by what the movies showed. This is now for quite some time no longer ...