Mirkwoods Elite Units: Palace Guards and Lieutenants news - Wars of the Firstborn based on The Ridder Clan Mod for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King

Hello followers,

The time has come for the visual update of the elite units of Mirkwood, the Lieutenants and the Palace Guards! However, given the role of these units in the faction, several other related units will also be showcased since they are strictly tied to them!

The Palace Guard

The Palace Guards are Thranduil's personal guard and the ultimate soldier of Mirkwoods forces. In the mod, they will be tied with Thranduil's leveling system so the more experienced Thranduil is, the more battalions of Palace Guards you can recruit (to a maximum of 3). Their presence on the battlefield will make the enemies tremble, as their visage enforces.

One of their unique ability will be to mount their steeds and go quickly into battle to defend their king. This is a very powerful ability since Mirkwood will have very limited access to cavalry. Also, this gave me the chance to come up with a new design for their horses.

More screens of them in battle

The Lieutenants

The Lieutenants are masters of the battlefield and their unique tactical abilities fill up the gaps of the infantry-based faction of Mirkwood. While they can be used as a standalone unit, their potency comes from their ability to summon specific units/machines to aid the assault.

The Lieutenants will have 4 abilities, from which 3 will be summon abilities as presented below.

Mirkwood Lancers

The first summon ability is Summon Mirkwood Lancers. The Lancers are the only cavalry units of the Mirkwood faction (except the Palace Guards Mounted) and as you can see, have a limited number of units in a battalion. They also lack the ability to receive upgrades. However, they are the Lieutenants most trusted riders and so the Lieutenants join the battalion as a banner carrier which increases the survivability of the battalion.

Mirkwood Battering Ram

The problem of Mirkwood siege was long discussed in the team but in the end I think with come up with a solution that is both believable and functional (and beautiful we hope). The second summon of the Lieutenants is a Battering ram. The ram is probably the most simple siege engine to design and powerful enough to get through Dol Guldur's doors!

While we knew we wanted a ram for Mirkwood, the main reason this appealed to us was the chance to make a fresh new design of a ram in the mod, with a roofed cart and a stylized stag head. Thranduil would have learned how to protect his soldiers by the time of the War of the Ring? Obviously this came with a number of technical challenges such as making a full set of animations from scratch for both the carrier and the ram itself, but this did not stop us from seeing it through.

Mirkwood Supply Cart

The third summon ability of the Lieutenant is the Mirkwood Supply Cart. If it isn't obvious, the cart will support the nearby units by healing them and the Lieutenant will give instructions to units for additional bonuses.

The full elite force of Mirkwood

If you have any feedback, we welcome you to our discord server where you can discuss and give your thoughts about this feature.

Many thanks to AOTR and Ruudy for their donation of the Dol Guldur orcs which you will see pretty often from now on.

I hope you enjoy this sneak-peek into our new faction. This is all for now but more news about Mirkwood will come in the coming weeks. You can share your thoughts in our discord channel you can find the link on the main moddb page or at the bottom of this article. Also, we share there bonus stuff in the #sneak-peek channel for the very curious ones.

Sincerely,
NewErr and the Wars of the Firstborn team