It’s February, and for the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game that means it’s time for the latest Designer’s Commentary. We caught up with Jay, the Lead Game Developer, to find out what has changed this time around for the Strategy Battle Game.
Jay: The Middle-earth gaming scene is going strong right now, with events almost every weekend across the globe – and the promise of new things later this year. As always, the Middle-earth team has been keeping an eye on the results – and any rules debates that have been occurring – to see if anything needs addressing.
We are overall very happy with the current state of the game, and there hasn’t been much that we felt needed to be addressed this time around. Nevertheless, there have been a few things to clarify and a couple of small tweaks to help with the overall game balance.
The Dragon Emperor of Rhûn
Perhaps the most notable change in this update is a slight points increase for the Dragon Emperor, seeing him go from 170 to 200 points. Points changes are not something we make lightly in the Middle-earth team, and this change will mean that the Dragon Emperor is still great on the tabletop, though slightly less efficient than he once was.
Rules Debates
We have noticed a couple of rules debates in the wider gaming community that we wanted to address, as players couldn’t seem to agree on the right outcome. The first concerns models that start in an enemy Control Zone – they can charge a different enemy model, provided they go no closer to the enemy model whose Control Zone they started their move in.
The other is in regards to pairing off Fights, particularly the wording whereby models must be paired off into one-on-one Fights where possible. This wording is designed to prevent players having multiple models on the same side in the same Fight – a two-on-two Fight, for example. It’s not meant to force models to Fight one-on-one when they could fight two-on-one if that would be more beneficial for the player with Priority. We have tweaked the wording here to enforce how this works.
We’re confident that these tweaks, and the others included in this month’s Designer’s Commentary, will make for even better experiences.
Cheers Jay! Head on over to the FAQs page now to download the free PDF updates for your Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game publication of choice.