Tea & Hobbits: A Hobby Blog

  Down, down, to goblin town Goblin Town in the 2024 edition of MESBG Previously, Goblin Town was often considered among the more competitive of army lists, and would be regularly seen on or near the top tables at MESBG events. However, with the arrival of the new edition of the game, Goblin Town have had a raft of changes which have massively altered how this army plays, and, many would say, how well it performs on the battlefield. Indeed, as things currently stand (25-05-2025) the goblins have a 41% win rate on longshanks (games from events hosted on the site), and a 32% win rate on tabletop admiral (where anyone can submit results, including casual games). Within this their popularity has also taken a clear hit, with only approximately 1/5 the number of games played compared to the most popular armies on both sites. So what has changed to make this list perform so drastically differently? Is it still fun in the new edition? How can we make best use of its new tools? In thi...

Last month I attended my first MESBG event of the new edition, and only my second MESBG event in total. The event was a GBHL80 "A Wizard is never late but is slightly early for April" (the pun here being that it was on the last weekend of March and held in a town called Earley). For the uninitiated, GBHL (Great British Hobbit League) events are organised into different tiers by how many league points they can award - 80, 90, or 100 - with 100s being the highly competitive tournaments where the top players test their mettle, 80s being fluffier local events usually with some themey special rules, and 90s sitting somewhere inbetween.  Tournament Overview This event was a 600 point 1-day tournament with 4 games to be played from the standard array of 6 scenarios from the main rule book. The list building quirk was that if you brought both a wizard and a Baggins you could choose a scenario that must be played on the day! I could have built a Wizard + Baggins list by taking Ganda...

Welcome to Tea & Hobbits, a place for me to share progress on my hobbit-based hobbying, likely over a mug of tea. The tea is Yorkshire, of course, and the hobbits in question are those from Games Workshop's Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game (SBG), which was The Hobbit SBG when I first attemped to get into it approximately 12 years ago. I say attempted, because my enthusiasm waned, my progress came in fits and spurts, and only last year did I finally put my heart into really trying to get in to this excellent game. So this will be the first forays of a new(ish) player learning the ropes of SBG and sharing some hobby updates and progress along the way. Thanks for joining me on this adventure!   Bilbo starts his adventure (credit: New Line Cinema)