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Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
I think that overall, almost every piece in the game works if you use the appropriate rule to taste.

Still I am not convinced of the Balrog. And Is a shame, I bought 12 Gundabad Blackshields and 12 metal goblins, go to plastic, drums, characters and then Balrog would be tempting...

The Balrog, like Smaug and Sauron, should be viewed as scenario characters. In a common battle they won't be useful or just super annoying for your opponent. But for scenario-play they are great.

I think SBG succeeded in the way AoS wanted to, but struggled with, initially, where coming up with interesting, even if unbalanced, scenario-play was just more well received by SBG players. There are tons of models that do more, or are more interesting in scenarios, than general points-matches.

With the expanded rules for Monsters in The Hobbit rules, the Balrog certainly comes into his own now.

Sauron and the Dragon are great without being overpowered. Heck, you could just have a Sauron + Dragon 750 point list and play a reasonable game against a normal list. You are absolutely not forced to use them in scenarios, albeit a noob can crap in his pants seeing Sauron

With SGB rules, the Balrog is overcosted. Since I am not fan of many aspects of the Hobbit rules, I did not try an Hobbit rules Balrog, but is probably the way to go.

On-Topic:
Escape from Goblin Town is cool, my playtesting group used the terrain as swiss-army knife terrain. We used that shiebe for everything: walls, roofs, bridges, ladder-proxies, gates, you name it. The few dinky pieces of terrain are fantastic and make me like the set, the goblins are a lot of fun to toy around with too but I care little for the new Hobbit Movie factions. Personally, unless you particularly like the Escape from Goblin Town concept, I'd suggest grabbing the Mines of Moria set (if you can find it) and then find a quick-reference sheet of the changes (ditto). The price is cheaper but its utility is possibly less depending on where you stand in your taste. With the Mines of Moria set you can use the good side models over and over again to play out the Trilogy scenarios and slowly build your collection that way. You do not even need official scenarios, just estimate how you should represent the books/movies and simply have fun!

Off Topic:
Rules-wise? I feel the Hobbit book brings a lot more good than bad, even if it was by a different dude iirc.

-The hand-weapon stuff is not necessarily terrible... it just is a little clumsy and definitely optional. The extra die can easily be incorporated with a different colour die. (IE: If I win the fight, the secondary die colour represents the increase of strength on my Dwarf) All the units' models are taken strictly from what the movies depicted and the movies depicted swords on Isengard and Moria. So it just so happens that Moria likes this update and Isengard is disappointed.
However, you are allowed to convert your models freely to represent different hand-weapons. My hobbit party is chock full of shiriff-clubs, knives, lumber axes, and sledgehammers to give the little guys an edge. My Mordor Battle Company was converted with mostly hammers and axes on Orcs and Uruk-hai (respectively). Some call it power-gaming, others call it incorporating changes. It is a matter of "are you giving warriors of minas tirith all axes or are you at least keeping it close to the commonly-accepted lore?".

-The bow penalty to moving is pretty nice when thinking of woses, elves, etc. It really diverts the game from a gunline-and-kite--only stance in a good way but it does stink to be orcs. Where I put my foot down is with throwing weapons. They should NOT have a penalty for moving!

-Monster strikes are pretty necessary for bringing monsters back in the game. Before you could feed one model and tie up 80+ points for infinite time and a fraction of the cost. Though, I am debating house-ruling the monster "Hurl" to rely on a 40k scatter die for determining where it is thrown. That ability can HURT, yet it can be avoided with careful thought.

-Army building restrictions feel pretty okay. A need for 1 hero per 0-12 warriors is good for keeping the infinite goblin armies from being a terror. My complaint is that it forces a lot of Might into the game. ( I do not think I like might except on epic heroes)

-Magic, is cool I guess. Still feels good, so can't complain.

-In the Way is absolutely garbage, for one reason. It is not worded correctly. A foot being covered by a piece of dust obscures the target and thus the model gets an in-the-way. So we made a house rule where cover must be 25% (or just plain reasonable) and below-the-knees doesn't count. Knees especially so that darn Dragons can't get a billion in-the-ways from a horde of goblins.

I do not know if the OP needs to know what I think, but I haven't been able to pop this zit in a while.

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
-The bow penalty to moving is pretty nice when thinking of woses, elves, etc. It really diverts the game from a gunline-and-kite--only stance in a good way but it does stink to be orcs. Where I put my foot down is with throwing weapons. They should NOT have a penalty for moving!

I couldn't agree with this more.

As far as EfGT vs MoM, I think the Fellowship is a much better known and largely more useful group of characters/ models. Thorin and Co are simply much, much more well done than the plastic Fellowship though.

 Lord Corellia wrote:

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
-The bow penalty to moving is pretty nice when thinking of woses, elves, etc. It really diverts the game from a gunline-and-kite--only stance in a good way but it does stink to be orcs. Where I put my foot down is with throwing weapons. They should NOT have a penalty for moving!

I couldn't agree with this more.

As far as EfGT vs MoM, I think the Fellowship is a much better known and largely more useful group of characters/ models. Thorin and Co are simply much, much more well done than the plastic Fellowship though.

we are also looking at what about a decade of advances in plastic molding as well as digital sculpting. The original LOTR stuff was majority done at a 1:1 sculpt by the perry brothers. Its good because the perry brothers are damn good but theres just no way to compete to what they have now. That's the reason. The reason the new finecast blisters don't look as good as the new plastics is because for the same reason. All the finecast stuff was hand done not digitally

The plastic Fellowship was awful by the standards of the time as well, though. I clearly remember being badly disappointed by it.

All LOTR era plastics were sculpted as 3-ups.

How does the rulebook in Escape from Goblin Town compare to the big rulebook? What specifically would I be missing by not getting the big book and sticking with the small box set book?

Assuming you also download the free Heroes and Villains of Middle Earth PDF from GW, the only things you'll be missing will be the hobby section and the AUJ scenarios. All the actual rules content can be found in the EFGT set book.

Yeah, and the hobby section can be easily substituted by DakkaDakka and youtube for all your hobby tutorial needs.

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