Video Game / Age of the Ring

Age of the Ring is a Game Mod for the real-time strategy game The Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch-King. The mod began life as The Horse-Lords, which was designed to split Gondor and Rohan back up into separate factions (the base game had merged them into a single Men of the West faction), but over time, it became a heavy redesign of the entire game from top to bottom. It draws its inspiration from both the books by J. R. R. Tolkien and the film series by Peter Jackson, with the goal of the mod being to revamp the existing game to better fit both. It takes its name from the chosen time period: that being, the last years of the Third Age, from the discovery of the Ring by Bilbo onward.

The mod contains eleven main factions, up from the seven of the base game and its expansion:

• Gondor: The southern kingdom of Men, ruled by the stewards and a bulwark against Sauron. Gondor is the most well-rounded faction, drawing its men from across the many fiefs and cities of the last of the Realms in Exile.
• Rohan: Presiding over the plains to the north of Gondor, the Horse-Lords are the finest cavaliers in the known world. They focus on a mixture of using those horses to the fullest, and drafted peasants called to war.
• Erebor: The great dwarven kingdom under the mountain, returned to some of its splendor after the death of Smaug. Erebor aims at accentuating the strength and durability of its dwarves, supported by their mannish allies. Uniquely, Erebor can also choose its era, varying between The Hobbit-era Reign of Oakenshield, allied with Laketown, and The Lord of the Rings-era Reign of Ironfoot, allied with Dale.
• Lothlórien: The Golden Wood of the elves, ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn, with the Ents of Fangorn on the side. Lothlórien is a defensive faction with a magical bent, using the many abilities of its mallorn trees to control territory.
• Rivendell: The realms of Eriador, protected by the Dúnedain and the surviving Noldor elves. Rivendell's eclectic blend of units, drawn from the Shire to Imladris, give it a literal small start that builds to a powerful lategame.
• Woodland Realm: The wood-elves of Mirkwood ruled by the Elvenking Thranduil, and the men who live alongside them. Woodland Realm units are fast but frail, and specialize in hit-and-run attacks and stealth over brute strength.
• Mordor: Sauron's domain, the black land, teeming with orcs and beasts, supported by corrupted men of Rhûn and Khand, and led by wraiths. Mordor focuses on overwhelming force, with massive hordes and powerful monsters.
• Isengard: A fortress ruled by the fallen wizard Saruman and allied with the vengeful people of Dunland. Saruman's creations give Isengard a powerful economy, backed up by a versatile military of Uruks and men.
• Misty Mountains: The scattered groups of orcs, trolls, and beasts of the wild north, unified under a banner of hatred. Misty Mountains is fast and aggressive, utilizing mobs of goblins backed by a menagerie of terrors.
• Dol Guldur: The shadow fallen on Mirkwood, ruled by the mysterious Necromancer. Dol Guldur is unsurprisingly a necromancy-based faction, transforming its weak and rotting troops into powerful undead aided by spiders.
• Haradwaith: The southern regions of men now allied against Gondor, Haradwaith is a blend of cultures brought to heel by Sauron's servants. It excels at controlling the map, and boasts a great diversity in units.

Aside from these eleven, several "adventure mode" factions are also available: Angmar, Arthedain, Dorwinion^note an alliance between different Rhovanion factions with the addition of Kinn-Lai elves and the Blue Wizards, Rhûn, Ithilien, Durin's Folk^note a purely dwarf-focused version of Erebor, the Grey Company^note a heavily modified Gondor meant to simulate Aragorn's journey to Pelennor Fields, Shadow and Flame^note a purely Moria-focused version of Misty Mountains, led by the Balrog, and the Battle of Five Armies^note a blend of Woodland Realm and Oakenshield Erebor, meant to simulate the aforementioned battle.

Though most of the original game's fundamental systems remain intact, the mod is far larger and more elaborate than the base game, with the vast majority of models being revamped and the overall gameplay being more complex and tricky—units that once may have had only one or two abilities now often boast several. It's also full to bursting with references to even the most obscure parts of Tolkien lore, though it also takes a fair number of liberties with regions that were little-explored in any prior narrative. This is particularly showcased in its main campaign mode, which covers the events of the first two films and many events of the books. A Return of the King campaign is in the works.

Age of the Ring saw its final major gameplay update in March of 2023, after over a decade of work, and can be downloaded here.

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The mod features the following tropes:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Most of the hobbit heroes in the game are physically mediocre and extremely cheap by heroic standards, being meant more for support—and then there's Sam. Sam in the books and films was certainly brave and heroic and could rise to the occasion when need be, but even he was amused at the idea of being a legendarily-skilled warrior. The Sam summoned by Frodo's The Guide and the Gardener ability, meanwhile, is an excellent fighter, with health on par with upper-tier combat heroes like Aragorn and Éomer and a temporary buff that doubles his damage and armor. Of course, this is largely just scaling up Sam to the much harder duty of keeping Frodo safe in a more combat-heavy situation, as in the campaign, he is considerably less powerful.
  • The Eye of Sauron power. In the original Battle for Middle-earth and the sequel, the power was an earlygame one that provided buffs to units the Eye was watching. Here, the Eye instead literally incinerates enemies caught in its gaze, its single use can be enough to deal with an entire army, and appropriately it's one of Mordor's endgame powers.
  • Sméagol, aka Gollum. In the original, he was a Joke Character. In the sequel, he only appeared to be killed to retrieve the Ring. While he still has "kill to find the Ring" role, Good factions can summon him via Frodo, and he becomes a surprisingly useful scout/hero-killer.
  • Tom Bombadil's level of strength in the books is nothing if not vague (the closest thing to an upper limit he's given is that he would not survive if the rest of Middle-earth fell), but in the original game, he was a 10-point summon, good enough to wipe out a battalion or two but not much more than that. In Age of the Ring, meanwhile, he is a 25-point summon, putting him in the same tier as the Balrog, and with the highest health of any controllable Free Peoples unit^note Treebeard ties him but Tom has better armor, two strong AOE powers, and the ability to simply turn invincible, he's well worth the cost.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Some of the factions, such as Haradwaith and Dol Guldur, weren't particularly detailed in canon, and therefore received a great deal of further elaboration. In the case of the former, none of its heroes were even named in canon, and all but two are Canon Foreigners.
  • The campaign expands several relatively brief or combat-light scenes due to needing them to work by real-time strategy rules. One of the most significant is the changes to the Dead Marshes portion, where one of the ghosts of the marshes (all but stated to be Oropher, Thranduil's father) actually joins Frodo's group and aids them.
• Adapted Out: Angmar, the faction added in the base game's expansion, was not present in the mod until version 8.0, and the Angmar added in that version has nothing in common with Rise of the Witch-King Angmar (though some of the mechanics and thematics of that version live on in Haradwaith and Misty Mountains). The Angmar campaign also hasn't been adapted in any form. The mod creators explained this by noting that the intent of the mod was to focus on the setting at the time of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, at which point Angmar had long been annihilated.
• Affably Evil: Though most of the evil builder units are rustic, cruel, and rude, Haradwaith's Architects are polite and kindly fellows who fulfill their orders happily and often compliment their commander (the player) for good planning and "*mwah* impeccable taste." There's no implication they have any issues with building conscription camps and dark temples, though.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: Inherited from the base game, the AI has a tendency to ignore both fog of war and units being stealthed, leading to it beelining troops towards units or buildings it should logically not be aware of (i.e. a farm constructed on the other side of the map in the middle of nowhere).
• All Trolls Are Different: The trolls in the game keep to the classic Tolkien model: stupid, tough, and inarticulate. That said, they show up a lot in the evil factions, which leaves a lot of room for experimentation.
  • Mordor's trolls are divided into Mountain Trolls (a fairly low-tier and generic troll that can toss rocks from a distance or fight competently in melee), Drummer Trolls (support units that are poor at combat but project a strong leadership aura), and Olog-Hai (armored, powerful shock troops that can smash their way through whole formations). The leader of the crew is Mollok, the sole troll hero of the main factions, based on the chieftain Aragorn battled at the end of Return of the King in the films.
  • Misty Mountains makes trolls into a major part of the faction. Cave Trolls are basically a reskin of Mountain Trolls (their stats are nigh-identical, and only one ability changes between the two), while Gundabad Stone-Trolls form an equivalent to Olog-Hai as a sturdy monstrosity, with the added gimmick of being possible to further upgrade and armor up to unstoppability. Snow-Trolls, alluded to in the books and featured in the original game, are smaller than Cave Trolls, but come in squads and serve as anti-spam units thanks to their AOE spear-tosses. Mountain Giants, just as in the original game, serve as major heavy hitters, and they're more or less treated as very big and powerful trolls, even down to having basically the same focus as the Cave Troll but massively buffed up. Lastly, the Troll Stew power summons Tom, Bert, and William from The Hobbit, who protect their pot of stew from any nearby enemies while it projects an aura of healing to nearby soldiers.
  • Though Isengard doesn't use trolls in Skirmish, they do show up in the Two Towers campaign, where a gang of heavily-armored trolls are involved in the raid on the Westfold.
  • The Undead Monstrosity summon of Dol Guldur is a creature that looks like it probably used to be a troll when it was alive, but is now a hulking murdermachine with half its body replaced with rusty implements.
  • Trolls show up in a lot of maps as Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps. They also come in different variants depending on location, including Cave Trolls, Hill Trolls, Stone Trolls, Snow Trolls, and Jungle Trolls. Barring the Cave Troll, which functions just like the Misty Mountains one, every troll variety is statistically identical as a melee brute, with the differences only serving to flesh out the local area. Both Misty Mountains and Haradwaith can take over their lairs and recruit these trolls, while the Olog-hai can take over pretty much any troll that isn't the elite Gundabad Stone-troll. In a nod to the books, troll lairs drop significantly more loot than most other creep varieties.
• Anti-Villain: Quite a few of the men allied with the forces of Sauron are depicted sympathetically, often musing in their combat dialogue about either legitimate grievances with the good guys or the fact that they've been forced into battle. The campaign mode of Two Towers even features, as in the books, the Dunlendings surrendering to the Rohirrim and being treated with dignity for it (unless the player decides to just slaughter them instead).
  • In terms of Heroes, the three standouts are Wulfgar, Suladân, and Caran-Lambar.
    • Wulfgar is the leader of the Dunlendings, who makes it clear that he only wants what is best for his people. He was actually wary of Saruman's offer to join him and was originally planning on joining forces with Theoden despite the hatred that exists between his people and that of Rohan, but when he sees Theoden's son Theodred and his forces dead on the River Isen, he reluctantly joins forces with Saruman since he believes the Dunlendings would be blamed for the King's death and Saruman is far too powerful to refuse. Notably, when the Uruk-hai are getting slaughtered by the Rohirrim at the end of the Helm's Deep mission, he does not allow the Dunlendings to engage the Rohirrim and save the Uruk-hai, demonstrating that he has no love for the true forces of Evil despite his allegiance with Saruman.
    • Suladân is the Serpent Lord and the leader of the Haradrim. His dialogue makes it clear that despite his allegiance to The Golden King (and by extension to Sauron), he wants what is best for his people as well, disdains the idea of needless bloodshed, and genuinely believes the "Northern oppressors" (aka Gondor) to be an evil and hated enemy. His background lore also indicates that he is secretly planning on backstabbing the Golden King and negotiating more favorable terms with Sauron on behalf of his people, indicating that his loyalty is to the Harondor people he commands first and foremost.
    • Caran-Lambar arguably goes even further into Anti-Villain territory by virtue of the fact that, unlike the other two, his turn to the darkness was forced upon him with no say in the matter. He was originally a heroic warrior-chief of the Nâfarati tribe who noticed the evil growing in the ancient city of Abrakhân (which turned out to be the Golden King) and ventured out with a group of warriors to investigate and eliminate it. Unfortunately, the Golden King turned out to be a far more powerful entity than what Caran-Lambar and his warriors could handle, and they were captured, tortured, and mutated into troll-like brutes who are enslaved to the will of the Golden King and were forced to attack both their own tribe and the rest of the people of Haradwaith in general to subjugate them under the Golden King's rule. Unlike Wulfgar and Suladân, Caran-Lambar was never given a choice in his servitude to the Darkness, and his quotes make it abundantly clear that he's in atrocious agony because of his transformation and corruption.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Armies have a population cap based on the number of resource buildings currently owned—unlike in the base game, recruitment buildings like barracks do not raise it, making this even more constrained unless you have control of a lot of the map. However, the game also provides the option to raise the maximum unit cap up from the base game's 1000 when playing Skirmish, up to ten times that number (though good luck getting an army that big without causing the game to crash). Heroes also do not take up the population cap, encouraging the player to make more use of them.
• Artificial Insolence:
  • A handful of summons, including the Great Boar of Everholt and the dragon called by Thrór's Hoard, are truly uncontrollable, as they don't actually represent an ally to the faction so much as a problem they sometimes deal with. These summons rampage across the battlefield, attacking both friend and foe.
  • Gorbag and Shagrat, two early-game orc heroes used by Mordor, are normally fully controllable... except if you put them close to each other and leave them idle, in which case they'll start attacking each other after a few seconds. It's Gorbag and Shagrat, after all.
• Ascended Extra: A number of heroes are based on characters who either made very brief appearances in the original texts (Forlong, Galion, Rumil), appeared but never had names (Muzgash, Mollok, Suladân), or were only mentioned (Thorin III Stonehelm, Grimbeorn, Brand). In several of these cases, this overlaps with O.C. Stand-in, as the character's description didn't give much to go on.
• Beast of Battle: Tons, aside from the ones elsewhere on this page.
  • The woodsmen of the Woodland Realm, the Lossoth, and Farmer Maggot go into battle with the protection of a group of dogs (the former two only after an upgrade). The dogs aren't especially strong, but they can keep their masters safe when alongside them in battle. The Easterling subfaction goes further with the Khandish hero Bélohk, a huntsman and beast tamer who not only shares the idea of a squad of canines, but allows the player to recruit wardogs as light cavalry.
  • Aside from its signature War Elephants, Haradwaith makes this one of their bigger gimmicks, with the Pavilion of the Golden King almost entirely recruiting tamed animals of various kinds. The Carrion Feeder is a vulture that serves as pseudo-siege, the Great Scorpion is just what it sounds like, able to poison heroes or break through structures, and the Kâradd Patriarch is a giant orangutan-like ape reminiscent of a Gigantopithecus that functions as a melee brute.
  • Misty Mountains, as described in the books, utilizes wolves as a form of cavalry and huge bats that function as mini-siege. Researching Brood of the North also allows for the recruitment of some lesser dragons, which can even be armored up.
  • Mordor uses the Great Beasts of Gorgoroth, gigantic rhino-like creatures based on the ones that pulled Grond in the films, as a form of high-level siege. They broadly fill a similar role to the Mûmakil, and were added to the faction when it lost them: a powerful, expensive tank unit that can punch through infantry formations or smash down buildings, but needs support to handle its weaknesses to pikes and arrows. (Though based on a film design, their role as pseudo-Mûmakil with towers on their backs is from the Games Workshop strategy game.)
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Tom Bombadil, the final summon of Rivendell's tech tree, is every bit as silly and carefree as you'd expect, dancing across the battlefield and singing a jaunty tune. He's also a veritable One-Man Army who can bring down entire bases singlehandedly. This doubles as Adaptational Badass, as he is far stronger than he was in the original game.
  • Radagast the Brown, who is just as much of a goofball he was The Hobbit. He is also just a badass as he was in The Hobbit, being one of the strongest heroes for Woodland Realm, and having an ability that irreversibly transforms enemies into harmless critters—which in gameplay terms is a One-Hit Kill. He's also said to be responsible for the Druids of the Oaken Order, one of the faction's main support units.
• Blue Is Heroic: The Blue Wizards feature as the faction leaders of the Adventure: Dorwinion faction. And based on their allegiance to a Good faction and their dialogue, it's made abundantly clear that they are loyal protectors of the Free Peoples and sworn enemies of Sauron and the forces of Darkness.
• Boring, but Practical: Frodo and Bilbo, the Good factions' Ring heroes. They are average in combat at best, but can summon other heroes (Frodo summons Sam, a strong attacker, and Smeagol, a very useful scout, while Bilbo summons Gandalf the Grey), and possess possibly the best leadership in the game, while being five times cheaper than Evil Ring heroes.
• Boss-Only Level: Two levels of the campaign consist of nothing but fights between Gandalf and Saruman (the first) and the Balrog (the second).
• Broken Aesop: Avoiding this was a major reason behind the heavy revisions to the Ring Hero mechanic, where finding the Ring would allow the player to recruit a special superpowered hero (Galadriel in the original game). The modmakers felt that the good guys using the Ring to defeat the enemy was going against the whole theme of the book, which is that the good guys should never use the Ring and it would only corrupt any victory they might have. Therefore, all Good factions in the game summon Frodo or Bilbo upon obtaining the Ring, both of whom are strictly support and do not use the Ring in combat. The only exception is the Arthedain adventure faction, where finding the Ring instead enables the summon of a buffed-up Elrond, but he makes no use of the Ring and is explicitly said to be only there to finish the war so that the Ring can be dealt with.
• Canon Foreigner: As some factions simply didn't have enough named characters to work with, these show up with some frequency, with Haradwaith in particular being stacked with them. That said, they tend to be at least based on something in canon and are characters that would logically make sense in their respective factions, such as Golfimbul being a descendant of a character of the same name mentioned in The Hobbit.
• Color-Coded Armies: One change from the base game was downgrading this: rather than having unit models be clearly colored based on their player, they only show their colors either on the minimap or when selected. This was due to the designers having found the color-coding in the base game ugly and inaccurate.
• Creepy Crows:
  • The Crebain—large, intelligent crows—are a large part of Isengard, which can either summon a flock of them to darken the skies for the enemy and scout around the map, or let them roost around the fortress to vastly increase its vision. The designers also leaned into crows as a general Dunnish motif, with their flag being emblazoned with a soaring crow, and Wulfgar being able to call upon a pair of crows named Huginn and Muninn (suggesting this is in part playing on Dunland's Norse aspect).
  • Just as mentioned in The Hobbit, the Ravens of Erebor avoid this trope, being entirely good-aligned. They boast a similar "flock of birds" power to Isengard, but the main stars are Roac and Arcah, their leaders: great ravens who, though incapable of fighting on their own, are excellent scouts and buff troops nearby.
• Decomposite Character:
  • The base game's Men of the West was turned into Gondor and Rohan. This overlaps with Ascended Extra in Rohan's case, as Gondor heavily dominated Men of the West.
  • Elves were split into Lothlórien, Woodland Realm, and Rivendell, with the majority of their prior identity and mechanics going into Lothlórien.
  • Mordor remains about the same, but the Haradrim and Mûmakil were pulled off into Haradwaith and replaced with alternatives.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: After building four standard resource buildings, every building after that starts producing progressively less resources up to the eighth. This is on top of the fact that the buildings can't be too close to each other, thanks to the base game's resource competition mechanics. Focusing too much on hoarding resources can result in the player's economy suffering next to an opponent who builds a handful of resource buildings and keeps them defended. Some factions do have ways to circumvent this through buildings that don't count against the limit, though; for instance, many of Rohan's structures produce small amounts of resources independently of this limit, as does the Lumber Mill building shared by a few evil factions.
• Easter Egg:
  • Pre-8.0, playing Gondor on the Dol Amroth map changed the usual Inn unit to Dol Amroth Archers. After said version, Dol Amroth Archers became exclusively used by the Grey Company Adventure faction.
  • The Belegaer Abyss (which takes place at the bottom of the ocean) has an Auxiliary Camp in it. What do you recruit there? Why, fish. No, not Fish People, just normal, regular fish that do nothing whatsoever. Makes sense.
• Expy: The three main Umbar heroes of Haradwaith (Berúthiel, Câssimir, and Burôdapân) draw very noticeable inspiration from Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister, and Euron Greyjoy, respectively, of A Song of Ice and Fire, even quoting them in some of their ingame dialogue.
• Fallen Hero:
  • Thráin, once the heir-apparent of Erebor and a major figure in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, is one of Dol Guldur's heroes, based on his depiction in the extended cut of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as a broken, raving wisp of a dwarf wandering and lashing out in anguish.
  • Cargást, a powerful barrow-wight working for Dol Guldur, is noted in the game's background to be the wight of Marhwini, a goodhearted king of Rhovanion briefly described in the appendices.
  • The warriors of Far Harad have their book descriptions of being "like half-trolls" interpreted as them having been physically transformed and corrupted by the Ringwraiths. Most of their dialogue shows them to be clearly in agony as a result of their corruption, and flavor text states that they were once heroes of their people who faced a threat that proved too great for them.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Lamedon, with its sword-wielding, tartan-clad clansmen, seems to be inspired somewhat by Scotland.
  • The Dunlendings have a heavy Celtic and Nordic vibe to them, going in line with many readings of them as the rivals to the Anglo-Saxon Rohirrim.
  • Rhûn and Khand, particularly in the Adventure Faction, draw very noticeable inspiration from China and Mongolia, respectively. That said, the variags are inspired visually by the Varangian Guard, who were mostly Norse.
  • Dorwinion is based on Rome, with a fondness for wine and troops clearly inspired by Roman legionnaires.
  • The Lossoth of Forodwaith are inspired by native Siberian people, most notably yakuts.
  • All over the place in Haradwaith. Harondor is based mainly on the Middle East, particularly during the time of the Crusades, with caravans, bazaars, assassins, and desert raiders. Meanwhile, Far Harad's Mahûd people, like their Games Workshop counterparts, are similar to the Zulu, albeit backed up by war elephants. The neighboring Nâfarati people are Aztec, with gold-clad jungle warriors wielding macuahuitls.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Rhûn Adventure faction can make two of them. The first are Flame Destroyers—ballista-sized flamethrowers that absolutely destroy everything in front of them, but suffer from very short range and all the disadvantages of siege engines. The second is a Dragonfire Cannon—a cannon that fires fireballs and serves as Rhûn's catapult/ballista equivalent. Both have weakness to fire and blow up if destroyed by fire.
• Fragile Flyer: Just about all the game's flying units barring the Purposefully Overpowered Smaug have a major weakness to archers and ranged attacks in general. Even sturdier flyers like Fell Beasts, Cold Drakes, or Eagles prefer to give archers (particularly upgraded ones) a wide berth, and the smaller ones like Carrion Feeders, Giant Bats, and the dwarven raven heroes are liable to die in two volleys. This compensates for the fact that archers are the only things that can hit them normally.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Moria Orcs are speedy on their feet, can use tunnels to instantly jump across the map, and have some unusual movement traits like wall-climbing. They also die if an enemy so much as looks at them funny, mandating at least some pike-screening to keep them from being run over (which can be problematic when a standard Moria Orc Cave can't build pikes).
  • Woodland Realm troops tend to fit this label, overlapping with Glass Cannon, with high speed and access to teleportation through waystones and Cellar Doors compensated by low armor. This is accentuated by a faction-wide gimmick that affects even the relatively tankier Greenwood troops: Woodland Realm troops cannot buy heavy armor, and it can only be bestowed by Thranduil's Love of Silver and Jewels power.
  • Nazgûl when mounted are some of the fastest cavalry in the game and can use Relentless Pursuit to accentuate that speed further—combined with their high trample damage, they can crush whole groups of archers singlehandedly. They are also extremely vulnerable to pike damage, with many an overly-aggressive Nazgûl auto-targeting a group of low-tier pikes and dying one second later.
• Full-Boar Action: One of Rohan's summons is the Great Boar of Everholt, a giant wild boar briefly mentioned in the books. Unlike most summons, the boar is uncontrollable, and does nothing but rampage around and attack the closest target. It compensates, however, with immense health, high siege damage, and surprising speed, meaning that simply dumping it into the midst of an enemy base during an assault can end up giving them a very persistent problem that is likely to knock down at least a few of their buildings. Additionally, if it somehow does go down, its corpse provides a damage buff to nearby Rohan troops, letting them take advantage of whatever hole it just punched into the enemy.
• Giant Spider: Being based on one of the Trope Codifiers of fantasy, it should come as no surprise. Dol Guldur boasts the lion's share of spider units, including the man-sized Fell Brood, which serve as cavalry, the horse-sized Saenathra's Sister, who acts as a siege unit, and Saenathra (yes, the one from War in the North), a hero unit with high mobility and many disruptive tricks. These fill a vital niche for Dol Guldur, as they can operate freely without needing to worry about Slow Decay. Spiderlings, essentially nerfed Fell Brood, can also be found as creep units on a number of maps, and taken control of by Misty Mountains or Haradwaith players. Shelob herself, the progenitor of all of the above, is one of Mordor's strongest temporary summons, boasting high health, a deadly sting, and an area-of-effect stun.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Quite a few troops (including all varieties of ranger barring the Grey Company) can upgrade their weapon damage, but not their armor. This is particularly common with early-game archers, and can lead to a troop that can kill a troll in two volleys and then cease to exist if a cavalry battalion comes within twenty feet of them.
  • Siege units can deal massive damage to structures and clumped-up units, but are very slow and fragile. Without support, siege units are nothing.
  • Though not short on genuinely tanky units, Mordor as a whole tends to fill this role. It can pump out hordes of orcs, wipe out whole groups of enemies trivially, and bring down enemy buildings very easily with either trolls or powerful siege. However, it has the worst static defense in the game, with its only defensive structure outside of its fortress being battle towers that cannot be garrisoned, its on-demand healing is so rare as to be nonexistent, and a number of its troops have glaring weaknesses. Mordor is an absolute monster on offense, but if it gets forced on the back foot, it can often crumble very quickly.
  • Saruman and the Necromancer become this when given the Ring: their already-impressive abilities are all vastly upgraded, as is their attack range and damage, but their health and armor remains the same as ever. Note that the "glass" part is only relative—that health and armor is still fairly high by hero standards, as they're faction leaders and all—but if they get caught off-guard or travel without some kind of escort, they can quickly end up overwhelmed, something very much not the case with other evil Ring Heroes.
• Harder Than Hard: The AI has four main difficulty modes: Peasant (equivalent to Easy mode, though by no means a pushover), Soldier (equivalent to Normal mode), Captain (equivalent to Hard mode), and the aptly named Death March, which is difficult enough that even tournament players can struggle against it. Death March AI not only cheats heavily (having faster building times and discounts on its purchases), but it has perfect reaction time, plays highly aggressively, and is programmed to build its base to be as difficult to take as possible.
• Hellhole Prison: Dol Guldur is depicted as such, expanding the mentions of its terrifying dungeons to a place that leaves any to dwell there it broken and accursed, to the point that its main recruitment structure is a jail. Even the orcish troops, stated to be the prison staff, aren't doing much better than the prisoners.
• Hero Must Survive: In most campaign missions, losing a hero is an instant Game Over.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: Quite a few characters gain bonuses for fighting a single category of unit that many factions do not possess, such as dwarves or Nazgûl, or in some cases, single characters. Éowyn's Begone, Foul Dwimmerlaik, for instance, goes from a fairly damaging spear-toss to a borderline One-Hit Kill if used against the Witch-King of Angmar.
• I Have Many Names: Sauron appears three different times in three different guises across different factions. In Mordor, as a Ring Hero, he is simply Sauron, returned to his full power by the Ring and appearing as he did in the War of the Last Alliance. In Haradwaith, again as a Ring Hero, he is Zigûr—Sauron's name in Adunaic—reflecting how he appeared to the people of Númenór when he corrupted it. Lastly, in Dol Guldur, he is the Necromancer, the central hero of the faction, but greatly reduced in strength by the loss of the Ring.
• Inexplicably Awesome: The Gwanthaur, the final summon of Dol Guldur. While most things about the faction have at least some canonical grounding, the Gwanthaur, a soul-devouring giant made of decaying plant matter that rivals the Balrog in power, has no canonical ties and no stated origin. The only thing we're really told about it is that it showed up in Mirkwood at around the same time the Necromancer did. The creators seem to consider it in the same space as similarly undefined beings such as Tom Bombadil, the Nameless Things, and Ungoliant, which also lack real origin stories, leaving the truth about the Gwanthaur as a Riddle for the Ages and a reminder that Middle-earth is a big place.
• In Name Only: The Angmar adventure faction has almost nothing meaningfully in common with the Angmar faction added in Rise of the Witch-King, being instead built on the foundation of Dol Guldur. They are both based on the Angmar from the books, though, about which we know relatively little.
• Instant Militia: Rohan's Draft power returns from the first game, with it providing a substantial boost to Rohan's normally weak peasant units. Draft Towers are meant to represent a similar idea, allowing for the temporary summon of a large group of drafted Peasants, or the permanent (if costly) summon of some other kind of troop.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Gondor is deliberately intended to be this. It has a unit or hero for every situation, and can pursue just about any strategy it wants. It has solid cheap troops of the four basic categories that transition into solid elite troops of those same categories, an effective siege weapon in the trebuchet, heroes that fill a variety of focuses, and a power tree with just about everything it could want. It is also highly straightforward in its design, with few gimmicky units or abilities, which makes it easy to learn. That said, none of Gondor's traits individually beat a specialist in their field.
  • Isengard, though more complex than Gondor, also largely fills this role. With a wide selection of troops that all have clearly defined functions, it can pursue many potential strategies and do them all well. Its main distinction is that it has a greater emphasis on the lategame, as its Dunlending troops are gated behind a somewhat costly hero and many of its powers involve its economy.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger, a character from the early parts of Fellowship who was mostly cut from the film, is a hobbit hero with a goofy name, goofier voicelines, an attack that consists of tossing weak stones, and only two powers: one to let him run away from a fight, the other, Fear! Fire! Foes!, briefly buffs hobbit recruitment time. However, he requires very little XP to level up, and his ranged attacks mean that keeping him safe is easy, making it a short journey before he gains his recruitment boost. When combined with Gildor's leadership buffing hobbit troops, he can form the core of an entirely viable Zerg Rush.
  • Fellow hobbit hero Farmer Maggot is more competent in a fight than Fatty, thanks to his scythe and being backed up by his three dogs, but this isn't saying much. Like Fatty, however, the real reason to recruit him is his level 2 power, Bamfurlong, which summons his mushroom farm. Said farm, while it's active, produces a large amount of resources, giving Rivendell's normally poor early economy a major shot in the arm.
• Lightning Bruiser: Elite cavalry units, such as Swan Knights, Sindar Nobles, Knights of Rivendell, Black Numenorean Vanguard, Golden Cataphracts, and everything Rohan gets from its Stables apart from Horsemen of the Mark, tend to end up here. They are fast, as befits horses, have high armor and health that can be upgraded further, and can trample large amounts of infantry. This is countered by their weakness to pikes and untrampleable foes like monsters, but some factions have ways to at least soften the blow of this (for instance, being able to equip shields to bolster anti-pike armor).
• Magikarp Power: Rivendell starts with a weak economy and weak troops, and is generally forced on the defensive because of it. In the lategame, they get some of the most broken units and heroes in the game, with the Noldor being some of the strongest infantry available.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Most factions have some kind of gimmick, be it gating off some of their tools or recruiting units in an unusual way, but a few require some fundamental changes in how one plays the game.
  • Lothlórien uses a single building, the Mallorn Tree, to fulfill the purposes of resource-gathering, infantry recruitment, cavalry recruitment, and upgrade purchasing—the choice of which to be is made upon finishing a tree. This also means that they all share the upgrades Mallorns can receive, and all serve, to a limited degree, as resource buildings (though this does put them in competition with each other).
  • While most factions purchase upgrades on a mapwide basis once a single building has researched them for money, Haradwaith uses caravans to transport upgrades to its units. These caravans also only gain upgrades once they've spent enough time gathering resources to level up, though once a single caravan has researched an upgrade, so do all the rest.
  • Dol Guldur is by far the least conventional faction in the game. The vast majority of its humanoid troops suffer from Slow Decay, which causes them to gradually drain health if they aren't near Dark Presence (that is to say, within a short distance of the Necromancer or a building that generates it). However, if they are, they gain noticeable boosts to damage and armor. Additionally, Dol Guldur cannot research the standard melee weapon and armor upgrades, with its equivalent being converting its troops into Risen Dead, which, along with being stronger than their infantry, do not suffer Slow Decay and actually regenerate rapidly out of combat. Lastly, instead of Builders, Dol Guldur has Tethered Shades, which are expended upon creating a building and have a unit cap, but cost less than standard builders, debuff enemies around them, and can be recruited from battle towers as well as the fortress. Since these towers also generate Dark Presence and are naturally stealthed, this encourages Dol Guldur to build them throughout the map and establish small bases.
  • Among Adventure factions, Ithilien is the most non-standard, as they use the build-plot system from the first game, have no resource buildings (all of their structures produce resources to compensate for the strict limit on them), and the closest thing they have to builders instead act like earlygame scouts that can also deploy into a Heroic Statue-like tent.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Dwarves, to the shock of nobody in the world. Dwarves are short-legged and ungainly compared to most other infantry, but their standard infantry is pound-for-pound the toughest in the game next to other infantry of its cost (though this is somewhat hampered by their smaller unit sizes) and can stand their ground against even some elite infantry. The Arkenstone cutting the cost of upgrades and the Fully Armed and Filthy power automatically upgrading troops further encourage the player to double down on this angle by giving heavy armor to as many dwarves as possible. The only complete exceptions to this rule are the Ered Luin Rangers, who are some of the most fleet-footed infantry in the game and can't wear heavy armor at all. Underlining this further, Erebor, the main dwarven faction, is the only one without a standard cavalry unit, with the closest equivalent being the rather unconventional Battlewagon. That said, it does compensate by way of being able to use its mine network, which lets it effectively teleport troops across the map between different mines. The standard infantry can also use Natural Sprinters at higher levels to compensate for their lackluster speed.
  • Quite a few of the Tactical Superweapon Units in the game have a slow top speed but massive damage, health, and armor. Sauron is the biggest example of this, as are those units that share aspects of their animations with him (the Necromancer, Zigûr, the Dol Guldur Castellan), all of whom are visibly not exerting a whole lot of effort in getting where they want to be.
• The Medic: Quite a few heroes are worth calling upon for their ability to heal others. Uglúk, for instance, is mainly useful for Isengard because he's one of their only sources of healing, which he can use immediately upon recruitment.
• Moveset Clone: The Angmar adventure faction is, largely, a clone of Dol Guldur, with many units being shared, many other units having highly similar functions to those in Dol Guldur (for instance, wolves to spiders), and Slow Decay being refluffed as the immense cold generated by the Witch-King's power.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: When the AI controls Dol Guldur, its troops decay much slower than those of a human player. This is largely a patch job due to the fact that the AI doesn't have the systems to understand how Slow Decay works.
• Nerf: Archers have been (understandably) weakened in power in the mod. In particular, unupgraded archers deal near zero damage to structures, and even upgraded ones will deal less than unupgraded infantry or pikes.
• No Cure for Evil: As in the base game, evil factions have far less access to healing than good ones do. All good factions can build a structure that heals all nearby units; meanwhile, only Haradwaith can do so among evil factions, and even then, it doesn't work as effectively for healing. Additionally, many good factions have a healing-based power, a hero who can heal all nearby units, or both, while many evil factions are lucky to have a single one, and it is likely to be more limited (for instance, Uglúk can only heal nearby Uruks and heroes). Most evil factions rely on self-healing to sustain their armies, and even then, many of their monster units don't gain self-healing until level 3—meanwhile, the few permanent monster units the good guys use, such as Ents, tend to have self-healing from the start. Even aside from unit-based healing, five of the six good factions have a way to instantly repair damaged buildings, something no evil faction boasts. Mordor takes this to particular extremes, with the only non-regenerative healing ability in the entire faction being the Mouth of Sauron's Lieutenant of Barad-dûr, which only comes online at level 8, only works on heroes, and is primarily useful for refreshing used abilities rather than its healing, which is comparatively marginal.
  • The Adventure: Rhûn subfaction of Mordor is the one evil (sub)faction that thoroughly averts this. Unlike every other Evil faction or subfaction, they have a 5 PP power called Reckless Fervour that acts as an instant area-of-effect heal akin to ones in other Free Peoples factions. The skill is unique in that it also reduces the armor of all units affected by the radius (ally or enemy), making it potentially riskier to use but also giving it offensive utility since it can weaken enemy units while healing allies at the same time. One of Rhûn's heroes, Razári, also has a skill that simultaneously deals damage over time AND heals allies near her, and the heal can be particularly powerful once she reaches a high enough level. And with careful use of her Baleful Wards that reduce her cooldowns by 50%, she can cast this spell somewhat consistently. Between these two, Rhûn is the only evil faction that has reliable access to healing spells and this gives the subfaction a level of longevity that other Evil factions can only dream of. It's particularly ironic since Rhûn is based off of Mordor, which by far has the least amount of healing out of any faction in the entire game.
• Nominal Hero: An example specific to the Temple of Kârna map. This map has a unique Auxiliary Camp from which Watchers of Kârna can be recruited by any faction that controls it. This means that it's entirely possible for Free Peoples factions like Gondor and Rohan to recruit Watchers of Kârna despite their typical allegiance to Haradwaith, thus technically making them good guys. Their personalities and overall goals don't change even if they get recruited by the Free Peoples, though.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • The Dorwinion adventure faction has very few units from the actual Dorwinion (the Legionnaires and "Hero of Dorwinion" unit). Every other unit and every hero comes from somewhere else. It would perhaps be more accurately named a Rhovanion faction.
  • To a lesser extent, though the bulk of Rivendell's forces are elves of the Last Homely House, and the Dúnedain who were closely allied with them, it also features a lot of characters and soldiers from the Shire and Bree, and one hero (Círdan) who is from Lindon instead. It could just as easily be labeled an Eriador faction.
• One-Hit Kill: Sauron and the Adventure: Shadow and Flame version of the Balrog both have abilities that can instantly destroy any hero that isn't a faction leader or uniquely powerful, and still deletes 50% max health off those who are. Sauron's is accessible immediately, while the Balrog's affects only Dwarven heroes but can be upgraded to destroy any hero like Sauron's if he gets the Ring.
• One-Man Army: Though flanking damage means that throwing a hero unsupported into combat against a large enemy force isn't a great idea, individual heroes can indeed slaughter their way through entire battalions. In fact, fewer heroes aren't this than the alternative, mostly hobbits.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • Dragons tend to be the provenance of the Misty Mountains, with them being locked behind the Brood of the North power and recruited from a Wyrm Lair. Fire-Wyrms are four-legged, ground-bound, lizardlike dragons that serve as walking flamethrowers and can be armored up. Cold Drakes are wyvern-esque dragons that can't breathe fire, but can fly and stun enemies in terror. The Were-Wyrm is a significantly beefed-up version of the Wyrm enemy in the base game, a large serpentine burrower that attacks with jets of flame. Lastly, Smaug himself serves as the faction's Ring Hero, with him being every bit the force of nature as you might expect from his book and film appearances.
  • Mordor's Fell Beasts are, if nothing else, dragon-adjacent. They fill a similar "heavy-duty flier" to the Cold Drake, being able to crush whole formations of weaker enemies beneath their talons, but are none too fond of arrows and fire. Aside from the Wraiths on Wings power, which yields a pair of them temporarily, Fell Beasts are obtained from the fortress by researching Breeding Grounds and then upgrading individual Nazgûl.
  • The Rhûn adventure faction features, as a capstone power, the ability to summon a dragon named Khâronax. Though not nearly as insanely powerful as Smaug, he's certainly built along the same lines, being described as Smaug's eastern counterpart whom the men of Rhûn seem to view as a borderline deity.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Being based on the Trope Codifier will do that. Notably, while men receive three factions and have a major presence in another five, orcs receive three and have a presence in a fourth, and elves receive three, dwarves receive only one in the form of Erebor. Even with the ability to switch its era, this mainly affects the heroes and the faction's human side, leaving the dwarven side unchanged. That said, Erebor does still have its oddballs, such as the quirky tinkerers and merchants and hard-edged rangers of Ered Luin. The mod also likes to point out instances where Tolkien dwarves didn't fit the common stereotype, with many soldiers using short swords instead of axes and a dedicated archer unit who even lampshades the rarity of them in other fiction.
  "What, you've never heard of dwarven archers? Well, let me tell ya a thing or two!"
• Our Elves Are Different: Covering three different elven civilizations will do that.
  • Lothlórien's Silvan elves are the most "standard" variety of elves, with Lórien being the most elf-focused faction. They build their whole livelihoods around Mallorn Trees, which their builders sing into growing, and are on par with humans in combat, though they have somewhat weaker armor and outclass them in bowmanship. Additionally, rather than the standard elven curved blades, their main infantry wields battleaxes, something said to be the case for Nandor elves in Tolkien.
  • Rivendell's Noldor elves are the most elite units in the faction, to the point that much of Rivendell's gameplan is simply getting to the point where it can deploy them en masse. They are cultured, ancient, experienced veterans of old wars: costly, but immensely dangerous, boasting incredible damage that can be buffed further and reasonable durability. Being that the Noldor in Middle-earth were in their last legs, they make up a surprisingly small part of the faction, though they do comprise most of its heroes.
  • Woodland Realm's elves are wild and deadly huntsmen, and base their gameplan around a speedy Glass Cannon assault. They come in two varieties: Silvan elves, which are depicted as relatively low-class elves carrying hunting bows and knives and clad in dark green, and the elite Greenwood Elves, representing the actual military, who wear ornate armor and boast stats on par with the Noldor. Mirkwood's elves cannot buy heavy armor normally, being dependent on Thranduil to provide it.
• Our Orcs Are Different: With four factions that make heavy use of orcish troops, this was only natural.
  • Mordor's orcs are a mixture of weak, rank-and-file fodder suitable for Zerg Rush tactics, and the more elite infantry of the Black Uruks and Morgul Legions, which can stand toe-to-toe with mannish troops. The sniffers mentioned in the book serve as an early-game summon. Mordor orcs come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, though the more elite varieties have noticeably more human-like bearing as opposed to the Primal Stance of the rabble.
  • Isengard's orcs are mostly Uruk-Hai, unsurprisingly: tall, powerful-looking, dark-skinned, straight-backed soldiers, being drawn from the Uruk Pit building. Barring the early-game Scout, which is a frail sword-and-archer unit, Uruks are universally heavy-duty troops on par with standard elites, backed up by berserkers similar to those seen in the film and the immensely deadly Man-Slayers. Warg Riders, smaller orcs probably from the Misty Mountains, serve as light cavalry on their Wargs, and the Scum from Lugbúrz power allows for a brief surge of Mordor reinforcements led by Grishnákh.
  • Misty Mountains is the most orc-centric faction, with only a single foot unit not being an orc of some kind. It divides its orcs between the Moria Orcs, which are hunched and green-skinned with large eyes and long ears, and the Mountain-Orcs of the North, which are more standardized and humanoid with pale grey skin. The Moria-orcs are fast, cheap, quick to recruit, and made of paper, best suited for Zerg Rush tactics. Mountain-Orcs cover the faction's midgame needs, particularly the Gundabad Berserkers, a versatile mixed-pike unit, and the gigantic Bolg's Bodyguard, the main hero unit. Gundabad Wolf-Riders, bigger and nastier than their Isengard counterparts, serve as the main heavy cavalry option. Additionally, the Great Goblin allows for the recruitment of the deformed and sickly-looking Goblin-Towners, who are barely less frail than Moria orcs but excel at taking on buildings.
  • Dol Guldur, by contrast, focuses less on orcish troops, with them being mainly drawn from the Gaol and bearing little resemblance to their film counterparts. Guldur orcs are defined by how the Hellhole Prison of Dol Guldur has ruined them, leaving their standard troops as pale, thin, haggard, and jumpy, clad in ramshackle bone armor and likely to be converted into Risen Dead by the midgame. A lucky few, such as the Ravagers and Tomb Guard, serve as more elite troops. They all bear the curse of Slow Decay, causing them to degrade if they're away from a base or the Necromancer.
• Patchwork Fic: The mod doesn't quite stick to either the canon of the books or the films, combining aspects of both continuities while using visuals based on the film's aesthetics. It also incorporates elements from the Games Workshop Middle-earth strategy game, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, War in the North, and Middle-Earth Role Playing, and adds some elements entirely of its own invention.
• People Puppets: Implied to be the case with Dol Guldur's Blighted Trappers, who visibly have Festering Fungus growing out of them.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Unsurprisingly for Middle-earth, you can count on the highest-ranking person in a given faction to be the overall strongest and most expensive unit in it. There are cases that play with it, though, usually with the leader being primarily a support unit while someone else is best at fighting (for instance, Glorfindel is a better fighter than Elrond). Gondor features a Double Subversion of this, where Denethor, the leader of the nation, is only above-average in cost and based on buffing his troops rather than fighting, with the strongest recruitable hero being Gandalf... and then the highly-expensive Return of the King power enables the permanent summon of Elessar, who is the true king of Gondor and one of the best combat units in the game.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: Normally, pike units are the counter to mounted units. However, Rohan's cavalry can equip horse-shields to significantly reduce pike damage. When combined with Théoden's massive armor buff, charging a group of Rohirrim into a line of pikes can work far better than it has any right to.
• Schmuck Bait: One of Erebor's endgame powers is Thror's Hoard, which summons a huge pile of gold (worth 10000 resources). However shortly after the pile is picked up, a dragon shows up and starts doing... dragon-y things to everything in the vicinity of whatever unlucky sod grabbed the gold.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some of the Dunlendings can ponder "Wait, are we... the bad guys?", similar to a memetic line from That Mitchell and Webb Look.
  • The Mound-Dweller of Rhudaur is very directly pulled from the draugr in The Northman.
  • Suladân, the Black Serpent of the books, is heavily based on Saladin as depicted in Kingdom of Heaven. (His astoundingly unsubtle name comes from Middle-Earth Role Playing.)
  • The Trade Caravan unit can note that "I see you are interested in the exceptionally rare."
  • Another Trade Caravan quote is "We sell curved swords. Curved. Swords."
  • The Shadow and Flame adventure faction takes its name from a prior Battle for Middle-earth game mod that sought to add a goblin faction to the original game, and shared a fair bit of its team with Age of the Ring. The same is the case for Dorwinion's Rhovanion Alliance power.
• The Siege: It's Lord of the Rings, there's going to be sieges at some point.
  • The main campaign has you play out the Battle of Helm's Deep in film-accurate fashion.
  • War of the Ring contains spruced-up versions of the sieges of Dol Guldur, Erebor, and Rivendell that the original game's Good and Evil campaigns boasted.
  • Fortress maps in Skirmish mode put one of the players in control of a large defensive structure with designated build plots similar to the original game. Besiege maps work similarly, except an AI is in control of the structure, and usually has a host of additional advantages to make razing it as hard as possible.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Just like in the original campaign of the first game, it's possible to save Boromir from his death at Amon Hen in the Fellowship of the Ring campaign. Saving him will be acknowledged throughout Two Towers, even having a cutscene or two dedicated to it. Playing Helm's Deep well enough also allows you to rescue Haldir. That said, Théodred is sadly doomed no matter what.
  • In bonus campaigns such as the War of the Last Alliance that represent historical wars, it's entirely plausible for a good player to save the lives of many characters who die in the canon history, such as Elendil and Gil-galad. (And it's equally plausible for a less competent player to have everyone die.)
• Stance System: Many heroes, and even some units, can switch between different weapons or go from mounted to on-foot. A handful can even radically swap out their skillsets.
  • Faramir can, as in the original game, switch between a Knight (providing him with a horse and abilities to boost other cavalry) and a Ranger (providing him with a bow and abilities to boost other rangers).
  • Éowyn can switch between the White Lady (based on boosting Peasants and acting as a leader) and Dernhelm (based on fighting in single combat on horseback).
• Stone Wall:
  • Erebor Vault-Wardens are all but explicitly designed to be this, as they are very tough (and become even tougher when close to a mine thanks to their passive ability), but their damage is low, and half of the battalion cannot even attack. Their special formation is even called Stonewall Formation.
  • Lothlórien as a whole serves as the designated "turtle" faction. Due to the way the faction's build system works, most of the buildings it'll have active at any given time will be Mallorns, all of which can be upgraded to gain a temporary AOE fear effect, healing to nearby units, a damage-and-slow to nearby enemies, and the ability to summon a gang of infantry to protect it. The mechanics of the local battle tower equivalent, the Talan, also encourages building them around Mallorns, and they themselves can also be given a pile of upgrades. Altogether, this means that Lothlórien can make any invader pay in blood for every inch of ground taken, or at least delay them long enough for reinforcements. However, Lothlórien struggles with early offensive maneuvers: it focuses heavily on archers, it has few to no forms of cheap siege (the cheapest thing it has to fill that role is Ents), and its troops tend to be frail when not backed up by nearby buildings. Additionally, the mechanics of resource buildings mean that trying to build up too quickly can result in either Lothlórien's economy suffering badly or a lot of buildings being horribly exposed to assault.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: Inherited from the base game, but revamped in various ways. Outposts and Harbors work the same as ever (though Outposts are much rarer), but Signal Fires are changed to boost vision and provide a small amount of resources, and Inns have been replaced on many maps with Auxiliary Camps, which function the same but have different designs. Additionally, the mechanics of Inns/Camps have been altered so that instead of recruiting a faction-specific unit, they recruit a Good or Evil unit depending on the map: for instance, in Gondorian maps, the player recruits either Veterans of Osgiliath or Harondor Swordsmen. It's worth nothing that a lot of the Auxiliary camp units (especially Evil ones) are ones that would logically be part of a specific faction's main roster but are conspicuously absent, such as Great Khan's Swordsmen (the only type of Easterling unit missing from Mordor's Easterling Encampment), and Dunlending Spearmen (the only type of Dunlending unit missing from Isengard's Dunlending Longhouse).
• Support Party Member:
  • A number of heroes, such as Denethor, Wormtongue, the Master of Laketown, and Gothmog, have poor combat ability for their price but compensate by being able to either buff their allies or wreak havoc among enemies. Roac, Arcah, Arwen, and Berúthiel go so far as to not possess standard attacks at all.
  • Frodo and Bilbo, the two good-aligned Ring Heroes, are unimpressive at best as combat units. However, both possess an incredibly strong leadership aura, summons that can call on rather effective bodyguards, an AOE that waylays nearby enemies, and the ability to slip on the Ring and escape from a tough situation.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Though Angmar was removed as a full faction, Haradwaith inherits quite a bit of its mechanics and identity, such as basic infantry being called upon by a summoner, a magic unit whose spells sacrifice their followers, an anti-resource power, and Black Númenóreans as elite units.
  • When Haradwaith went into development, Mordor lost the ability to train Haradrim and build Mûmakil. However, at the same time, the Great Beast of Gorgoroth (based on the rhino-like creatures that pulled Grond in the films) was added, and functions incredibly similarly to a Mûmak, while additional units from Rhûn were added to replace Haradrim.
• Suspiciously Small Army: By default, it is rare for a skirmish battle to go over a few hundred soldiers on each side, despite battles in the books and films having often involved thousands of troops. The limit can be raised by up to x10, but getting, say, 10,000 Uruk-Hai or 6,000 Rohirrim on the screen will usually cause the game to crash. The campaign mode version of Helm's Deep depicts the size of the invading army surprisingly accurately, largely through spawning in waves rather than a single huge blob (most players will end the mission having killed roughly 4,000 soldiers), but the player's army at its maximum is noticeably smaller than it was in the film, to say nothing of the book.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: A somewhat complex one. The most basic cycle is swordsmen (or the equivalent short-ranged melee infantry) having a clear advantage over pikemen, while pikemen hard-counter cavalry, and cavalry beat swordsmen but are more expensive, with all three being passable against buildings. Archers have a noticeable advantage over swordsmen and moreso pikemen, but are hard-countered by cavalry, and deal Scratch Damage to buildings. Monstrous units (trolls, Ents, etc) beat swordsmen and cavalry, and can usually also take down buildings quickly, but are weak to archers and pikemen (especially when they're upgraded). Siege loses to everything but is highly effective against buildings. Flying units beat everything, except archers, which bring them down fast. And heroes tend to do well against just about everything, though they take more damage from pikemen, but require support to not be surrounded and flanked to death.
• Tactical Superweapon Unit:
  • Nearly every faction boasts at least one "heroic" battalion. This is typically a very expensive unit placed behind at least one kind of gate and limited to three or less, but more than deserves its price, being able to level up to 10 like proper heroes and boasting very strong stats and abilities. Rivendell's Veterans of the Last Alliance are near the peak of this, being pound-for-pound the best infantry unit in the game but requiring a level 3 version of a rather expensive building and costing a fortune themselves.
  • Evil-aligned Ring Heroes tend to fit this model, including Sauron, Smaug, and Zigûr (Sauron under a different name and appearance). They are as expensive as two fortresses duct-taped together, require finding the Ring, take forever to build, and can decide entire games by themselves. Isengard, Dol Guldur, and the Angmar and Shadow and Flame adventure factions don't get a special unit, but the Ring supercharges Saruman, the Necromancer, the Witch-King, or Durin's Bane, respectively, up to this level. Good-aligned Ring Heroes are much cheaper, less dramatic and way more useful all things considered.
  • If there's a summon at the end of a power tree, chances are it'll be a single massively destructive unit that rampages around for a bit. Notable candidates include the Balrog of the Misty Mountains, Tom Bombadil of Rivendell, the White Stag of the Woodland Realm, the Gwanthaur of Dol Guldur, and the Black Matriarch of Haradwaith. Erebor's Thrór's Hoard is particularly funny, as it summons a massive pile of gold and resources... and a dragon, which proceeds to mercilessly attack whomever picked it up.
  • GROND! One of the most expensive single units in the game, and gated behind buying a fortress upgrade, a level 3 Siege Works, and Gothmog. It's also entirely worth it, as it boasts a stupid amount of HP and can bring down most buildings in only two or three swings. It's so fearsome that the game actually plays a mapwide audio cue when it rolls its way onto the battlefield.
• Truer to the Text: Though the mod mostly sticks to the film's visuals and characters, several are changed to be closer to the books.
  • Bolg, not Azog, is the leader of the Misty Mountains faction. He also has a distinctly different look, being based on an early concept for Azog.
  • Thorin has a long graying beard rather than the shorter one Richard Armitage bore in the films. Fili and Kili also boast more extensive beards than their film counterparts.
  • The Witch-King uses a mace rather than the flail he used in the films. This was mainly due to his original animations looking somewhat wonky in a way that couldn't be fixed without swapping out the model.
  • Arwen is a Support Party Member who is incapable of attacking on her own, rather than the sword-wielding Action Girl of the films. She does show some film-like skills in the campaign, though.
  • Smaug has a modified version of his film design that gives him four legs and wings rather than the two legs and wings of his Desolation of Smaug design.
  • This is zigzagged with the soldiers of Minas Tirith. In the books, they wore black surcoats over chain armor, while in the films, they wore plate armor resembling almain rivet. The mod splits the difference by making the former their standard look, and the latter their look after equipping heavy armor.
• Undying Loyalty: Sam, unsurprisingly. His abilities encourage him to be used the same way he was in the books: that is to say, glue him to Frodo and never separate them, thanks to Frodo gaining doubled armor around Sam. It helps that, unlike most summons in the game (including Bilbo's equivalent summon of Gandalf), Sam sticks around permanently. "Don't you leave him, Samwise Gamgee", indeed...
• Units Not to Scale:
  • Grond, being the same size as its base-game counterpart, is much smaller than it was in the films. This is particularly evident next to the Great Beasts, which are film-scale and about the same size as Grond, when four of them fit in front of it in the film.
  • Smaug is a fair bit smaller than his portrayal in the films, though he's still handily one of the largest units in the game.
  • In a non-character case of this, Minas Tirith, being grandfathered in from the base game, is much smaller than how it was described in the books and films, with only three rings of walls as opposed to seven. Like Grond, this is far more evident next to mod additions, with canonically much smaller fortresses like Dol Amroth, the Hornburg, and Rivendell approaching if not outclassing it. This is largely because a truly book-and-film-accurate Minas Tirith would be downright impractically huge. For the same reason, Barad-Dur, which is said in both versions to be positively gobsmacking in scale (the film version is over a kilometer in height), has no map in the mod, with the role of Mordor's main fortress map being passed to the much more obscure Durthang.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • In early versions, Muster the Rohirrim and Muster the Dwarves rarely saw use, and for the same reason: they were powers that significantly cut recruitment time of units (cavalry on one end, dwarves on the other) that are expensive enough that you likely wouldn't have the funds to purchase a bunch of them at once. This contrasts with They Are Coming and Call the Horde, which cut the recruitment time of very cheap units and could therefore be used to generate a Zerg Rush. Both powers were cut in 8.0, with Muster the Rohirrim being changed to instead fully heal an infantry unit and convert it to a cavalry unit and the recruitment-booster being moved to a hero summoned by a different power, and Muster the Dwarves being replaced entirely with the debuff power Vow of Vengeance.
  • In a more deliberately comedic version of this, Rivendell's Bree-Land Encampment can use the ability Unexpected Party. It plays Flaming Red Hair and causes a bunch of smoke rings and dancing hobbits to emerge from the Encampment for a few seconds. None of this has any effect on the gameplay.
• War Elephants: Mûmakil are the biggest heavy hitter units of the Haradwaith faction: tough, surprisingly fast, great against buildings, and able to wipe out whole groups of units with a swing of their tusks. The mod fills them out as being tamed and trained by the Mahûd people, a tribal group from Far Harad bearing a loose resemblance to the Zulu. They are immensely powerful, especially when fully upgraded, and far more generally useful than in the base game, where they were mostly a fancy way to waste 1800 gold, though they retain a weakness to pikes and arrows. One variety can be garrisoned with archers, while the other carries a catapult on its back to lean into the siege weapon aspect. Haradwaith's most powerful summon is the Black Matriarch, an ancient Mûmak that fills the Tactical Superweapon Unit role as an ultra-heavy-hitter siege engine.
• Weather of War: Each faction has a Tier 3 "weather" power, which affects the entire map when used, and has either a powerful, short-term effect, or a weaker, but much longer-lasting one. Notably, weather powers are all mutually exclusive, and using one will cancel any other. Several of the Good-aligned powers also have the rather funny side effect of petrifying all trolls on the map.
  • Gondor has Western Winds, which stuns all enemies and increases all allied movement speed for 15 seconds. It is also used by the Grey Company, Arthedain and Ithilien adventure factions.
  • Rohan has Ere The Sun Rises, which stuns all enemies and heals all allies for 15 seconds. Durin's Day, used by Erebor and its adventure factions, has the same effect.
  • Lothlórien has Aiya Eärendil!, which stuns all enemies for 15 seconds and gives all allied heroes magic and elemental resistance for 30 seconds while reducing enemy heroes' speed and armor for the same duration.
  • Rivendell has Blessing of Ulmo, which heals and replenishes all allies for 30 seconds and increases the armor of Orchards for 3 minutes.
  • Woodland Realm has Lights Go Out, which reduces enemy vision range, attack range, attack damage and experience gain for 3 minutes. It is also used by the Dorwinion adventure faction.
  • Mordor and Dol Guldur have Darkness, which increases the damage and armor of allied units for 3 minutes. Shadow and Flame and Rhûn adventure factions have, respectively, Pitch Black and Endless Twilight, which have the same effect.
  • Isengard has Freezing Rain, which reduces enemy attack damage and armor and negates leadership effects for 3 minutes. Misty Mountains have White Winter, which has the same effect and also reduces vision range. The Angmar adventure faction also uses White Winter.
  • Haradwaith has Unrelenting Sun, which slows and damages all enemies for 15 seconds, while increasing Haradwaith units' speed.
• What If?:
  • Just as in the original game, the Dominion of Sauron campaign allows for playing the War in the North from the side of Sauron's forces, culminating in an assault on Rivendell.
  • Oakenshield Erebor depicts Thorin as the leader of what looks like an established kingdom, when he canonically held Erebor for less than a month and only had access to Dáin's reinforcements and the members of his company. This causes it to resemble a take on "what if Thorin and his family survived the Battle of Five Armies?"
  • The Arthedain adventure faction posits the idea of the forces of good finding the Ring much earlier, with Elrond himself coming to the aid of Arthedain so that the Ring can be destroyed without the threat of Angmar hanging over their heads.
• When Trees Attack: Along with the base game's Ents, inherited by Lothlórien (main siege unit) and Rohan (high-tier summon), the mod also features the Entwives, depicted as corrupted servants of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and the Huorns, a Lothlórien unit that can be permanently summoned by the Twisted Malice power.
• Video Game Caring Potential: During the final part of the Helm's Deep mission of the campaign, the Dunlendings led by Wulfgar are clustered together somewhat apart from the Uruk-Hai. Choosing to leave them be results in a cutscene after the battle of Wulfgar surrendering to Théoden and being allowed to return home.
• Zerg Rush: All over the place, though how factions go about it is more variable. Several units even gain a "horde" bonus, where gathering a large number together gives them a damage buff.
  • Mordor and Misty Mountains use the classic method of a cheap, weak, early-game infantry unit that comes in swarms, in the form of Orc Warriors and Moria Orcs. In both cases, they also boast a power that vastly increases recruitment rate for a short time, allowing for a flood of infantry that can pose a threat even in the midgame. The Great Goblin pushes this idea even further with his Swarm power, which simply dumps a massive number of Goblin-Town Warriors onto the battlefield—though they're not much stronger than Moria Orcs, they can quickly overwhelm the opponent when combined with the Great Goblin's buffs and their own anti-building damage.
  • Rohan's variant of the strategy is based on its Peasants, which are recruited from its main resource structures (but, placing the economy even more at risk than most rushes, require those structures to be turned off to recruit them). Though they're a little more expensive than Orcs, once on the field, the Peasants can then receive the Draft power, which buffs their health, armor, and damage to far more than a unit of their cost should boast. Backing them up with White Lady Éowyn, who buffs them further and can summon a battalion of drafted Peasants for free, results in a formidable early force.
  • Rivendell can manage a version of this, though it tends to be more defensive: its hobbits are quite weak, but they're quick to recruit, and with Fatty Bolger's Fear! Fire! Foes! power, it can pump out a small army of them in short order.
  • Isengard's Wildmen of Dunland are costlier than any of the above, but are still cheap and meant very much for early raids, with weak armor but high speed and siege damage, as well as the ability to steal resources from structures.