A common thread in the realm of Battle Companies has been that certain paths are superior to others. Some paths have special rules that are better at wounding the enemy, and thereby gain Experience at a higher rate, creating a snowball effect that sent those specific heroes out of control on a rampage.

When reviewing the paths, changes had already been made to lessen the impact that the Path of the Ranger and Path of the Warrior had on the battlefield. Both paths, in their official iterations, represented an overwhelming amount of force that could go uncontested on the battlefield. In the first wave of the Community Edition, each path was split into two paths creating the Warrior, Duelist, Ranger, Sharpshooter paths. However, something still set these paths apart from the rest of the paths: the probability of gaining those all-important characteristic advances. Warrior and Duelist had the highest rate of gaining key attack, wounds, fight, strength, and defense overall. Skirmisher, Watchman, and others were less fortunate.

Characteristics, and the access thereof, defines the base level of a Hero’s power. So, what about standardizing the probable access of each characteristic? Not change the maximums, of course Warriors and Duelists will end up with the highest Fight Value, but just the odds of rolling one of those numbers? What would that look like?

Simultaneously. there was another observation made about Heroes in the early game (the first few levels of a hero’s career). There wasn’t often anything that set heroes apart from each other! Sure, Warriors had higher combat stats in their maximums and probabilities, and that was a huge deciding factor in their ability to bully other classes, but at the end of the day they were often like any other model with just some stat-ups while signature abilities were locked in low-probability dice results.

With the threat of hero models being too similar being magnified with this overall balancing-act of the paths, “Mithras” of the Tabletop Simulator play-testing team spoke up with a remarkable idea: To take a page from other franchises, what if the signature ability was put at the forefront of the Heroic Path, in this case at the “7” result? By making it the most common result on the path, there is a high chance that amidst the hero’s early progression they will pick up a defining special rule that is the core of the path’s identity. 

From there, we began Sign-posting each path. The General’s aura of courage moved to 7, Steady Aim was moved to 7, and so forth. We did our best to keep each ability chosen to be the sign-post as tame but as integral to identity as possible. Warrior got Deadly Strength at 7, granted, but this is now in a pool of paths where everyone has the same odds of getting to two-attacks (if able) as the Warrior which was generally unheard of before.

In the course of a campaign and a half, we fell in love with our signposted heroes. Suddenly it meant a lot more early on which path you chose for your hero. Moria, Lake-town, etc were able to benefit from a General that not only kept other heroes in the game but had an aura that made the models around more courageous (helpful against Terror!)

Those of you who might listen to the North of the Shire Podcast, by the Ontario Strategy Battle League hosts Dan & Drew, might have heard their episode on Battle Companies where Dan talks about the ups and downs of the Path of the Sorcerer. Dan spoke for many who had also felt that the Path of the Sorcerer was such an investment of experience, effort, and one of your initial three heroes’ progression, that the lack of proactivity that it featured meant that it hardly kept up in the campaign.

After brainstorming with folks in the community, and speaking with Dan, some ideas were tossed around. The result, which I am quite happy with, is presented within this book. Spoiler alert, a spell which shares its name with the path has made an appearance. Now, not as reliably cast as Gandalf or Saruman, Sorcerous Blast and the new addition of granting any Path of the Sorcerer +1 XP for successfully casting at least one spell in their game (Whether it was resisted or not) means that the Path of the Sorcerer has a proactive way to level itself up without having to rely on desperately poking with a spear from behind the beefier warriors or taking up a bow slot in the company.

A new favorite among a lot of the community, conceptually, the Path of the Minstrel had a grand entrance but showed signs of a weaker crescendo than we would have hoped. The conservative design of the Minstrel was boosted up this time around with a few important changes. Namely, it no longer costs Will points to activate a song. With only a few uses of the song available, it was a huge investment to take a Minstrel who would be spending Will to hope to not get charged. Now they just need to avoid combat and that’s it! Let the bagpipes and drums ring out every turn, and see that the Instrument of War might end up being used in melee soon enough!

The Leader is the signature piece of the Battle Company. It is the face, the main character, and sometimes the objective! Though, the Leader hasn’t always felt super unique beyond that; they were no cooler or different than a Sergeant. Well, as a minor alteration to give the Leader a bit of a spotlight (especially if they are a General) the Leader gains the Last Stand special rule for free. Don’t remember this rule? I know I hardly do during matched play! It comes stock on the Hero of Legend: They automatically pass their first courage test to take when their force breaks! Now ain’t that nifty? Your leader becomes the rallying point of your warriors, even your General-Sergeant nearby!



Remember this thing? Kinda awful? Rarely seeing play in Battle Companies due to a powerful, but underwhelming, ability and a -1 to the Duel roll meant that most companies didn’t take it. Banners have never been present as wargear, so that wasn’t a way to improve it. So, what it has become is kinda cool. The bearer of the Company Standard now counts as an additional model for the purposes of breaking and objectives. Need to outweigh 2 enemy models on the central objective? Send in the Standard Bearer and their best friend to outnumber those 2 enemy models by 1! Also, it can be passed along and kept by the survivors should the Standard Bearer suffer a permanent death. Cool, no longer as much of a financial gamble!

For our first release of the “Passing of the Grey Company”, we sat down and tried to include every facet of the entire Grey Company journey into one list. What resulted was a hodgepodge slew of profiles in the reinforcement chart that required a lot of suspension of disbelief on the part of the players. Rangers of Gondor were expected to be interpreted as lesser Dunedain and Warriors of Minas Tirith as general “Gondor Levies”. Now, we’ve found a place for these fan-favorite companies within the context of the community edition in a more cohesive faction. 

In our revamp of the Passing of the Grey Company, we focused on two things: Portraying the unique personalities who accompanied Aragorn as well as portraying those who followed behind them. By trimming down the reinforcement chart and limiting a few personalities to the Starting Company only, we created a unique Battle Company blueprint that served our purpose. An echo of Aragorn, Halbarad, Legolas, Gimli, Elladan, and Elrohir make up the Starting Company. The reinforcements, on the other hand, feature the Clansmen of Lamedon and Archers of the Blackroot Vale who encountered and followed Aragorn (some longer than others) and the oath bound dead of Dunharrow as special units much like Karna.

The tricky component was figuring out how to include Rangers of the North in the reinforcement chart without handing out actualized heroes like candy. After flipping through the pages of the Armies of the Lord of the Rings for the 111th time, it was right there the whole time! Not the Ranger of Gondor, Arnor, or anything else, but the most appropriate profile to represent the last of the line of Numenor: The Warrior of Numenor profile! With a Fight Value and Strength of 4, a Warrior of Numenor with bow, spear, and/or shield is the ultimate representation of a Ranger/Dunedain that lacks a pre-packaged Might/Will/Fate and is also not forced to take a bow (very useful for the bow limit)! The “Warrior of the North” presents awesome conversion opportunities for the modelers at home to portray Warrior Rangers. With this. we are feeling a lot more comfortable with how we portrayed the Grey Company than we did before!