I’m always late to parties. It’s not a ‘fashionably late’ coolness thing, I just tend to lose track of time and turn up flustered, wearing a random floor-drobe outfit and a sheepish, apologetic grin. And, reader, as a long-time Warhammer 40k player who’s just now waking up to the refreshing, immersive wargame that is Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, I feel the exact same way I do ringing a house party doorbell 90 minutes late, clutching a cheap six-pack of beer and a bag of chips.
It’s a bit embarrassing that I’m only having my MESBG epiphany now, really, because I’ve adored both Lord of the Rings and Warhammer since I was eight – and Games Workshop’s licensed LOTR Warhammer game has been around, and beloved, for almost as long.
I remember, as a school kid when the game first launched in the early aughts, lusting after plastic Gondor warriors and the classic metal Fellowship minis. I squealed with delight when my wife bought me the Pelennor Fields set for my birthday in 2018. As editor of your friendly neighborhood Wargamer since 2021, I’ve regularly reported on MESBG news, occasionally played it, and watched as an increasingly vocal tribe of fans named it Games Workshop’s ‘secret best game’. And yet its unique appeal never quite clicked for me, until now.
I blame 40k addiction. Like many other wargamers, I’ve spent much of my hobby life wrapped up in the bestselling, constantly updated, never-ending sci-fi roadshow that is Warhammer 40,000 – delighting in its strengths, bemoaning its faults, often dipping into other games, but never reinvesting enough of that 40k time in another system to find out if it suited me better.
40k will always be my first tabletop love – half my memory palace is filled with its grimdark lore; my shelves are loaded with models from half a dozen Warhammer 40k factions; and the newest rule set – Warhammer 40k 10th edition – is almost certainly the best I’ve played.
Since reviewing the MESBG Battle of Edoras starter set in November, though, I just keep thinking about it. In my 20 years collecting, painting, and playing with toy soldiers (four of those spent editing a website all about them) I’ve tried out dozens of miniature wargames, and among other things, I’ve learned that my favorite thing about them is the unique interactive stories they can tell.
And, for a bunch of reasons, my latest foray into Lord of the Rings has me thinking that there’s a whole legendarium’s worth of potential for that in MESBG, that I’ve rarely found on the 40k tabletop. This isn’t a deep dive into the rules, because compared to the Middle-earth faithful I’ve barely dipped a toe in so far – but even the basics have me hooked.
The very spine of the game – the melee combat – feels so much livelier, more cinematic, and less calculating than the 40k fight phase. Every model acts independently in MESBG, rather than as combined units – and every fight begins by pairing off combatants into one-on-one duels, if the number of opposing models in the melee allows. Then, once steel starts clashing, any model that loses its ‘duel roll’ gets forced back one inch, out of the fight, able to retreat and reposition next turn if they’re not killed, and aren’t trapped by other models or scenery.
So, instead of fights being primarily about charging one squad of meaty head-bonkers into another and rolling dice until one lot is dead, you get a naturally fluid push and pull, rife with opportunities for glorious, animated theater of the mind.
Defense lines split and reform. Well-positioned reinforcements flank and surround isolated models to overbalance the fight with extra duel dice and wounding strikes. Long-reaching spearmen crowd behind shield walls to give them dueling bonuses. Lines collapse in apparent rout, only to prove a feint to make room for a surprise charge. It’s sublime.
Ranged combat is generally far less impactful than in 40k, but it’s also ‘crunchier’ in some ways. Shooting past stuff doesn’t just give the target a plus one to their save – every intervening obstacle to your shot forces an ‘In the Way’ roll, giving your arrow a 50% chance of thunking harmlessly for each barrel and fence between bow and target. Aggravating it can be, but it also subtly drags your mind’s eye down to the arrow, bolt, spear, or catapulted rock in mid-flight – just like in the movies.
And the heroes – the great, the good, the mighty, and the evil of Middle-earth – are realized in a way that makes them so much more integral to the battle, compared to the up-statted videogame bosses that are 40k characters. Don’t get me wrong, I freaking love 40k characters, or else I wouldn’t have spent hundreds of combined hours painting Lion El Jonson and – at the last count – 13 decked-out chaplains, marshals, castellans, ancients, and apothecaries for my Black Templars.
But their abilities – the traits that make them characters – tend to be baked into their stats: they’re good at fighting, they have really good armor, they empower nearby soldiers, they have a horrendously powerful gun, that sort of thing.
MESBG heroes have a bit of that too, but they also start the game with three special resources – Might, Fate, and Will – representing the fact that, in Tolkien’s world, these individuals aren’t just powerful and in charge; they’re fundamentally different beings, more important to the flow of history.
It’s up to you, as the player, to decide when to spend those limited resources on making game-changing Heroic Actions, re-rolling or improving dice results, casting spells, or avoiding damage at key moments. Mechanically, it means their role as heroes is more involved – and in my current view more characterful – than their counterparts in the 41st millennium, or even in Age of Sigmar, where Command Abilities offer a similar mechanic.
It all pools together into a game that, at every turn, feels more geared towards creating memorable moments than modern 40k, and less towards the platonic ideal of balanced strategy. Both those things can fuel wonderful gaming, and the two are not mutually exclusive (I’m not an anti-competitive guy). But right now, it’s Middle-earth that’s pulling for the majority of my hobby time in 2025, because I just can’t get it out of my noggin.
I want to get a pile of Uruk-Hai and build an army worthy of Mordor; I want to 3D print a massive Helm’s Deep for them to attack; I want to finally paint my Rohirrim from the Pelennor fields box and refight that battle before the walls of Minas Tirith, while reciting King Théoden of Rohan’s iconic speech (and hearing the late, great Bernard Hill’s voice in my head).
I guess I’m going to need to ask Santa for more brown paint. I need it for my sad, grey Age of Sigmar armies anyway.
For more expert Warhammer insights to end the year, check out our six big predictions for Warhammer 40k releases in 2025, and Tim’s interview with the team behind Napoleon Dynamite’s Warhammer 40k documentary.
Source: Wargamer
