Another Middle Earth preview this morning, this time highlighting the forces of evil and a few of their army bonuses. Here is the latest.
via the Warhammer Community
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/08/30/middle-earth-strategy-battle-game-big-rules-changes-army-bonuses-for-evilfw-homepage-post-3gw-homepage-post-2/
We have chosen three of our favourite Army Bonuses from the Evil factions to show off, so without any further ado, here they are:
When creating the Mordor Army Bonus, we wanted something that would help to represent the ever-advancing hordes of Orcs and other servants of the Dark Lord, and how they seemingly become stronger the more of them there are. This train of thought led us to this:
The Mordor Army Bonus means you are going to want to try and cram as many Orcs into your force as you can, that way you can get the full benefit of this rule. Giving all Mordor Warrior models +1 Courage and re-rolls on 1s To Wound in the fight is incredible, though make sure you keep an eye on the number of models both you and your opponent have remaining, as this rule only works while you have more models than they do.
In the previous edition of the game, the Harad force had a rule allowing for 50% of the models in the force to be armed with bows. We liked this as a concept, so this became the starting block for their Army Bonus, but it needed something else to go alongside it.
Not only does this Army Bonus still allow an all Serpent Horde army to keep the 50% bow limit they enjoyed in the previous edition, but it also give all Haradrim Warriors and Haradrim Raiders the Poisoned Weapons rule for every weapon they carry! Suddenly, all of your basic warriors are re-rolling 1s To Wound when shooting or making strikes in combat – couple that with the Betrayer, who lets them re-roll 1s and 2s, and you have a seriously deadly force!
Tackling the Army Bonus for the Easterlings was a tricky one. We wanted something that would showcase the fact they will always fight to the last, even in the face of defeat, though how to represent this in game took a while to figure out.
The Easterling’s Army Bonus allows an Easterling player to stay in the battle if it ends before they wish it to, as well as making them braver when the army breaks. Many of the Matched Play Scenarios have a random game length, and this bonus allows the Easterlings to re-roll the dice when the game ends. This has many uses in practice – if the Easterling player is losing when the game ends, they can force the game to keep going so they can try and claim victory. If the Easterling player has earned a small victory, but know that if the game keeps going for a few more turns they can claim an even bigger victory, they can do that, too!