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 judgedoug wrote:
Confirmed on Warhammer TV just now that Pelennor Fields starter box is Citadel/GW and will be available from all Warhammer stores and any game stores with GW trade/retail accounts.


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Releases planned through the end of 2020 with monthly releases planned.

Theoden is the first of a range of new plastics (characters).


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OOP models related to Pelennor Fields in the first 2-3 months of release will be coming BACK IN PRODUCTION: Models will cycle into production for a "while" and then back out, then cycle other models back into production, repeat.

*Ahem*

SQUEEEEEEEE!

That is all.


Seriously GREAT news. Hopefully I can convince more people to pick up the game again with the new set AND confirmed plastic support going forward

I would love to see some more aggressively priced plastic kits. I've always had an easy time selling people on the game when I could say, "Look... the hero models can be pricey, but then your rank and file are dirt cheap..."

When the value proposition averages out, and people realize $100 can (often) get them a healthy sized army, with a couple iconic characters, they usually find themselves pretty willing to give the game a go.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I would love to see some more aggressively priced plastic kits. I've always had an easy time selling people on the game when I could say, "Look... the hero models can be pricey, but then your rank and file are dirt cheap..."

When the value proposition averages out, and people realize $100 can (often) get them a healthy sized army, with a couple iconic characters, they usually find themselves pretty willing to give the game a go.

This IS WHAT IS NEEDED for LotR to grow again. If GW doesn't do this, then we know they are content with a very small niche group and don't really plan on growing LotR anymore. Seems stupid to say that with what seems like a lot of work that is being done, but if it's the accountants that stick their nose in the game and making the prices, LotR will stay where it is and not grow new blood or even bring in the old blood like me. I hope I am wrong, I really want to see LotR succede I believe it's the best rule system out there so I am hoping they improve the rules and espeically the prices.

We should be able to buy an good size army for $100 leader included. Then we can build up on it and hopefully we have a War of the Ring game as well later on.

I'm very much looking forward to a revitalization of LOTR. The lack of availability, followed by the rising cost, was the primary issue I came to have.

Sounds like that might be turning around, so I am very happy with the direction they have chosen!

I might be tempted to give this a go, as I keep hearing great things about the game. I'm just put off by the "so tiny they aren't fun to paint" models.

That's funny... I LOVE painting that proper 28mm scale. Its nice to see models not scaled to heroic madness levels, and the models are usually gorgeous and easy to paint to an attractive level.

The size isn't the issue, they're just so old that the detail doesn't stand out as much as their newer plastics because of the sculpting and the molds. Models like Minas Tirith soldiers have parts where the sculpt just blends into one big chunk of plastic and it's up to you to paint it so you can make out what the detail is supposed to be.

Whereas models like Morgul Knights or Galadhrim Knights have nice crisp detail despite only being a few years older.

But, anyways, the plastic character news is great. I just bought the shitcast Gothmog to go with my Mordor models, but i'll happily buy a new plastic model. They straight up need to make a multi option mounted Ringwraith kit. Only one of the sculpts from the metal kit has aged well (the horses are in really goofy looking poses that only look good if you recreate the scene of them chasing Arwen and Frodo), and the really nice mounted Witchking model* is almost impossible to find nowadays.


*This model

I love the finecast for LOTR, been swapping out metals for them for a while, but ok with more plastics as well!

Anyone watch the twitch feeds today? Anything said that we don't know about or something new?

Davor wrote:
Anyone watch the twitch feeds today? Anything said that we don't know about or something new?

Yes, I posted the news above as it occurred in realtime

How'd their game go, Doug? I had to bail right after Tales of Four Generals.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
How'd their game go, Doug? I had to bail right after Tales of Four Generals.

It was pretty fun to watch (I had it on my second monitor in my office, so watched it while I was working). Couple of exciting moments, and like all the battle reports they do, really made me want to play SBG. They did seem to drop a hint that the release would be early September, and there's been huge hints that it would be available at NOVA Open, so we might see a first-release on 9/1 at NOVA and full release 9/8.

PRICE AND RELEASE DATE LEAKS

Pre-order by August 25 2018
Reelase date is September 1 2018

Item - MSRP

Battle of Pelennor Fields - $150
Middle-earth SBG rulebook - $60
Armies of Lord of the Rings - $60
Warriors of Minas Tirith (box 24) - $40
Knights of Minas Tirith (box of 6) - $32
Haradrim Raiders (box of 6) - $32
War Mumak of Harad (box of Mumak with 12 Haradrim and 1 Haradrim Warchief) - $100
Mordor/Isengard Troll (box of 1 customizable) - $40

Free-standing display unit that game stores will be able to preorder. Free standing display unit includes: 2 x Battle of Pelennor Fields boxed game, 3 x Armies of Lord of the Rings sorucebook, 2 x Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual, 2 x War Mumak of Harad, 2 x Warriors of Minas Tirith, 2 x Knights of Minas Tirith, 2 x Haradrim Raiders, 2 x Mordor Troll. FSDU bundle also includes poster and demo set for game stores.

New trade / retail boxes and packaging for Middle-earth products.

Yesssssss.

I don't understand. Are they relaunching the Mumak and the trols? I see that they are reboxing them, yes. I'll check if the prices are the same.

Warriors of Minas Tirith go from 12 for 24,75$ (2,06$ a piece) to 24 for 40$ (1,66$ a piece) so nearly a 22% discount. Knights of Minas Tirith go from 29,75$ to 32$ for the same models. So they increase in price. The same with the Raiders.
The Mumak goes 1$ up in price and the troll comes down 1$.

It could have been worse.

EDIT: Ok, they where direct only before. So on top of this, add another 15-25% discount in 3-rd party retailers. Yeah. Pretty good.

 Galas wrote:
I don't understand. Are they relaunching the Mumak and the trols? I see that they are reboxing them, yes. I'll check if the prices are the same.

They're relaunching, via retail, Strategy Battle Game. This free-standing display unit (FSDU) is the first product available for retailers to order in years, since the entire range went direct order (white box) only. This is the new edition of the rules, titled Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, and is launching with a focus of The Battle of Pelennor Fields, hence the FSDU including the new Boxed game (which has Morannon/Morgul Orcs, Witch-King on Fell-Beast, Theoden, Riders of Rohan, and Army of the Dead), so the "supplement" items in the FSDU are related to that - Minas Tirith and Haradrim. So basically, ever notice how the 40k and AOS FSDU's only focus on the kits immediately relevant to the contents of the specific starter set? Same deal here; buy the Pelennor set with Rohan vs Morannon Orcs for the initial charge itself, and then expand with Haradrim and Mumaks for the counterattack, and add Minas Tirith warriors for the fighting in the midst of Minas Tirith. Great models to immediately expand to imho

Oh, I wasn't aware that ALL of LOTR range was Direct order only.

Then yeah I understand the "relaunch". Man, I hope they start relaunching Rhûn boxes soon! They where at Pelennor afterall! I always wanted a Rhün army but as nobody played the game there I just had a small Isengard force for pure collectionism.

 judgedoug wrote:
Haradrim Raiders (box of 6) - $32

So a $2.25 price increase for something I'll no longer have to mail order? That works for me!

Yeah, the price increases, now that you can have them with the typical 15-25% discount become irrelevant. And the new Minas Tirith infantry becomes like 40-50% cheaper than before, buying it directly from GW.

 Galas wrote:
Oh, I wasn't aware that ALL of LOTR range was Direct order only.

Then yeah I understand the "relaunch". Man, I hope they start relaunching Rhûn boxes soon! They where at Pelennor afterall! I always wanted a Rhün army but as nobody played the game there I just had a small Isengard force for pure collectionism.

Yep! 2016, 2017, and most of 2018, everything was white box direct. And yep I agree! Now, GW was talking on Thursday last week that the plan is to cycle OOP models back in print for certain periods, like a 3 month window all old metal models related to Pelennor would be available, and then cycle another range for another 3 months, etc. They problem they have is that the warehouses and such are now designed for plastic kits , so SBG would have thousands of different models while even the bigger ranges of 40k and AOS have far less inventory/sku counts to control. They'll never be able to bring the full OOP range back as they're not set up for that. (all plastics will remain in production, we're just talking about older metal fellas)


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 Ghaz wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Haradrim Raiders (box of 6) - $32

So a $2.25 price increase for something I'll no longer have to mail order? That works for me!

It's definitely an attempt to normalize pricing, instead of awkward $29.75 and $41.25 prices from the Kirby era.

Got to say I'm so excited for LotR coming back properly, I've been looking through my old boxes of miniatures and picking out some of my favourites to start painting up.

The biggest problem I have is choosing an army, every time I look at an army they become my new fav

So much wallet-murder will happen on that day. I really will end up buying stuff like that Mumak box, just to show that people want to see more SBG in their stores.

Oooh yes. I'm keen for this like a hobbit is for lunch.

LotR was got me into the hobby as a whole and Rohan is my army of choice. So this is a must buy for me.


Hopefully this re-launch will give the game a much needed lease on life.

 gianlucafiorentini123 wrote:
Got to say I'm so excited for LotR coming back properly, I've been looking through my old boxes of miniatures and picking out some of my favourites to start painting up.

The biggest problem I have is choosing an army, every time I look at an army they become my new fav

This is literally my problem. I barely have the disposable funds, but mostly the time, to build one full army let alone multiples. But there's barely a single LOTR faction I don't love and want to own. But its a massive rabbit hole with no end! I'll have to somehow choose just one (okay, maybe two... see, this is how it starts...)

An alternative is to work on small forces for the many scenarios that are out there.

Personally I am working through the old LOTR "Journey books", making all the terrain and painting the models for each scenario in turn. It keeps me off the streets, at least

Sweet looking repacks there, they should catch some attention. And Element Games have already confirmed they'll be getting the stock in, so discounts ahoy.

 Slinky wrote:
An alternative is to work on small forces for the many scenarios that are out there.

Personally I am working through the old LOTR "Journey books", making all the terrain and painting the models for each scenario in turn. It keeps me off the streets, at least

The Journeybooks are, without a doubt, my favorite supplements ever released for any game. I asked Adam about revisiting the Journeybooks and he thought it was a great idea (but we'll see).


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 Oppl wrote:
This is literally my problem. I barely have the disposable funds, but mostly the time, to build one full army let alone multiples. But there's barely a single LOTR faction I don't love and want to own. But its a massive rabbit hole with no end! I'll have to somehow choose just one (okay, maybe two... see, this is how it starts...)

Dude, let me help you out here. You always gotta have two armies. The Pelennor Fields box contains about $350 worth of books and models, for $150. Buy from a discount place. Problem solved.

The journeybooks are just outstanding in every regard. I had managed to hunt down the Two Towers and Return of the King journeybooks on ebay.

No luck on the Fellowship one so far. Though I do also own all 3 of the starters and their books.

I'd love to see them revisited.

Doug is absolutely right on the Battle of Pellenor Fields box. GW usually does value rich boxed sets, but that one is just insane. It would be like getting probably two 1500pt 40k armies in their starter box, instead of a third of that.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Doug is absolutely right on the Battle of Pellenor Fields box. GW usually does value rich boxed sets, but that one is just insane. It would be like getting probably two 1500pt 40k armies in their starter box, instead of a third of that.

Based on the new pricing, and the move towards two sprue (20-man and 24-man boxes) for infantry again, I figured:

Witch-King/Fell-Beast $62 (this might change with the new pricing, most likely down)
Morannon Orcs (24) $40
Morannon Orcs (12) $20 (half box)
Troll $40
Riders of Rohan (6) $32
Riders of Rohan (6) $32
Warriors of Rohan (12) $20 (half box)
Warriors of the Dead (20) $40
Theoden ft/mtd $20
Rulebook $60
plus dice and rulers and scenario booklet.

Total $366. Caveat: Riders of Rohan and Warriors of Rohan can easily be found on ebay for cheap. Caveat 2: This boxed set is CHEAPER than ebay prices for used models.