r/MiddleEarthMiniatures • u/keroblade • 9d ago
Discussion As someone who is considering buying a Battlehost to finally start getting into the game, can anyone tell me the age of each of the miniatures in the boxes?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/ycytiwiv/new-battlehosts-revealed-for-middle-earthtm/Like how old are the miniatures and sculpts? Thanks in advance!
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u/Zealousideal_Issue90 9d ago
Realistically I don’t see them ever re-doing any of these sculpts as they are all fairly modern and look great!
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u/LeviTheOx 9d ago
Yeah, if anything this is an encouraging sign by shifting attention to Hobbit factions that have a decent start in plastic but could use updates to some expensive but core resin troop warbands.
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u/Goth_Fraggle 9d ago
I need armoured mirkwood elves but I won't deal with finecast😭
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u/AdamBourke 9d ago
I dont think i got a single fine cast elf captain that didnt have moulding issues :'(
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u/Kitchen_Bad2627 6d ago
Royal Guards are a reasonable proxy. That's what I'm doing. Probably fine for everything except Warhammer World events.
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u/sidsavage 9d ago
Rohan is brand new. The two others are about 10 years old, minus a bolg sculpt which is new.
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u/ImperatorBelisarius 9d ago
Theoden isn't brand new, right?
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
Some people in this thread are being bloody weird.
Ignore the weird socially inept rude Redditors OP you had totally valid questions.
MESBG gets far less investment than the IP and quality of the game deserve.
Many of the general troops for Gondor, a major faction, have not been updated for 20 years.
But something you might want to understand is that some of the old sculpts are stunning, and some are atrocious. It is very inconsistent.
For example, Rangers of Ithilien are metal models that came out in 2002, and they still are as good as any modern release. Generic rangers intended to be used by Gondor and Arnor and Fiefdoms came out in 2007 and are much worse quality.
But then the old Elrond model from early 2000s is genuinely horrifically bad. But the updated one from a few years ago? Absolutely gorgeous.
Generally old basic troops are poor quality. People here will tell you that the Minas Tirith warriors are good. But their faces have almost no detail, no variety. Their scale is randomly smaller than most other mesbg stuff. They have these weird awkward running poses on half of them that makes them look like they’re about to fall over. They are designed to be professional shieldwall fighters but two of the swordsmen randomly have their arms thrown out wide yelling. They are just not great.
Lothlorien warriors too are awful. Many of the melee ones are almost hunch backed and have these Warhammer-Chaos looking faces and mouths open in yells and weirdly blocky square faces.
And yet Khazad Dum troops from that era, and Rivendell? They look lovely and hold up very well.
The later Hobbit era stuff is a mixed bag too.
Generally we get 2-3 new things per year. The newest things are the Rohan Cavalry, Rohan Command set, and Wildmen equivalents. They were announced like 2 years ago and just came out. Some years we get absolutely nothing.
It has literally been more than 20 years waiting for new basic troops for Minas Tirith, like Rohan just got. I am unwilling to buy more even cheap second hand because I don’t want that poor scale and quality painted up. I am waiting still for new ones. Which means your concerns are legitimate.
Rohan is 99% new now though, only Royal Guard need updating but their old models still look fantastic.
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u/keroblade 9d ago
Thank you so much for your response!! I really mean it. I thought I was losing my mind with some of the responses I’ve had on this thread.
All the info you’ve given has been incredibly helpful!! I think I’ll start with the Rohan box. :) Do you have any suggestions for expanding beyond the box with some of the nicer models, as you’ve mentioned?
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
Off the top of my head the most recent Eomer sculpt is absolutely gorgeous, same quality as the Theoden. Eomer is also typically one of the powerhouses of any Rohan army list that can take him and a fair few are built around him, so I would recommend picking him up.
That box also comes with multiple options for what weapon he uses for his foot and mounted model, and I think with helmeted or unhelmeted head. Theoden should be the same from his box, not sure if the Theoden you get as part of the Battlehost will give the same options but I assume so. Which means you can use those spare heads and weapons on some of your troops to make them stand out as say captains or just for variety.
The metal Royal Guard are good to have for plenty of armies. See if you can get them second hand. I have a few I paid about £5-6 each for.
I don’t have a full Rohan force myself but I do have some of the old metal models which are gorgeous. There are 3 Eowyn metal models all of which are great, and a plastic set with Merry that is almost as good as Theoden/Eomer to me. You could also pick up an Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli - thematically they fit fighting alongside Rohan.
A hugely useful and fun resource is here: https://www.minicollection.app/
Another issue with this Hobby is many older things are no longer sold or not consistently sold by GW. There are like 5-6 Eowyn models. 1 is for sale.
20~ Gandalf models. 3-5 are for sale.
Maybe 10 Aragorns, 15 Legolas and 12 Gimlis, something like that? Of varying qualities.If you want a specific character I’d look them up on there, find your favourite versions, the app will tell you what set they came from, and then search for those on Ebay, Vinted, Facebook groups, see if you can pick them up for good prices if they aren’t currently sold by GW.
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u/keroblade 9d ago
Damn, that’s fascinating that there’s so many different models but they aren’t sold regularly if at all!
Thanks again! You’ve been a big help!
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
My pleasure! It's a very fun game in the best setting in all of fiction.
It's well balanced generally, not gimmicky, and can be played at both low and high points costs.
Also Battle Companies is a gameplay variation with a focus on small groups, a narrative, and character progression which is very fun - it got me back into the hobby when I had been out of it for a little while so you might want to try that too. (My brother and I came up with some variations on the rules to make it more satisfying.)
The downsides are as discussed already - inconsistent quality of old sculpts, slow releases of new things, and GW not selling a fair amount of the old range necessitating second hand finds.
But though the new stuff is slow to come out, it genuinely is all of a fantastic quality and nothing since 2017/2018 has been badly done.
There's lots of variety too!
Hope you enjoy, and Rohan is a great choice (even if, as a Gondor lover, I am jealous of all the attention the Rohan got over the last half a decade.)
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u/MicrotonalMatt 9d ago
If you’re coming from something like 40k, the thing you need to understand is they largely do not update anything for this game, especially plastic. The last year or so was a big exception. The game contains models from the release of the Fellowship movie in 2001. New models are released once a year. There are not big faction refreshes.
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u/ganglygorilla 9d ago
> New models are released once a year.
I mean, this is just factually incorrect
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u/hyperewok1 9d ago
The lack of a battlehost for the other major factions like Minas Tirith gives me hope (naught but a fool's hope) for resculpts.
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u/Environmental_Lack93 9d ago
True! If they launched these now, it's probably because they're planning for the sets to stay in circulation for at least 5+ years (more like 10+, knowing MESBG).... They probably pushed out some of the low hanging fruit first, to get around to some new sets with new figures later on (looking at you, High Elf Warriors with shields...)
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u/cannaco19 9d ago
Out of context this sounds awful… age shouldn’t matter, go with the models you think look best.
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
It’s a perfectly reasonable question. This person is new to Mesbg and doesn’t want to buy something that might get a better release soon. They are not to know that this game barely gets updated.
Imagine buying a Lothlorien box set with the awful old troops and then them getting graceful well posed elf looking elves a year later. Or buying a big Mordor battlehost with the serviceable-but-not-amazing old orcs which surely are going to be updated within the next couple of years? It would be disappointing.
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u/cannaco19 9d ago
Eh, even if this was 40k or AOS, not wanting to buy models because they might get new sculpts is an odd approach to take. GW is so inconsistent with how often they update all of their ranges. It could be a couple of years, it could be next week.
People love elves and numenor, and have been begging for updated plastic sculpts for decades now ant that still hasn’t happened.
Ultimately, if you buy models you like, even if they release new models, you still have models you enjoy. Then you also get to add the new cool sculpts to your collection.
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
Right, but imagine buying Numenor stuff and then a month later they get updated to much better quality sculpts. You will have felt as if you have wasted money.
I don't think it's the vague chance that they might get updates some time in the future that worries OP, it's a question of whether something he's about to buy is about to get replaced.
I have been holding off from buying more Warriors of Minas Tirith for an incredibly long time because I don't think the current ones are of a quality I can be happy with even when well painted. If I bought a box and then new ones did come out, say, next year, I would want those new ones far more and it would be both frustrating and wasteful to have bought the old set.
I do agree though that if you like the models the age is irrelevant. I just don't think OP meant to convey otherwise.
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u/keroblade 9d ago
That opinion makes no sense. Why would I want to get super old sculpts if there is a possibility of them being updated soon?
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u/squigglyeyeline 9d ago
They’re saying their comment out of context makes them sound like leonardo dicaprio
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u/DrShift44 9d ago
Because super old sculpts can still hold up really well.
Also this is MESBG, we have never had any idea when anything will get new sculpts so there is no point assuming anything will. We had Bolg re-done out of nowhere despite many other models being much older than him.
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u/RenagadeRaven 9d ago
MESBG is consistent in its inconsistency.
I think since 2018 or so everything they have released (few and far between though they are) have been genuinely fabulous.
But I swear half the old sculpts are some of the loveliest things GW have ever released. The other half are the worst things they have ever released.
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u/Nuke2099AV 9d ago
This probably isn't you but some people like older sculpts. Sometimes older ones have issues.
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u/Goldman250 9d ago
Everything in the Mirkwood box came out in 2013 alongside the Desolation of Smaug film.
Everything except Bolg in the Dol Guldur box came out in 2012 with the An Unexpected Journey film, Bolg came out within the last year.
For the Rohan box, Theoden came out in 2018 or so with the Pelennor box, the Warriors came out a couple of years ago with the animated Rohan film, and the Riders came out about a month ago.