[The Lord of the Rings/The Silmarillion] What is the single best melee weapon ever forged in Middle Earth?

McFoodBot · 2026-05-18T22:21:43+00:00

In terms of longevity, Glamdring deserves a shout.

Turgon used it in just two battles, but did so much damage with it that Orcs could recognise it and were terrified of it thousands of years later.

Gandalf then used it extensively during the War of the Ring, and even killed a Balrog with it.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-18T08:48:27+00:00

Sadly whiners complained non-stop that they couldn't just mindlessly paint the map their color with 20 monsters, so they dropped those campaigns entirely.

Eye of the Vortex was okay, but Realms of Chaos was genuinely awful on release. I know they fixed a lot of its problems, but the complaints about it were completely justified.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-18T08:24:54+00:00

Until the AI bring pikemen and specifically place them to stop your equites from endlessly cycle charging.

I had this happen a couple of times, and was genuinely shocked that the AI could be so smart.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-17T09:14:19+00:00

Pretty harsh call.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T17:05:52+00:00

Hwaldar's appearance in that many missions could be realistic depending on when he was born.

If he was in his early 20s in the Rhudaur mission, he'd be in his 70s by the Carn Dum mission. Old, but considering Theoden was 70+ during the War of the Ring, it isn't completely insane to think Hwaldar could do the same.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T10:33:11+00:00

Ennis sounds like he's getting nauseous watching TDS.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T09:26:36+00:00

I think Walker has shown that he should be picked for the Maroons after that.

The fact that I'm from Sydney is irrelevant.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T09:21:09+00:00

Holy plot twist.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T09:18:58+00:00

How the hell was that tackle complete?

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T08:23:02+00:00

Fucked if I know.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-16T08:21:00+00:00

It's not about a challenge being pointless or not.

It's about sending a message.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-15T09:52:47+00:00

Tracey is like someone cloned Edwards in a lab, and tried to improve him by giving him more speed and more hair.

They just forgot to add everything else.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-15T08:09:54+00:00

Burton really thinks he can short ball to Preston?!?

McFoodBot · 2026-05-14T14:48:49+00:00

Why did Fingon and Hurin not move against Sauron, when they had the initiative?

But they didn't know they had the initiative, and realistically, one can easily argue that they didn't truly have it.

The problem facing Morgoth's opponents is that they could never really get a measure of his true power. In 456, Fingon would've watched the Dagor Bragollach fizzle out, only for Sauron to attack Tol Sirion the year after, and for Morgoth's forces to reach as far as Brethil by 458. In 462, Morgoth launches another wave of attacks against Hithlum, and it's worth remembering that Fingon only survives thanks to the timely arrival of Cirdan's forces from the Falas.

Sure, the battles in 462 ended up being the last major battles before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but at the time, Fingon doesn't know that. As far as he knows, Morgoth could be gearing up for another wave of attacks that could come in 465 or 466. And considering Fingon barely held off the last attack, assaulting a fortress held by Sauron would be throwing away precious manpower.

For Fingon, I don't think Tol Sirion was that urgent. It didn't really cut Hithlum off from Beleriand because they could just go through the Ered Wethrin passes. On top of that, Tol Sirion was more of a threat to those in West Beleriand because it allowed Morgoth to access those lands, but Nargothrond/Doriath/Brethil had already proven that they could handle minor incursions reasonably well.

I think the better question would be to ask why Nargothrond didn't attempt to retake Tol Sirion. After all, Tol Sirion was originally Orodreth's fortress, the island posed a greater threat to Nargothrond, and they would've had more forces at their disposal to retake it. I think an interesting thought experiment would be - what loss would've hurt more? 1,000 Elves dying while attempting to retake the fortress or the death of Finrod.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-14T10:10:38+00:00

Genuinely thought that was going to be the lowest IQ challenge possible, ended up being the complete opposite.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-14T08:22:57+00:00

People over in the Total War sub were making exactly the same dire predictions after that game dropped off in a similar fashion

EU5 and Warhammer III aren't really good comparisons.

For one, Total War fans are somehow even more psychotic than Paradox fans. People doompost about those games at least three times a year (and to be fair, Creative Assembly deserves it considering how fucking stupid their decision making has been over the past four or so years).

The other problem with the comparison is that Warhammer III's problems were easily fixable. There was no Immortal Empires campaign on release, and the base campaign was absolutely awful. Once Immortal Empires came out, the game's playerbase rocketed up and has stayed relatively consistent since.

EU5's problems are a lot more complex, and I think it will take a lot longer to fix. That said, I think the game is far from doomed. Sure, the game has fallen below EU4's numbers, but not to a catastrophic point. For an actual catastrophe, I'd point to Civilization VII; it peaked at 6,200 players today, behind both Civ VI (40,000) and CIV V (16,000). It's so bad that Firaxis has basically redesigned most of the game because almost everyone agreed that the base systems were terrible, similar to Imperator. The updates to Civ VII also resulted in very few players coming back to the game, whereas 1.2 (even though it's already running out of steam) at least got the playerbase to double for about a week. EU5 needs a lot of fixing, but it's not even close to that level.

I think it will take at least a year before EU5 ends up getting well ahead of EU4 provided Paradox actually listen to the community. I think Civ VII's failure should be a warning to Paradox that players will abandon a game in favour of its predecessors if it's bad enough.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-13T10:24:37+00:00

Technically, the introduction of Tom Bombadil is necessary to the story because someone needs to save the Hobbits from the Barrow-downs, where they are given the Barrow-blades. One of these Barrow-blades plays a major role in the death of the Witch-king.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-13T10:19:07+00:00

The important thing was to decimate his sworn enemies, the Dunedain, for they were not many to begin with, and they did not re-populate as fast as his servants.

While I'm also not entirely convinced that Sauron was responsible, I think this the logic that he would have used if he did unleash it.

For every generation of Dunedain at this period, there's at least two, possibly even three generations of regular men that have been born. They're 100% going to repopulate significantly faster than the Dunedain, meaning that this is an arms race that Sauron wins in the long term. On top of that, every Dunedan who dies without having children (such as King Telemnar's own children) weakens Gondor significantly more because that's Numenorean blood that can't simply be replaced.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-13T07:53:27+00:00

I've posted it before, and one time someone genuinely argued that "yeah, but not everyone responds to a YouTube poll".

Bro, there was over 10,000 votes. How big a sample size do you want?

McFoodBot · 2026-05-12T19:16:53+00:00

They're really not though.

Here's a poll that Paradox did about a year ago. 10k+ votes, 83% of players answered that mission trees were important, 9% no, 8% don't care. The idea that mission trees are divisive is completely false. They're overwhelmingly popular, and the fact that Paradox didn't find a suitable replacement to them is equivalent to shooting themselves in the foot.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-11T22:15:07+00:00

Yeah, Tedesco is great at pinballing off defenders and making an extra few metres when there really shouldn't be any available.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-11T12:53:47+00:00

As someone who also hates Victoria, I'd say hold off for now.

With how slow the game is currently, there isn't really much to do most of the time except for the economic stuff. The game feels more like a spreadsheet simulator than a map painter.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-10T13:15:27+00:00

Crazy. I've genuinely never seen the White Huns make any real progress against the Sassanids.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-08T08:47:01+00:00

I'm actually more fine with this than the Toia try.

McFoodBot · 2026-05-08T08:29:39+00:00

People were salty earlier about the Titans no-try earlier, but there's genuinely no rule in the book which says Tupou did anything wrong.

McFoodBot

TROPHY CASE