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Hey everybody, I've been working on a little side project for the past year and I feel like I'm getting quite close to it coming to a foreseeable conclusion. I played my first few games of War of the Ring early last year and was instantly hooked. I love the mass scale battles in the Lord of the Rings movies and books, and as much as I love the rule-set for SBG, it wasn't fulfilling that mass scale desire I had.

After playing about 20 games ranging from 1,500 to 10,000 points I realized there were some glaring issues in the game. It wasn't so much the core rules (besides a few outliers) but more so the army lists themselves. They were lacking any semblance of balance. For example, a single Ringwraith is 125 points, all nine individually totaling 1,125 points, however there exists a certain legendary formation that contains all nine Ringwraiths in a single company. It costs 500 points, and considering how every individual wraith has a special ability and a magic level (these all combine in the formation) it becomes the most powerful unit in the game and can easily take on an entire army by itself. Now this is the most extreme example, but there were many others like it.

With this in mind, I set out to "fix" this otherwise well written game. And since then I have created 20 army lists with TONS of variations to keep each battle fresh. Many of the newly created units were based on the Medieval Total War 2 mod called "Third Age Reforged". I love the mod and regularly watch battle replays on YouTube, so I joined the Discord and asked the Mod creators for permission in using their mod as a design basis since there were a large amount of awesome units the devs had come up with. This of course opens up a ton of conversion opportunities for models as well as adding loads of variation.

Every army has a unique focus, whether its line breaking, ranged superiority, skill at arms, or being complete tanks. And any army can be allied together as long as they fight for the same side.
I have begun play-testing some of the army lists with a friend and once I get each army to a satisfactory state I would like to post the rules up for you all to use if you so desire.




I would encourage you to check out some Third Age Reforged battle replays on You Tube if you're ever looking for some background material for some painting!

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
...After playing about 20 games ranging from 1,500 to 10,000 points I realized there were some glaring issues in the game. It wasn't so much the core rules (besides a few outliers) but more so the army lists themselves. They were lacking any semblance of balance. For example, a single Ringwraith is 125 points, all nine individually totaling 1,125 points, however there exists a certain legendary formation that contains all nine Ringwraiths in a single company. It costs 500 points, and considering how every individual wraith has a special ability and a magic level (these all combine in the formation) it becomes the most powerful unit in the game and can easily take on an entire army by itself. Now this is the most extreme example, but there were many others like it...

The Mastery level of The Nine Abroad is 10 rather than the 18 you get out of taking each one individually, they don't get to hide behind a huge number of ablative wounds' worth of Orcs, and even with the Shadow Lord they're still really vulnerable to artillery.

Its quite rare you would be able to get through all 10 powers anyways. Its mainly an example of bad points balancing. The unit is fine if it cost 1000-1500 points. The biggest benefit it has is that it is only one company in size, meaning its extremely mobile, which is quite hard to deal with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
They also are defense 8, cannot be shot unless in short range (effectively making artillery a moot point) , have 2 resilience a model, are almost always fight 10, and have one of the only saving throws in the game (5+)

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Its quite rare you would be able to get through all 10 powers anyways. Its mainly an example of bad points balancing. The unit is fine if it cost 1000-1500 points. The biggest benefit it has is that it is only one company in size, meaning its extremely mobile, which is quite hard to deal with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
They also are defense 8, cannot be shot unless in short range (effectively making artillery a moot point) , have 2 resilience a model, are almost always fight 10, and have one of the only saving throws in the game (5+)

Half range is still 36" for a trebuchet.

OK. Artillery can hurt them.

IF

They are within 36" of a trebuchet or catapult and 24" of anything else

In line of sight (considering spirit walk, it would be rare they would be)

The attack hits due to the -1 penalty to the Artillery table due to the Nine Abroad being a single company

Accounting for any fates the unit is under the effects of (such as increases to thier Defense)

The hits aren't saved with Khamul's 5+ saving throw

Even then they are resilience 2.



The unit is severely under-costed. Bringing up one of the few things that can manage to harm them doesn't counter this fact. Artillery can harm literally anything in the game, thats the point of it.

The Nine did as soon as the enemy hits them. They’re fine

What you want is Khamul in a gorgoroth orc horde with a couple other characters in it. This formation will kill anything in the game just through virtue of Khamul’s power before they die.

Your only hope is to kill Khamul in a duel, but you toss a captain and a few other chars in to soak that gak

stratigo wrote:
The Nine did as soon as the enemy hits them. They’re fine

What you want is Khamul in a gorgoroth orc horde with a couple other characters in it. This formation will kill anything in the game just through virtue of Khamul’s power before they die.

Your only hope is to kill Khamul in a duel, but you toss a captain and a few other chars in to soak that gak

This is a good example. This combo will still be very strong, but with the variety of unit types that I've added (such as Rangers, who have body piercing ammunition and high shoot values) there should be an answer to almost anything.

Just incase you weren't aware, there's a forum called 'Rough War" who made a set of refined war of the ring rules. Might be helpful!