This article assumes that you are a beginner and have read the rules. If you indeed have the rules thoroughly you deserve an award of some sort - you are way ahead of most beginners. But even so, there are a number of mistakes that reading the rules don't help you avoid. These mistakes are the focus of this article.

Be advised, many of the below topics are worth a whole article. The purpose here is just to get you pointed in the right direction and stimulate thought.

Mistake 1. Making armies perfect: Training, morale, weapons, armor, and food all have a varying degree of effectiveness on one or more capabilities of any army. It can take a very large number of turns, money, and orders to significantly enhance all aspects of an army. Usually it is not worth it. Your entire empire can crumble around you if you focus too much on "getting an army ready." Relax a bit. It is perfectly viable to send an army into combat with wood weapons, no armor, no food, lousy morale and no training.

Reasonable steps: Often just having 1 food in an army allows the pop center it is located at to feed it--1 food is a very reasonable step.

You get the most bang for the buck armoring your Heavy troops - so this is a reasonable step in many circumstances.

I am not going to tell you all my secrets, but in widely differing circumstances I do worry about training, morale, weapons, armor, and/or food. But the point is this: if you are new to the game, don't fell obligated to bog down your war effort worrying about morale, etc.... recruit those troops, get them out on the field, and don't feel any regret if you skip the frills. They are frills.

Mistake 2: Too few armies: Mages, Agents and Emissaries can be crucial to your country's survival. But in general, your side will not win if your side does not have enough armies (and characters with command skill to lead them). You can assassinate all you want, cast cures spells all you want, but without armies your side will not win the war.

Mistake 3: Ignoring caps: I cannot overestimate the importance of building camps. They enhance your economy and allow you to build bigger armies. I sometimes get the impression from players that they plan to concentrate on conquering enemy pop centers rather than building camps. My response is, "Since the enemy built camps they will have bigger armies than you, explain how you will be conquering THEIR pop centers when YOU have smaller armies."

Mistake 4: Frantic use of characters: Move, sell, buy, transfer, make armor, etc... are just some of the orders that do not improve the skills of your characters. After completing several turns and looking back at the actions your characters performed, it is possible to be shocked at how little training some or all of your characters received. With some planning and personal discipline your characters can get much more training. For starters, pay close attention to:

--how you handle commodities, in particular, try to it so that you only sell one commodity per turn.

--the use of companies, often you can have the company commander do the moving while one or more "carried" characters get to increase a skill with an order that otherwise would be devoted to movement.

--each move order. When I really think about it, about 15% of my initially planned move character orders are not necessary.

--if you have a character you really don't want - that you will retire anyway. Try to issue your non-skill building orders with that character - your buys. sells, etc... This frees up the characters you will keep, to build up their skills.

Mistake 5: Lack of character focus: Just because your multi-skilled character has a skill do not feel obligated to build it up. For instance: If you have a Commander - Agent - Mage, it is best to focus in on two (or even one) of these skills rather than try to become proficient in all three. Perhaps near the end of the game - if you want to boost your character related victory points, you might build up the remaining skills. For now your goal should be to focus on the character- to become proficient at something.

Mistake 6: Leaving key characters in one spot: Often you will have a key character, perhaps it is a powerful character like Elrond, or perhaps, the character carries a valuable artifact. Sure there are reasons not to move characters. But, do no, through mere inattention, leave this character in one spot. Enemy mages can spot the character; or artifact and the character carrying it. It is just then a matter of sending the correct character to finish off your stationary character. In other words, as a general rule, keep your truly key characters moving or they will likely be tracked down and eliminated.

Mistake 7: Assuming Mages are critical to armies (this commentary applies more to ME 1650): There definitely are expectations, but generally do not expect mages to win battles for you. If you are a new player, do not load up your armies with your mages. I recommend to beginners that they keep pure mages out of their armies.

There are a number of useful spells, but if in doubt - you can't go too far wrong having your mage(s) eventually learn Locate Artifact True and Locate Character True.

Now my personal preference is this: I believe every nation should have one mage (with a few exceptions - the Noldo and Blind Sorcerer in particular.) If you think you need ore than one - well you might - but do some careful thinking on the subject.

Mistake 8: Overlooking Friendly and Tolerant relations: For reasons unknown to me, people who have studied the rules never quite understand how important it can be to have friendly relations with their teammates. They understand "hating their enemies," just not why they should be friendly with the countries on their side

If you want to join a country's Company you must be at friendly relations.

If you need to trade ships back and forth you need friendly relations.

If you want to feed another player's army with a pop center of yours, you need friendly relations (.e. if you want my army to fight on your front - if your pop centers fed my army, it might speed my getting into position.)

Relations levels affects how easy it is for Neutrals to change their Allegiance.

If a Neutral joins an allegiance that Neutral and any relevant members of that allegiance need to move from neutral relations to tolerated so that army movements do not get blocked.

There are some even more subtle reasons. (I never promised I'd tell you everything.)

Mistake 9: Bankruptcy: It is incredibly easy to say to yourself, "next turn I will be having financial troubles. I'll have to do something - next turn." The mistake is here, in that next turn it is probably too late. The turn to worry about bankruptcy is the turn before you go bankrupt. It is easy to go bankrupt, but it is usually just as easy to avoid bankruptcy.

First, do not be distracted by your flashy characters and armies. Pay attention to money and most especially spending deficits.

Second, remember enemy agents stealing gold or killing characters in your capital can upset your carefully laid financial plans, especially if you have a large spending deficit. Make reasonable allowances for such events.

Third, buying commodities from the market comes before maintenance. I actually go this far, "Beginners, don't buy anything!" When you have conscientiously studied how the market works and disciplined yourself no to glibly buy, then you can buy - but then you are not a "beginner" anymore either.

Fourth, don't be shy about asking for gold from your allies even if you only might need it. It is too late to ask for gold when you actually do need it, maintenance comes before your allies can ship you gold.

Mistake 10: No diplomacy with teammates: Middle Earth is more a team game than most new players realize. (Actually, I've found many "experienced" players haven't caught on either) Diplomacy / coordination is essential. Sharing intelligence, sharing gold, coordinating armies - this is what the game is about. Until you play awhile you may not quite understand how important it is to coordinate with your side - just trust me - it is. This is not a sit back game do your own thing game. It is a coordinated, bone crushing contest between two teams. Do you really want to be a team of one?

There you have it, the quick list of mistakes the rules do not help you avoid. Now you new players can go out and tear up those experienced players! Hey wait a minute...that's me!? What have I done? GSI don't print out this article! Stop! Stop! Oh noooo.....