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I'm just curious.  I know Lord of the Rings has pretty much died in my area.  Few people got into it initially- at least, few dedicated gamers; and all those kiddies who wanted the game for Christmas a few years ago never show up to buy new stuff- and no one is at all interested in collecting the new releases.  The FLGS owners have a couple of good-sized armies, that they use for demo games occasionally, and that is about it.

How is it doing in your area?  Is it getting a lot of play, as much as 40K, WHFB, Warmachine, Warlord, or Flames of War?  Is it getting any play at all?

Does anyone know how the sales figures for LotR compare with the sales figures for GW's other games?

Are there any heavily-trafficked online forums for LotR, the way Dakka & Warseer et.al. do for 40K and Fantasy? 

I wonder because I just went to the GW website, and I was looking at their 'Sneak Peeks', and I looked at the LotR pop-up and thought, 'Huh.  Suladan the Serpent Lord.  Who the hell cares?'  And I realized that that would be the response of every gamer I know personally. 

The miniatures are nice.  The rules do not completely suck.  There is a tie-in to a rich and complex world system.  And yet no one plays the game.

 

I still contend that if LOTR was produced exactly as is by another company a bunch of gamers would be trumpeting it as a great alternative to WHFB, kind of like Warmachine is to 40K.

But the fact that GW produces the game has created a stigma that: A) LOTR has taken GW resources away from the two games people who buy GW games mainly care about (FB & 40K) and B) That LOTR is the driving force behind GW's financial troubles.


The thing is, GW has asserted that the standard LOTR player is not necessarily the hardcore miniature gamer and therefore you won't necessarily see the dedicated forums, the tournament scene, etc but that doesn't mean there aren't players out there playing the game and buying the miniatures. Hell, I'd wager that there is a group of die-hard LOTR fans out there that just buys each set of new minis just to own them.

Now, obviously without sales figures we can't know for sure but I suspect that LOTR sells less than 40K and Fantasy Battle but probably not too far behind. If LOTR was produced by another company I'd bet it would be considered a resounding commercial success.


So while I agree with you that I certainly don't care about LOTR releases and I would prefer if they didn't take up any WD space with LOTR stuff (although what else are they going to fill the space with these days in WD since they tend not to have any articles of substance anymore) I certainly can understand that there are many, many people out there who *are* interested in LOTR, we just don't necessarily ever see them.



And FYI, the LOTR tournament at the Vegas GT had 12 people in it (I heard). While that is a tiny number, again the standard LOTR buyer/player probably isn't so interested in a tournament type environment.



That's my .02 cents.

I think Yak's made alot of good points.

I also think stores (both GW and FLGS) will sell whatever they actively promote. The other day I stopped by by FLGS to play a bud and the shop owner asked me if I wanted to try out a game called Wings of War. I had some time to kill before my friend showed up, so I gave it a shot. Turns out, the game was pretty fun, kinda like Gothic, low on the "random luck" factor, and required quite a bit of forethought for success. I bought the box and ordered four pewter planes since they looked cooler and were more accurate for gaming purposes.

If a store manager/owner thinks a game is cool, actively plays it, actively demos it, actively runs events for it, that game has a high chance of success at that shop. People who expect product to simply sell itself (without help) are in for a surprise.

I also think GW split and diluted their fan base with LotR. Since WH fantasy is so close to LotR (with some Elric thrown in) a lot of players saw no point. If you want to play elfs and dwarfs and orcs you've had that option for years. It didn't bring much that was new to GW fans. And since you're basically recreating a film or book there's not as much room for creativity.

Nice figures, good plastics. I had no interest.

Interestingly, this is borne out in interesting ways. A number of TMP-types tend to praise the LOTR plastics for being Perry sculpts, better proportions, and a good deal for your dollar (20 wood elves for about 20 bucks, for example). Meanwhile, others praise the system directly (while playing with other figs) or indirectly (i.e. WAB, which is essentially the same system(s) with different nomenclature).

I have debated getting into LOTR at various points, but have avoided doing so to save money and due to lack of fellow players. Though I do wonder if Yak is right; if RAFM or Mongoose had come out with the game, would it have been more popular? Or if GW (or some other company) had come out with the same rules and called it "FantasyWorld" or whatever, would it have been more popular?

Another random thought: considering the size of armies in WHFB, it would have made more sense for either LOTR or Fantasy to have been in a different scale (WHFB in 15-20mm, which would have allowed LOTR to be the 28mm skirmish game, Or LOTR as 40-54mm/1/35 scale for real skirmish, kind of the fantasy answer to Inquisitor). Too bad they kept them both in the same scale.

Does anyone know where to find sales figures? Because I have memories of seeing a breakdown earlier this year that put LotR ahead of Fantasy in terms of sales (maybe it was off Warseer, I don't recall).

Don't forget that the starter boxes were killer value: full color rulebook, a little terrain, and 40+ plastics (or 32, with 12 of them cavalry) all for $40. I bought the first two boxes, played each a couple of times with my Dad, never really got bit by it, and simply kept with the system I have.

Part of me simply thinks the initial release was botched: the starter box comes with goblins and elves/humans, enough for a small battle game, but the initial scenarios were all about the fellowship, and required buying multiple all metal "scene" boxes. With Legions, the new rules, and tons of models, plus about 5 years to fix everything, the game, so I've heard, is rock solid. I think everybody made up their mind back then though.

We sell a good bit at my shops, certainly worth keeping a full line of the blisters and boxes. The plastic boxes sell great, and are fabulous values. The system is very, very good. With the range of models out now, and the army lists in Legions, it's defineately worth playing a couple of games to check it out.

We do more sales on LOTR whenever we run events, and get people to take a look at it. We just ran a table at Baltimore Games Day and got a great response to the game, even though nearly all the people that took part had never played LOTR before.

I still collect the odd model here and there, LotR was initially my driving force into the hobby, as it was for many of the gamers in my area (I know, probably heresy around here). I only get interested in 40k after the LotR scene around here kinda died off ._. The greatest thing about the game was it's comparatively low startup cost, almost half that of Warhammer and 40k. This allowed poor kids like me to get a full army ready for cheaper.

I still collect/paint the odd Aragorn model every now and then <3

Likewise. I'd have a Haradrim force if I actually had an opponent to play against.

There's some enthusiasm for it in my area, mostly as a tight little skirmish game.
No real negative attitudes. I really like the models for roleplaying games (Uruk Hai make great D'n'D hobgoblins, and nothing says generic fantasy humans better than LOTR), and some of the bigger ones are very sexy.
I suppose for me it comes down to time. I barely have time to play fantasy and 40K anymore, and run my D'n'D game, and play in a freinds, and do my PhD. I'd like to play, if free time was more abundant, but will settle for painting up the odd uruk or man of rohan for my D'n'D games instead.

Come on, you haven't been IN the hobby until you've built and painted the War Mumak of Harad :3

The 10,000 registered members of www.thelastalliance.com would disagree with the contention that "no-one plays the game".

It is currently my main game (although I regularly play others).  And while I am part of a local club, there are regular LotR events at 2 my local GW stores and there are often people to be seen playing the game in-store.

People who like the game tend to steer clear of places where 40k is the "big game" (including many GW stores) as they generally have experienced a lot of hate directed towards them by the rude and ignorant, and tend to play at home, or within friendly-contexts (i.e. less bigoted clubs and venues)

However, globally LotR often outsells WFB (and often 40k in some months) and it is certainly a financially justificable fixture in GW's core range for the time being.

Posted By Polonius on 06/23/2007 10:15 AM
Don't forget that the starter boxes were killer value: full color rulebook, a little terrain, and 40+ plastics (or 32, with 12 of them cavalry) all for $40. I bought the first two boxes, played each a couple of times with my Dad, never really got bit by it, and simply kept with the system I have.

Part of me simply thinks the initial release was botched: the starter box comes with goblins and elves/humans, enough for a small battle game, but the initial scenarios were all about the fellowship, and required buying multiple all metal "scene" boxes. With Legions, the new rules, and tons of models, plus about 5 years to fix everything, the game, so I've heard, is rock solid. I think everybody made up their mind back then though.

Quoted for truth.  If only they had thought of the "Mines of Moria" approach back in 2002 then the acceptance point may have been very different.  I remember getting the box as a present, reading the book and then realising "I've got 48 models to paint up and there still isn't a decent scenario in the book to play? WTF?" (back then it was before the advent of proper "points match" rules).

Partly that was due to the film schedule making proper development and thought a bit of a luxury timewise.  Partly it was due to the massive hype of the films which made marketing too easy.  It wasn't until 2005 and the end of the infamous "LotR bubble" that GW really started thinking about a proper strategy for martketing the game.  Up until then it was really the "red-headed child" of their games.  It sold well, but no-one "cool" within the GW environment admitted to actually playing the game.  You got the feeling that apart from a couple of notable exceptions, GW staffers had to have their arms twisted behind their backs to actually play the new game, and they even had to go so far as to hire in new developers altogether (Mat Ward and Adam Troke) to take the game forward as no one in-house was even interested!

There was a Lord of the Rings megabattle at a GW store that my roommate works at recently and I think 2 players showed up to play in it. There are very few people in the LA area that I know of that play LotR, and those that do are usualy mocked.

Posted By Phoenix on 06/26/2007 2:41 PM
There was a Lord of the Rings megabattle at a GW store that my roommate works at recently and I think 2 players showed up to play in it. There are very few people in the LA area that I know of that play LotR, and those that do are usualy (sic) mocked.

Which kind of explains things really doesn't it.  I suspect that people are buying the miniatures, but playing games where they will NOT be mocked - such as at home!  The fact that the store staff believed putting on a mega-game might have worked indicated that they probably had sold plenty models through their store otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with anything so ambitious.

Certainly my initial in-store experiences with LotR (which brought me back into GW stores for the first time in 11 years or so) were not pleasant.  The staff knew nothing about the game or the story other than maybe having seen the film if they were lucky.  And as for the players of WFB and 40k who inhabited the store were frankly rude and ignorant and made me convinced I never wanted to play there ever. 

This was a situation that GW could have rectified with proper staff training, but frankly at the time they couldn't care less.  LotR was raking in the cash with no effort on their part.

It shows the strength of the franchise that people bought and played the game despite their awful experiences at the time.  It also goes a long way to explain why there was little crossover sales to WFB/40k and why once the film hype subsided LotR players walked way from GW in their droves.

Most definitely my experiences in those early days confirmed every stereotypical prejudice I held against GW-brand wargamers as being unpleasant teenagers with limited social skills.  Fortunately post-2005, things have improved somewhat, both generally and in the stores I visit from time to time.  Sadly though pockets of stupidity still exist out there.

Posted By yakface on 06/22/2007 6:53 PM

I still contend that if LOTR was produced exactly as is by another company a bunch of gamers would be trumpeting it as a great alternative to WHFB, kind of like Warmachine is to 40K.

But the fact that GW produces the game has created a stigma that: A) LOTR has taken GW resources away from the two games people who buy GW games mainly care about (FB & 40K) and B) That LOTR is the driving force behind GW's financial troubles.

 

QFT.

My experience with LotR is very limited, but it impressed me as a well-designed game -- simple yet requiring tactical thought -- with some very nice miniatures.  Ironically, it might be a better system than either of GW's flagship games, but players (myself included) are so invested in WFB and 40K that they hesitate to make the jump.

I have hundreds of LOTR figures spanning multiple armies. I have almost 200 Rohan, 250 Gondor, 125 Harad, 450+ Goblins and a smattering of good and bad figures popular in the main movies. I have never played a single game of LOTR. I use all these figures for other game systems. The figs look great and match up well with most fantasy setting miniature games. They are absolutely fabulous for Hordes of the Things for instance. It's nice for people to see the figures and instantly recognize what it can do in the game. So many fantasy miniature games have their races based on the archtypes from this book, it fits so well.

Posted By Phoenix on 06/26/2007 2:41 PM
There was a Lord of the Rings megabattle at a GW store that my roommate works at recently and I think 2 players showed up to play in it. There are very few people in the LA area that I know of that play LotR, and those that do are usualy mocked.

I find the idea of someone playing WHFB or WH40K "mocking" someone who plays LOTR to be the very definition of irony.  Geek hierarchy reeks of self-esteem issues.

I don't play LOTR (nor collect anymore), but it has good models, and is quite well respected for it's rules and support.

It's fairly well-played in my area, when there's something announced like a tourny there's a respectable turn-out.  People seem to like the rules alot, and the models are well-done.  There's some grumbling once and awhile from 40k/WHFB grognards, but like it's been said, irony x10.

Besides thelastalliance.com, there are other LotR-based site, like www.one-ring.co.uk

It's also too bad that people don't trust GW enough to invest heavily into a
third "core game." Every year, I think, people expect GW to dump LotR, and
every year people continue to second guess its existence.

I probably would have bought into it if other miniatures hadn't taken up my
money, but I too suffered from the lack of trust.

I mean, I still want support for Neromunda and other things. Ah well.

As harsh a realm as table top minis is these days, this game is pretty good. The problem is that GW is involved with it.

I say its a problem because of the same issues that they have with the other two games, they suprisingly have NONE of with this game. Because of the issue as well with having around five or ten other options of LOTR games on the market, plus the past couple of games with the same name, it only stands to me that there wouldn't be alot of interest in it. And, as was said before, the game is not trusted. every other product by GW has the flaw of being pulled or outdated. LOTR has a few exp[anstions, but the game is in GW, so from the few people I talked to about it, they are like, " LOTR? That will be another specialist game soon enough."

People dont trust GW, why should they? I feel that the game is pretty good, there is alot of fluff out there, and the minis are very well sculpted. I don't play it because of my investment into the other two games, not alot of people playing it, and it being just another fantasy game, now.

After you have played Fantasy , its real hard to go back and start over at ground zero, especially when the game is in as different a flavor as LOTR. I think othewr people have the same issues, and this stuff about looking down on the game might have the same opinion as mentioned in the other post, but my problem with that sort of thinking all around is the problem of lack of players in the first place, so why would you want to run people down for doing thier thing.

Mini's games need the help, trying to keep them going is hard enough then to alienate people just because of the games they do play.

This actually makes me sad. I guess it is just my local area that doesn't have many players.

I have to admit that, if LotR had come out oh, twenty years ago, I would have been all over it. But my deep and passionate interest in Middle Earth has waned a bit as I aged. I still enjoy it, but I no longer feel like learning Elvish, or memorizing the Lay of Luthien.

And I do think there is something to the argument that because LotR is made by GW, I resent it a little; resent the time and resources it takes away from my favorite GW game. Which is a psychological quirk I had never examined before, and one that is a bit irrational. Sibling resentment of the new baby, perhaps?

I suspect that there are a lot of people who simply collect the miniatures and never even consider playing the game. Back in the mid-80's a lot of people collected the citadel miniatures made for WHFB in the same way. With the ever-increasing move to plastic miniatures, people seem less inclined to collect, and GW's market share has shifted more towards wargamers.

LotR was what got me in to gw not 8 years ago without that I would have been completly obliveous to the small store next to target in holyoke, and later after my famly moved the one next to seares in manchester. i still enjoy it to this day i have substanchel armys for most the races, i find the turn sequence (player A move, player B move, A shoot, B shoot,  only one combat fase) and sevrel rules better then 40k and WFB, not to say its flawless (which its not GW shares your views that it devides their attention from the majority of gamers, thus (at lest in my locle store) LotR has a smaller shelf space, and smaller WD of pages in WD ( the june isshue it had only 11 pages includeing the sneek peek out of 129)

Posted By fellblade on 06/29/2007 6:09 AM
And I do think there is something to the argument that because LotR is made by GW, I resent it a little; resent the time and resources it takes away from my favorite GW game. Which is a psychological quirk I had never examined before, and one that is a bit irrational. Sibling resentment of the new baby, perhaps?

Hats off to you fellblade for being so self-aware!  Seriously.  It takes guts to look inside like this, even for something as trivial as a wargame.

I just wish more 40k players had been so intelligent a few years back!

Hopefully with GW's new attitude and a few more 40k players like yourself, the new generation of LotR players will face less discouragement of their chosen hobby.

Well, I've started. I was bitten by the bug because this thread made me go examine the plastics closely. It's as of now my main focus, gaming wise. I'm selling off my 40K and putting my fantasy projects on the backburner to press ahead. I'm boiling over with ideas, and I love the rules. The 1" pushback is genius. Sheer genius. And many other things are elegantly solved.
I'm really excited, wish I'd gotten into this aa year ago. Oh well.
When I get this excited, i tend to suck others in along with me, so I my next plan is to get some impressively painted and themed stuff together, whack together a few fun scenarios and start playing obviously and enthusiastically at my group. Lets see how many I convert!
I'm buying a digital camera so I can throw up my progress on here for you guys to look at.
Really glad I took the plunge.

Posted By Osbad on 07/03/2007 1:34 AM

Posted By fellblade on 06/29/2007 6:09 AM
And I do think there is something to the argument that because LotR is made by GW, I resent it a little; resent the time and resources it takes away from my favorite GW game. Which is a psychological quirk I had never examined before, and one that is a bit irrational. Sibling resentment of the new baby, perhaps?

Hats off to you fellblade for being so self-aware!  Seriously.  It takes guts to look inside like this, even for something as trivial as a wargame.

I just wish more 40k players had been so intelligent a few years back!

Hopefully with GW's new attitude and a few more 40k players like yourself, the new generation of LotR players will face less discouragement of their chosen hobby.

Dear God, I'm not a 40K player!  I despise that game.  The only good thing about 40K is the miniatures.  No, I'm a Warhammer player.  There is only one Warhammer, and it's the fantasy game. 

Posted By Da Boss on 08/12/2007 11:52 AM
 The 1" pushback is genius. Sheer genius. 

Really? When we were playing this years ago, this is what put us off of playing the game.

There seemed to be no definate combat resolution, only a huge bout of a shoving match.

300 point game with each model shoving each other back and forth across the table really made me not like the game. It made 300 points seem like a huge battle because it took so long to resolve how far back models were being shoved.

But in the defence  of the God known as Rick Priestly (hallowed be thy name) we didnt truly sit down and pour over the rules as we do with 40K, etc. We may have made a hasty disservice to the game, but from its initial showing it seemed poor.

I like it. I especially like the idea of it in large games, but I wouldn't be too worried about absolute accuracy with these things.

I like integrated defense aswell, and the 6+/4+ way of doing Strength/ Defence, move penalties for shooting are a pretty good way to represent it...

I'm impressed. Impressed enough to sink some big money into this game anyway.