Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game: Rules Manual

Release 14/12/2024
The Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game is the tabletop game for two or more players set within the world of Middle-earth. With it you can play through the events from The Lord of the Rings™, The Hobbit™, and The War of the Rohirrim™, and muster armies from these movies using your collection of miniatures. Take control of your favourite heroes, villains, and armies from across Middle-earth and recreate epic battles. Gather your forces and challenge your opponents in a test of wits, strategy, and tactical prowess.

This 176-page hardback rules manual is a comprehensive guide to the hobby of building, painting, and playing games with your miniatures – whether you choose the forces of Good or Evil.

Contents:

Introduction
An overview of the wider hobby of collecting, painting, and playing with your miniatures.

Rules
The core of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game:

– Code of Conduct and Basic Principles: A framework for players to adhere to, and a primer on the fundamental concepts and terms used in the manual.

– Turn Sequence: Learn about the five phases – Priority, Movement, Shoot, Fight, which covers close combat, and Courage and Intelligence.

– Unit Types: How Cavalry, Heroes, Monsters, Warbeasts, and Chariots work.

– Weapons and Wargear: This section explains the variety of equipment available to your warriors, and the impact your choices will have on your tactical decisions.

– Magic: This section explains targeting, casting, and resisting magical powers.

– Special Rules: This section collects together 44 common Special Rules for easy reference.

– Advanced Rules: Found in certain scenarios, these rules are handy when recreating scenes from the history of Middle-earth.

– Siege Engines: Rules for fielding these immense threats, covering their movement, firing, upgrades, and crew (and their ability to launch severed heads as ammunition…).

– Sieges: Throughout the history of Middle-earth, many sieges have taken place – these are the basic rules for creating your own sieges with your models.

Narrative Play
Recreate your favourite battles and scenes from the movies! These scenarios are also great to play as part of a campaign, where you can re-enact a chain of events, from short scenarios, to massive Sieges.

Matched Play
In Matched Play games, you and your opponent gather your forces of heroes and warriors from your collection, up to an agreed points limit, before unleashing your armies for the fate of Middle-earth.

Scenarios
This section includes six Matched Play Scenarios, each with their own layout, starting positions, initial priority, objectives, victory points, and special rules.

Model Showcase
Photography of armies and miniatures playable in the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game.

Index
The Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game Rules manual concludes with an alphabetised rules Index for readers to reference and quickly find the rules they need during games.