How the new Matched Play Guide will shape the meta

 

Even more book reviews! This is truly a golden age of MESBG

Alongside the excitement of the Armies of Middle Earth book, GW have seen fit to grace us with a new Matched Play Guide! These two books have had a seismic effect on the game, and no prediction of what is going to end up on top once everything shaken out can be much more than guesswork.

But sometimes guesswork is fun, and today I'm here to provide the best analysis I possibly can on how the new Matched Play Guide will shake up the meta.

Of note, I'm ignoring any changes from the new Armies book in this analysis. Yeah, Dale may love that Dragons of the North is available as target practice, but it’s the reduced proliferation of shooting scenarios that I'll be focussing on for them here.

This article will start by looking out how the returning scenarios from last edition have been updated, before diving into the 6 exciting new ones we've received. I'll then be assessing what impact all this novelty will have on the meta in general terms, before closing out with a discussion of how some of the top armies of the Meta That Was are likely to fare in the Meta That Will Be.

That's quite a lot to get through, so without further ado let's dive straight into our 12 returning scenarios from last edition!

Pictured: a game of Storm the Camp, one of the worst scenario of last edition. Looking forward to some changes to this one in particular!

What is old is new again: changes to the 12 returning scenarios

Starting from the top, Capture and Control has had no changes, besides having its scoring scaled to 20 points. Fair enough!

Breakthrough is similarly unaltered, but does now award banner VPs (2 of them) and also has VPs for killing your opponent’s most expensive non-general model. How does this play out with models that are equivalently-priced, or if your second-most-expensive model is Bombadil, or for models purchased ‘as a pair’ like Elladan and Elrohir? Absolutely no idea.

Lords of Battle has made it easier to regain Might points (your hero just needs to be in the combat with another enemy hero that’s killed, not to strike the final blow), and awards a couple of VPs for killing enemy heroes.

Assassination is now a night-fighting mission, so shooting will be shorter-ranged and more dangerous. It also now awards points for keeping both your assassin and the enemy’s target alive, which is interesting.

Contest has had a substantial rework, with three big changes. First, you now pick a Champion at the start of the game, rather than your leader being forced into the role by default. Lothlorien and Laketown players rejoice! Second, deployment is now funky: it’s basically inverse Capture and Control deployment, with your Champion’s warband deployed on the centre line, and every other warband needing to roll a 4+ to deploy with them or else be stuck in the back 12”. This is a substantial change, which means only around half your warbands will be in the fray from the beginning of the game. And if you get unlucky, that number could be even lower. Finally, the Champion that’s behind on the kill tally can call free Heroic Moves every turn. Cute, and a good way to reduce the chance of an early lead snowballing into unstoppable momentum. I think this scenario is still pretty rubbish (from my single test game of it so far), but hey, it’s improved.

Heirlooms has been even more fundamentally changed. Instead of 6 objectives scattered all across the board and a funky ‘roll a 6 to discover the relic’ mechanic, the 6 sites are now in a neat hexagon around the centre of the board. The relic is secretly pre-determined to be one of the 6, which already means that last edition’s weird incentives not to pick up objectives are gone entirely: a site will be just as likely to have the relic if you investigate it first or sixth, so there won’t normally be a reason to hang onto it. This is further accentuated by investigating ‘blank’ sites being worth 1VP each not enough to make up for not finding the relic, but enough to encourage you to search them all. This scenario will still be a bit luck-dependent, but hopefully much less so than before.

Hexagon deployment, how new!

Command the Battlefield is basically unchanged, with some new VPs for quartering the enemy as the biggest shift.

Retrieval has shifted the relics 5” closer to the centre of the table, making old strategies of turtling on them and shooting a bit less effective (they had also already been weakened a little by being unable to stand on objective markers). That puts the objectives about 26” apart from each other, and about 16” away from the opponent’s deployment zone.  There are also now points for hero kills, and some minor clarifications of how the relic-related obligations to return your own relic to its starting position play out.

Seize the Prize(s) has had another big rework, and even a name-change! That new ‘s’ is doing a lot of work, with the singular existing prize becoming three that are spread across the centreline. Digging them up is an Intelligence check (that can’t be Might-ed), and you’re hoping to get hold of all three and get them off your opponent’s board edge. Notably, this scenario is even harder to end naturally than last edition, because it requires either for all three prizes to have been run off a board edge (although not necessarily the same edge), or for both players to have been quartered. Also, weirdly, it still ends mid-turn if one of these happens: yes, this mission can still end halfway through a fight phase! Otherwise, this should be a lot less swingy than last edition’s version, although it will still incentivise a headlong sprint for the centre for most lists.

Storm the Camp has had a bunch of subtle changes that I think are very positive. The camps (and thus deployment zones) are now 18”, effectively shaving two turns of movement off a march to your opponent’s camp (although you’ll still start a whopping 32” apart, so don’t expect shooting-based strategies to be too much weaker). You now get more VPs for capturing the opponent’s camp with a hero or banner, so pushing forward in force is more important than before. And biggest of all, every model in your opponent’s camp (up to 5) is now worth a VP at the end of the game. So if your opponent sits back and ‘camps’ their deployment zone, you just need to sneak 3 models in and you’ll have overcome their score from breaking you. A huge change, much needed.

That last dot point should make a huge difference to how this scenario plays

Divide and Conquer now has a couple VPs for getting your leader to the central objective, and is otherwise scaled as expected. Notably though, the full objective VPs are now awarded only for holding them uncontested, which is going to be quite hard for the centre in particular, and is a big disincentive to any ‘sit back and skirmish’ plans you might have had going.

Finally, Clash by Moonlight now has a central objective that awards up to 4 VPs for controlling it. This is great, as it means that kiting into a corner comes with a significant points disadvantage. They’ve also reworked the complicated and confusing ‘kill more heroes than the opponent does’ (or was it ‘have more heroes alive than they do’? I could never remember) scoring, now just awarding VPs for killing heroes. Much better.

What is new is old again: a summary of the 6 new scenarios

Stake a Claim is kind of like an inverse Capture and Control: it has the same objectives, but you want to hold them every turn, not just at the end of the game. It will heavily reward lists that can rush the centreline fast, and slow lists will need to win the objectives back fast to compete. An army that falls behind early will also need to fit in lots of turns before ending the game to swing the score back, so don’t go quartering your opponent too quickly. It’s impossible to win if your opponent has double your fortification points at the end (although you can draw), so players will need to hit that 4VP bracket at a minimum in order to compete.

Sites of Power is funky, but it plays a lot like a weird version of Command the Battlefield. Both players are still fundamentally playing for table quarters, but are now emphasising the centre of each quarter rather than the edge (as in Command). The objectives give fun special rules, with the most relevant one sometimes giving Fearless to make break checks a tiny bit less scary. Night fighting means it's hard to shoot your opponent off an objective from across the board, but easier from the edges of each quarter. Generally, just play like it's Command and you'll be fine.

Treasure Horde is very different to anything we’ve had so far, with unique deployment zones (a 12” bubble from the centre of your back edge) and two lines of relics on the 18” lines. The central relics will be easy for each side to get to, being 6” from their deployment zones and 18” from their opponent’s. Surprisingly, this is also true (to a lesser extent) of the edge objectives, which will be ~9.6” away from the close player and ~20.3” away from the far player. I had to break out my high school trigonometry knowledge for that little titbit! In any case, that means that a cavalry model could sprint across the board and dismount in contact with the opponent’s side objective before they take their second move, but this is going to be hard to execute in a way that doesn’t just get that cavalry model slaughtered for no gain. Instead, I think the defining characteristic of lists that will do well in this scenario are those that can reliably pick up their own objectives (i.e. by passing Intelligence checks) and those that can threaten to wrest their opponent’s 3 objectives off them. Access to Compel or flying monsters (or both!) will be very nice here.

Whoever said you wouldn't use trigonometry in the real world?

Escort the Wounded is perhaps the wackiest of the new scenarios, with three heavy objects (wounded soldiers) being carried by friendly models across the board to the corners of their opponent’s deployment zone. It’s quite touching that in the brutal wars of Middle Earth, interfering with the enemy wounded is so taboo that not only will an enemy never dare to touch a wounded foe, but the safest spots for that wounded soldier are deep behind the enemy lines. #wholesome

In any case, this is a really interesting scenario that I’ve been lucky enough to play quite a few times already. It’s a great scenario for lists with fast non-Beast infantry models, and for those with enough models to dedicate some of them to escorting their wounded without crumbling in the main fights. It forces lists to spread out a fair amount, because it’s very difficult to get all three of your objectives moving towards one flank (unless you’re playing Eagles, who love this scenario), and is generally a good scenario for mobile lists that aren’t too reliant on cavalry.

Lead From the Front, on the other hand, is a very hero-focussed mission, in that only heroes can claim the three central objectives. As a result, it’s going to be very hard for any list to win without ways to deal with the enemy heroes, or at least protect their own. It’s generally quite hard to prevent most heroes getting within 3” of a central objective by the end of the game, so players will either need to kill those heroes or trump them with their own. This scenario favours more expensive heroes, but also heavily incentivises having at least 3 heroes, because two-warband lists will be basically conceding 4VPs to their opponents. While the emphasis on killing enemy heroes (including getting Might back for doing so) theoretically encourages aggressive hero play, I think in most matchups heroes will be doing a lot of Leading From the Back: armies will generally only have 3-4 models that can claim objectives, so keeping them alive will be absolutely essential.

Finally, Convergence is an interesting and different spin on Divide and Conquer, with the same deployment and a similar race-to-the-centre dynamic that players will need to balance with their desire to sandwich an enemy half between their whole army. Unlike in Divide, force also needs to be devoted to tracking down the 4 relics, so the race to the centre won’t necessarily be able to take the most direct route. This scenario has felt very interesting and different so far, and has played really well in my test games. It will reward careful prioritisation and strategic play, and I think the winning strategy will tend to involve hunting the relics ASAP. It is possible to win when behind on relics, but it’s an inherently more risky strategy that will depend on the game continuing longer after break.


Gollum's Gamers said this wasn't Divide deployment, but it absolutely is. Fake news! Also, cheers to these much-observed hands that are in every leaked photo of the new Matched Play Guide lol

The shape of things to come: general changes to the meta from the scenarios

With all the nitty gritty out of the way, let’s zoom out to think about these 18 new/new-ish scenarios are going to impact the meta of the first 6 months of this edition.

Before we dive in though, some caveats: it’s way too early to know for sure on any of this, because no one has played more than a dozen or so games with the new missions at this stage. Some of these conclusions won’t pan out, because inevitably I (and every other content creator) will have missed subtle nuances in the scenarios that only become clear from repeated practice games. That’s particularly true because I’m not taking into account the new Armies book at all here, so conclusions like ‘shooting will be worse’ is ignoring the possibility of more fire-breathing Dragons or Avenger Bolt Throwers. And finally, I’m making a lot of estimations of how much certain scenarios favour shooting, or mobility, or spreading out. There are debatable edge cases for each of those assessments, so those numbers should be treated as ballpark estimates rather than the word of Eru.

In any case, let’s dive in to see some of our winners and losers!

Winner: Intelligence

Previously, Intelligence was useful for Hurls and resisting Spectres and basically nothing else. Now, it’s critically important for 2 of the 24 scenarios. I’m not saying that lists with nothing but dumb Goblins will be out of the game in those scenarios, but fitting in a couple of higher Intelligence troops will now be a listbuilding consideration in a way it wasn’t previously. On that note, did you know Warriors of Rohan are smarter than those of Gondor? Minas Tirith, City of Himbos.

Given that they needed to be specifically told to shoot the Trolls rather than the towers themselves, maybe Int 7+ is appropriate

Loser: Beasts

Previously, the restriction on Beast models picking up objectives mattered not a jot. Now, it’s a real impediment in a full quarter of the scenarios. That’s huge, especially for models like Crebain that were primarily taken for their objective utility. Even in a lot of 1-day events, you can expect to have one game where you’ll wish you’d taken a Warg Rider over a Crebain, which was basically never true before this book. In saying that, Crebain, Bat Swarms, Wild Wargs and Cave Drakes are all still excellent enough to be fielded anyway, despite this nerf. War Bats, Warg Chieftains, both kinds of Spiders and War Drakes will suffer more, although they should still be good in other scenarios at least.

Mixed bag: Aggressive heroes

Previously, there were no scenarios that really required you to play aggressively with your heroes. There were points for killing your opponent’s in To the Death and Fog, and getting them off a board edge in Recon, but you were more incentivised to play them passively than to risk them in general. Now, the presence of Contest and Assassination is pushing players to get out and kill stuff with their heroes, while Storm the Camp and Lead From the Front both incentivise heroes to get into riskier parts of the board. In saying that, the presence of VPs for killing heroes in many scenarios now also disincentivises this, and encourages more defensive play. Ultimately, the winner here is likely to be lists like Ugluk’s Scouts that can either fling their heroes forward or protect them easily, depending on what the scenario incentivises.

Winner: Lists that like spreading out

The new scenarios have subtly increased the number of missions that favour spreading out relative to those that let you clump up (by about 17%). While new missions like Lords or Assassination will still give ‘bubble’ lists plenty of opportunities to play their favourite boring grinds, the balance has definitely shifted to a majority of missions requiring you to spread out to play them.

Loser: Shooting

Perhaps a bigger nerf for that style of list is that shooting is being brought back down to where it was last edition. Before this book, around 4 of the 6 scenarios (67%) favoured shooting. Now, that number has tumbled all the way down to 9 out of 24, or 37.5% instead. That’s a huge impact, and one that should have a sizeable effect on the meta. Lists can no longer assume that they’ll get to set up a nice gunline in most of their games, and will instead have to actively move towards the enemy in at least half of their missions. This is probably the biggest change from the new book, and I am so here for it. Down with the gunlines!

I'm sure we'll all be sad to see less of these around

Winner: Armies with no banners

I don’t want to overstate this point, because banner VPs are still in 10 of the 24 new scenarios, and still make up about 1 in 18 VPs available across all scenarios. That’s a big increase from last edition, when they were in 3/18 scenarios, and made up a measly 1 in 36 VPs. But it’s also a big decrease from the first half of this edition, in which they were in half of all scenarios and were worth 1/12 of all VPs. And notably, those stats are also counting the 3VPs for claiming a camp with a banner in Storm the Camp, which I expect one would only ever get in a game that you’re otherwise thrashing the opponent (and thus won’t be swinging tight games).

Overall, lists that can’t access banner VPs are definitely feeling a lot happier than earlier this edition. That’s likely to be especially true if veto becomes a bigger part of the tournament scene again, as I hope will be the case (see this article from last edition on what veto does for a tournament meta). Armies than can take banners should absolutely still do so in all but the most awkward of points values (most points values will remain awkward for 75-point Moria Drums), but those that can’t will be feeling great about this change.

Loser: Token cavalry

Previously, the two scenarios that really incentivised having access to a couple of fast models (Supplies and Recon) were great for cavalry, because they could exploit their speed, didn’t need to hold a point and didn’t need to dismount. Fog also had a similar effect, in that the point the cavalry needed to hold was generally not obvious to your opponent. Now, that remains true of those scenarios but of literally no others. This immediately makes the classic ‘token cavalry’ beloved of many factions dramatically worse. It’s still not necessarily the end of the world to dismount and pick up a relic, and cavalry will still be useful for threatening backfield objectives and the like. But threatening objectives requires you to be able to push quite a lot of force across the map, and dismounting means that you paid the mount’s 6-9 points as a temporary mobility buff and didn’t get its full value. Token cavalry will still be important and worthwhile including, but they’re noticeably worse than before this book.

Winner: Fast, non-Beast infantry (and Heroic March)

If this sounds like a niche category, that’s because it kind of is. But if your army is capable of accessing models like Eagles (famously not Beasts), Dragons, or Uruk-hai Scouts, then you should seriously consider it because they are excellent at the new scenario pools. And similarly, access to Heroic March is worth much more than it was before this book dropped, because it allows your basic battlelines (your best bets for a lot of the objectives) to move much faster than is otherwise possible.

This bird is extremely good in the new scenarios

Mixed bag: Model count

This may seem like a surprise, with the addition of scenarios like Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions seeming to skew things much more towards elite forces with big heroes. But overall, the balance between scenarios that favour such lists and those that support hordes has stayed relatively consistent, and actually moved a tiny bit towards the hordes. So if you were wondering whether Lords returning would bring with it the Vanquishers of old… Nah, probably not. Those days are passed.

Loser: Specific mission plans

Previously, if you attended a 6-game event then you knew exactly what missions you would play. You might or might not know the order (with later missions obviously being more important to build for), but you knew that you needed to be ready for every single scenario. If a list couldn’t plausibly win one of the scenarios into most lists, then it was a bad list.

Now though, there are 24 scenarios. This means two things: first, it’s much harder to plan for every scenario; and second, it’s a lot less of an issue to be bad at one or more of them. Something like Ugluk’s Scouts could have a plan for all 6 rulebook scenarios, but is realistically going to struggle with Contest (and Lords to a lesser extent) regardless of how they build. But on the flipside, that’s only a 1/24 or 1/12 chance in any given game. It’s very plausible to skate through a tournament and play neither of those scenarios, and building with that in mind is not necessarily a bad idea. And of course, veto will make this even easier (although it will also reduce the number of easy wins available to the Scouts, as discussed here).

Winner: All of us

You know I gotta end the section on a wholesome note!

But seriously, this book is excellent. The Armies of Middle Earth may have had some disappointments, but this one is like Christmas come early. All of the good scenarios are back basically unchanged, all of the bad ones have had some pretty great face lifts that look to be addressing at least some of their problems, and the new scenarios have all felt really fun in my practice games so far. The problematic parts of the first six scenarios (favouring banners and shooting) have been heavily mitigated too. I don’t know if I could quite give the book a 10/10 (I don’t like the new proliferation of VPs for killing heroes, for example), but a solid 9 or 9.5 feels very appropriate.

It feels so good to be moving beyond those first six scenarios at last

The shape of things to come: how (some of) the best lists of the edition so far will be impacted

And finally, it’s time for the most important part of the article, where I pontificate in a vacuum about ‘Dale down, Eagles up’ and we ignore any nuance in the previous 3000 words. All above caveats do apply though: I’m ignoring Armies of Middle Earth, these are very general takes, and above all, it’s too early to know for certain.

Right, that’s done, now let’s give some hot takes!

Winner: Eagles

Cacaw! It’s a very good day to have an entire army of hyper-mobile infantry models that aren’t Beasts. Lead From the Front is gonna be a tricky scenario for pure Eagles, thanks to only having a single hero, but even then it’s not like Eagles have ever struggled to kill heroes. And they will excel in scenarios like Contest, Assassination, Escort the Wounded, Treasure Hoard… the list goes on. And if you’re fielding one of the many lists that can drop in Gwaihir, strongly consider doing so, because he is excellent in every single one of the 18 added scenarios. Aside from the looming threat of Dragonfire, I think the future looks bright for everyone’s favourite (lol) birds.

Loser: Army of the White Hand

These guys will be taking a well-deserved drop in power with the new book

Jumping from buffed birds to nerfed ones, this list really enjoyed its Crebain, and will be sad to see them become less relevant in most scenarios. Centre-line deployment is also bad for its shooting and Lightning Strike, and that’s going to be a lot more prevalent now than before. I expect this list to remain a powerful and flexible force, but one that should be down a little from its heights.

Mixed bag: Depths

I’m not gonna lie, relying on 5” Move Goblins for mission play isn’t entirely ideal. And missions like Lords and Contest will depend heavily on which build of Depths is being used, with the Balrog maybe being encouraged a little more to deal with them. But more centreline deployment is good, as is the lists’ plentiful access to March and crazy numbers. I think that if anything brings down Depths’ winrate, it’s more likely to be players pivoting to generic Moria for some variety rather than this list actually being any worse.

Winner: Ugluk’s Scouts

It's going to be a good time to swarm people with Scouts

The Scouts may have been great at the existing scenario pool, but guess what, they’re even better at the new ones. An increase in demand for fast infantry is great for them, their horde playstyle will be as good as ever, and even the shift to less shooting scenarios is probably a net positive for them especially because the new proliferation of Night Fighting rules makes massed Uruk Bows a terrifying prospect. Contest is pretty close to an auto-loss against most lists, but otherwise things are looking excellent for one of my favourite armies.

Loser: Garrison of Dale

Leaving the best for last, Dale has taken a massive hit from the reduced importance of shooting. They’re a powerful enough list that they’ll definitely still be competitive (massed infantry with +1 to wound is never bad), but overall it’s a very bad day to be someone planning to gun people off the board with triple Windlances. I’m sure we all will feel very sad about this.

One of these two factions loves the new scenarios, and it's not the one that wants to sit back and shoot

Conclusion: What a time to be alive!

It’s an exciting time to be part of the MESBG scene, and I can hardly wait to dive even deeper into these new scenarios with more practice games. Between the new armies and the new lists, there is simply too much to test out!

But rest assured, there’ll be plenty of content from me in the coming months. I’m attending a number of high-points upcoming events, and am excited to be trying and writing up all my experiences from those. I’ve got a long-delayed (and now hastily-updated) Ugluk’s Scouts tactica coming out soon, as well as an article arguing that they’re much stronger than Lurtz’ Scouts. And of course, I have so many thoughts on the new Moria profiles, so expect content on those. Some of the first articles I ever wrote were exploring these beasties, and it’s very exciting to be analysing them in somewhat of a renaissance.

Until then though, may your favourite armies be on the right side of the scenario changes!

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