David Bridges
British model maker Games Workshop is best known for its Warhammer games, the far-flung future of 40K and the fantastical trappings of Age of Sigmar and its predecessors. But since 2001 the company has also been putting out the pretty-damn-fantastic Lord of the Rings miniatures game, based on the Peter Jackson movie trilogy and eventually the Hobbit films. Now, it’s on the precipice of a brand new edition… one that will bring miniatures from the first Middle-earth movie since Battle of the Five Armies.
Games Workshop confirmed today that a new edition of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game (MESBG, as it’s been known since the addition of factions from the Hobbit trilogy) is coming soon, the first for the game since its last major overhaul in 2018. As well as new updates to its ruleset and its current factions across both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the new edition will bring with it brand new models, inspired by the upcoming animated movie War of the Rohirrim.
While details are still under wraps—especially considering that we have barely seen much of the film at all, despite it being in theaters at the end of this year—it marks the first time the tabletop game has had new licensed material to draw on for miniatures since the release of the final Hobbit film in 2014. MESBG operates in a particularly weird niche of the already weird interconnected systems of licensing rights that is Lord of the Rings in the first place. Games Workshop’s deal covers both material from the Warner Bros/New Line movies and Tolkien’s books through a partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises, which was purchased from original rights holders Saul Zaentz by the entertainment conglomerate Embracer Group in 2022.
Embracer maintained that licensing deal in the transition, but it means that Games Workshop hasn’t been able to touch adaptations like The Rings of Power so far. Those rights are part of a separate deal Amazon Studios made directly with the Tolkien Estate in 2017, and thus a new attempt to incorporate visual imagery or show-specific versions of characters like Galadriel, Gil-Galad, or Elrond (who already all appear in various forms in MESBG based on their cinematic appearances) would require a new deal. The confirmation that Games Workshop can play with War of the Rohirrim likely means that, should any of them actually happen going forward, Warner Bros.’ plans for new Lord of the Rings movies—like Andy Serkis’ Hunt for Gollum—could similarly become accessible to the model makers.
It’s an exciting time then for one of Games Workshop’s unsung, but fascinating, tabletop franchises. No doubt we’ll find out more of its plans for the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game the closer we get to the launch of the latest edition, presumably sometime later this year ahead of War of the Rohirrim‘s release in December.
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Daniel Mercer
