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 Slinky wrote:
They are under Barad-Dur, but can also be used in the Mordor list, I believe.

It's a little confusing, and the one thing I have found that I don't like about the Armies of the LOTR book - Shared profiles between army list are not duplicated, so you have to squint at the list of units "this army may take" at the start of each army list.

Thanks for the info Slinky. Yes that is frustrating --- so how do you determine when looking at a list of units? Do you have to carefully read the Key Words for each entry, such as Mordor orcs labelled, " Mordor" with a kW even though they are Bardad-Dur?

At the start of each army entry there is an "army composition" section that lists all the units you can take in that army.

Any that are not in the following pages then have page references to tell you where to find them, so it's not awful, but does mean you can't just flick through the "mordor" pages to get every profile that is relevant.

It looks like a small Tau railgun. Perhaps it's meant to be a very large two-handed sword.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
So a new article just went up on the community site and Nick Bayton's uruk scouts featured in the attached picture. Can anyone tell me what on earth the converted feral on bottom right is meant to be carrying

Arggh. The wait for my books is killin me. I have a Grey Company force and some Rivendell minis purchased mostly because they are awesome sculpts. Can they ally without loss of army rules etc?

Rivendell's Historical Allies are the Fellowship, Lothlorien, and Numenor.

The lack of historical allies for "The Trolls" is annoying but not unexpected. I'm probably going to wind up proxying mine as Cave Trolls.

Deleted due to misinformation

 MangoMadness wrote:
im disappointed by the maximum models table.

Whats the point of goblin town allowing 6 more goblins per character when it will take you over the maximum model count.

Viva the horde!

I haven't seen that yet, where is it?

 Slinky wrote:

I haven't seen that yet, where is it?

My mistake, it looks like the pic was from Legions of Middle Earth. I will erase my comment

Almost done assembling the good guys from the new box. Finished putting together Théoden last night...what a great model. Awesome detail, love the non-heroic 28mm scale. Gave him the helmet on the mounted version and let his golden locks flow free on the footed version.

Hoping to knock out the rest of the Orcs, Nazgul, Troll, and the few remaining undead warriors tonight and tomorrow. Absurdly humid here in mid-Atlantic this week...next week should be okay for priming.

Anyone know if Rivendell Knights still don't contribute to the bow limit? I read that somewhere this was a thing in The Hobbit but I can't find reference to it in my Armies of LOTR book.

 weasel_beef wrote:
Almost done assembling the good guys from the new box. Finished putting together Théoden last night...what a great model. Awesome detail, love the non-heroic 28mm scale. Gave him the helmet on the mounted version and let his golden locks flow free on the footed version.

Hoping to knock out the rest of the Orcs, Nazgul, Troll, and the few remaining undead warriors tonight and tomorrow. Absurdly humid here in mid-Atlantic this week...next week should be okay for priming.

He truly is astonishing. I've gotten used to GW's current quality in terms of plastic sculpts - both in terms of the detail as well as how excellently designed they are for masking or incorporating mold lines, but seeing it done on a LOTR model is just sublime.

So my favorite new rule are the heroic challenges.Sadly almost no heroes have access to them. the only ones that i see that have them are legendary heroes!

 Haanz wrote:
Anyone know if Rivendell Knights still don't contribute to the bow limit? I read that somewhere this was a thing in The Hobbit but I can't find reference to it in my Armies of LOTR book.

Elrond allows them to be omitted when determining the bow limit I believe.

Do the rules for allies with less than perfect compatibility apply to both allies? For example if I'm Rohan and want to ally the Army of the Dead from the starter do I loss the Rohan army rule as well the allies? I'm having a bit of trouble with understanding the rules.

Speaking of which I haven’t gotten a chance to get it yet, but do the fiefdoms count as Gondor on that allows chart they posted or?

 Crazyterran wrote:
Speaking of which I haven’t gotten a chance to get it yet, but do the fiefdoms count as Gondor on that allows chart they posted or?

No, they count as a separate army with their own bonus but can green ally Gondor.

just out of curiosity as i'm new to the game. are there any squad building apps etc?

 durecellrabbit wrote:
Do the rules for allies with less than perfect compatibility apply to both allies? For example if I'm Rohan and want to ally the Army of the Dead from the starter do I loss the Rohan army rule as well the allies? I'm having a bit of trouble with understanding the rules.

I am as well. Looking forward to some insight here.

 durecellrabbit wrote:
Do the rules for allies with less than perfect compatibility apply to both allies? For example if I'm Rohan and want to ally the Army of the Dead from the starter do I loss the Rohan army rule as well the allies? I'm having a bit of trouble with understanding the rules.

If I'm reading the text correctly, the bonus and allies rule applies to all warbands in your army- not just the allied force. Historical Allies can keep all bonuses, Convenient Allies lose army bonuses, and Impossible Allies lose their bonuses and then some. The Dead of Dunharrow and Rohan are convenient allies, so bonuses would be lost. Additionally, the Dead require Aragorn to be included in the army for them to not be considered impossible allies...so you'd need a Minas Tirith contingent with Aragorn as your leader in there as well to retain the convenient ally status for everyone.

Edit: Support from the text-

" 'Army Bonus': If your army consists entirely of models from a single army list, then the army receives its own unique Army Bonus. Note that, unless otherwise stated, the Army Bonus will only come into effect as long as your force only contains models from a single army list (although certain alliances will allow for the forces to keep their Army Bonus)." pg. 236, LOTR Army book.

With allies, your army no longer includes models from a single list- meaning that it would lose it's bonus. The allies matrix/rules goes on to amend this and say that historical allies can retain army bonuses, convenient allies lose bonuses but are okay otherwise, and that impossible allies lose their bonuses and are punished further.

Rohan's historical allies include The Fiefdoms (DOL AMROTH), Lothlorian, Minas Tirith, and the Wildmen. The Dead are convenient allies of Rohan, but have their own special rule stating that they are automatically considered impossible allies (pg. 52), unless Aragorn is included in the list.

Thanks! I'm a little bit annoyed the starter came with two allies who don't get along great but I'll get over it.

 durecellrabbit wrote:
Thanks! I'm a little bit annoyed the starter came with two allies who don't get along great but I'll get over it.

more than a bit annoying, yes -- but I will accept as well. I may not assemble the dead just yet --I'm kind of customizing a starter using some of the contents with eventual careful purchases for my first game and intros to friends.

FWIW the starter seems to support scenarios recreating certain moments in the Battle of Pelennor Field. Ash from GMG noted that the starter box does not even divulge Theoden or WKA heroic tiers. You have to keep in mind that matched play, with all the army building rules, is just one of the ways to approach SBG - and furthermore the original way the game was meant to be played was actually scenario-based. Rather than judge the product as lacking because it is not tailored to the some of the last stuff SBG was ever meant to do, it probably makes more sense to judge it by what it’s actually aupposed to do.

Yes, the box is a great way to get a bunch of figs and the core book for a great deal but don’t just ignore everything else it comes with. This reminds me of James Hewitt lamenting that so many people bought Betrayal at Calth, fished the sprues out of the box, and disregarded everything else, which of course meant they were disregarding his labor of love because for them it was just a start collecting bundle.

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:

 durecellrabbit wrote:
Thanks! I'm a little bit annoyed the starter came with two allies who don't get along great but I'll get over it.

more than a bit annoying, yes -- but I will accept as well. I may not assemble the dead just yet --I'm kind of customizing a starter using some of the contents with eventual careful purchases for my first game and intros to friends.

It's definitely a little frustrating from a matched play perspective, but like Manchu said, a lot of the new SBG stuff seems geared towards narrative/story-driven play. The Dead and Rohan not being historical allies makes sense lore-wise...the Dead went and begrudgingly fought for Aragorn because of the ancient curse placed upon them when they broke their oath to Isildur. As Isildur's heir, Aragorn was able to command them to fulfill their oath to Gondor and come do his bidding. The Dead didn't owe anything to Rohan or Théoden, so while they were both fighting against the forces of Sauron in the end, it's not like they were buddy buddy and happy to be there together.

This has been the case with every SBG starter set.

It is one hundred percent designed to play the four included scenarios, introducing you to more advanced rules with each play through. After the scenarios, there is a "What should you get next?" detailing how to expand each of the three armies in the box, for matched/points play.

I gotta say it's a bit annoying how GW CONTINUES to underestimate demand for LoTR in just about every front.

You'd think that with the new starter they would've produced extra units to aid in expanding the armies from said starter. You'd think wrong. Want to turn that Morder army into a legal force by adding a Morannon Orc captain or Gothmog? Tough. How about adding another hero and some Royal guard to the Rohan? Sucks to be you.

They did the same thing at NOVA with the FW models (knights of Dol Amroth on foot and the Mordor support captains). They barely brought any and sold out immediately. By the time I got there first thing Friday morning they basically laughed at me when I asked if they had any.

I wonder if GW will ever learn that it's incredibly difficult to buy their stuff if they don't have any of their stuff to sell...?

Sorry. Rant over. I've been assembling the starter box tonight and got excited and wanted to add to the armies but found I was out of luck. Hope they restock soon!

I've not picked up the new starter set yet but I'm excited for the return of the SBG. I've dusted off some old models, including an old Mins Tirith battle force or something I was looking to sell and I'm excited to start work on the odd Wary Riders and Galadhrim I've picked up along the way. I might pick up two of the new starters and make a nice massive force of Mordor and Rohan although not sure what I would do with the army of the dead. Either way exciting times!

 godswildcard wrote:
I gotta say it's a bit annoying how GW CONTINUES to underestimate demand for LoTR in just about every front.

You'd think that with the new starter they would've produced extra units to aid in expanding the armies from said starter. You'd think wrong. Want to turn that Morder army into a legal force by adding a Morannon Orc captain or Gothmog? Tough. How about adding another hero and some Royal guard to the Rohan? Sucks to be you.

[...]

Sorry. Rant over. I've been assembling the starter box tonight and got excited and wanted to add to the armies but found I was out of luck. Hope they restock soon!

The game is in a slightly funny place at the moment, with a number of the old metal figures OOP. Some of the troops are in resin, which helps, but others like Moria shamans, which you very reasonably may want more than one of, are only available in the command packs. A lot of minor characters are just not available at all.

So what we did in the old days:

1) Give captains or other special units a different colour on the rim of the base. Or paint the "Royal Guard" with different colours on their cloaks and shields, or even just say that the riders with the throwing spears are Royal Guard, and everyone else is a normal rider;

2) Convert! The troll drums in the Pelennor box can be put on their own base if you want to convert a drummer model from an orc: drumsticks are a tiny length of paperclip and a blob of greenstuff. The command sprues for many of the Medieval/Dark Age historical plastics by the Perrys, Gripping Beast or Conquest are great for plastic horns, banners or variant weapons. The Frostgrave sprues have a ton of useful equipment on them (also great for Battle Companies). Drums and arms can be found, for example, Warlord's Pike and Shotte command sprue (may be a bit tidy for orcs though...)

Many of these sprues can be bought individually too, either from the company itself or via eBay.

The Dark Ages and Medieval period are both served unbelievably well by other manufacturers, but I realise that' you want, not unreasonably, GW to actually supply the models themselves.

unreleased miniatures and mithril miniatures have been my go-to for models GW is not producing.

Yeah, I think painting a gold base rim on an ordinary warrior makes a perfectly fine captain. Maybe do shields and/or helmets a different color, too. "Slightly shinier ordinary guy" sounds like a good description of a generic captain.

I'm also eyeing the Oathmark miniature line. I think their stuff would work great for LOTR.

Another idea I would love a size comparison for: the Song of Ice & Fire miniatures game just came out, it's starter set would get you a bunch of fantasy humans.