She leads Merry, I guess that would count as one (or perhaps a half)

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Soon Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves! Roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone!

Wow, I've been totally out of the loop for lotr but I gotta say this does get me a little hyped. I like the general direction of all the previews, that said, there still are a ton of special rules that amount to 12in stand fast or bodyguard.. while thematic and sometimes helpful especially for good models that kind of rule is just a little wasteful and makes models that make you take courage tests so bad, which is a bummer because it always feels like courage isn't that important because either your models will all always pass or will always fail. So I hope the new profiles have other cool additions or at least you aren't paying much for that kind of stuff.

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Cheers,

P

The preview for the evil army bonuses is up - Mordor, Harad and Easterlings. Mordor gets +1 courage and rerolls of 1 to wound if they outnumber the enemy, Harad has a 50% bowlimit and counts everything as poisoned, Easterlings get +1 courage after theyve broken and can reroll the die to see if the game ends. All pretty useful stuff. Easterlings in particular seem like theyd be great allies, depending on the matrix. Kind of miffed about the Lorien bonus now... magic resistance is going to come up way less often than poison weapons or rerolling wounds...

Could someone explain this to me? Unless this is changed in the new edition of the rules, you can't re-roll a re-roll, correct? So having this additional Army Rule in addition to having the Betrayer doesn't benefit you, since you'd already re-roll 1s anyway?

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For scenario and campaign playthroughs, visit https://aiwendil.net/

IMO the Easterling bonus sucks. Unless their troops get a buff, they are gonna be getting a lot of +1 Courage.

The army bonus give all your harad warriors and raiders poison. The Betrayer make things with poison re-role 1s and 2s rather than just 1s, basically giving stuff ultra poison. You don't re-role the poison re-role you just get a better poison re-role to start with. Therefore, the Betrayer does have an effect on an army with the special rule and the two are not rendered redundant by each others existence. I hope that clears up your confusion somewhat.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

Ah thank you, now it makes sense! Sounds like a good synergy. Agreed that the Easterling's army bonus doesn't seem as strong in comparison. Perhaps they've reduced their point values to make them more competitive?

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For scenario and campaign playthroughs, visit https://aiwendil.net/

Easterling’s will likely get the shieldwall rule. I play easterlings a lot, so I hope this is the case. I also would not mind a point reduction and making dragon knights lesser leaders so they can field troops. I have not used one yet and I have been playing easterlings since the eastern kingdoms book come out (actually since GW released the Mordor army box that had the metal easterlings in it).

I think the Easterling army rule is not as flashy as some of the other army bonuses, but it now makes Easterlings the evil army with the best leadership, if you don’t count a warhorn bonus. We already had fury, but by the end of the game the priest is dead. If we keep the black dragon upgrade, this army bonus will push them up to courage 5. That is a darn good benefit in my book.

One more thing, please let Armdur (sp?) have 3 attacks!

Yes! I also play Easterlings, and DK's really need to be able to lead troops. They could be a bit cheaper as well.

Agreed! Such a badass fighter should certainly have 3 attacks. Also agreed with the rest of the things you mentioned.

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For scenario and campaign playthroughs, visit https://aiwendil.net/

The new channelled blade wrath spell (strength 10!) should make him a beast assuming the war priests still have it.

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Soon Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves! Roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone!

Just got the book - He DOES now have 3 attacks

Any news on Glorfindel and Gil Gilad? Have they changed at all? Itching to get my hands on a copy, going to have wait a month till I'm back home

Yeah he looks really nice now. Easterlings as a whole look good now, they've fixed issues with the pike block and cataphracts get a mounted version of shieldwall.

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Soon Master Elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the Dwarves! Roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone!