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I ended up ordering a whole bunch of books off of Ebay, as this thread and the constant praise the game gets finally got to me. I also own, as I mentioned Escape from Goblin Town, and picked up a Fellowship box, just so I could own the iconic characters all at once (and relatively cheaply).

Is there anything playable I can do with that for the moment? We own literally thousands of extra Mantic models, so proxies are also an option for basic fodder type units across, essentially any race you could imagine. :-p

Ill pass.

War of the Ring was good, when you got 20 figs for 22$ ish bucks.

Changed to 10 figures for 25 bucks was crazy, and the prices being also 4 guys for 27 bucks is also nuts when you need units fo them

The rules were ok, but the elves were 100% broken. You never won in close combat unless you were a hero or they rolled terribly, and even then they had a good chance. Plus their archery was nuts.

I liked it in the early days, but they killed it as it went on.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
How certain is this rumour?

It doesn't get much more certain than a GW employee announcing it at a GW event held at Warhammer World.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Is there anything playable I can do with that for the moment?

Start a thread in the Hobbit/LotR subforum with a list of what you have and you will get great advice.

str00dles1 wrote:
War of the Ring was good

Oh?

str00dles1 wrote:
The rules were ok, but the elves were 100% broken.

Ah.

Just FYI - this thread is about Strategy Battle Game rather than War of the Rings.

With the new CEO of GW it could be possible they repack to 2 Sprue Plastic Sets with no Price increase,

The price of the old LOTR stuff doesn't hugely bother me, even though I know they halved the contents compared to when I first bought it, it's still not a terribly expensive game. It was the insane Hobbit prices that wallet shocked me out of buying anything else. You want how much for how many mono pose plastic Mirkwood elves?

RazorEdge wrote:
With the new CEO of GW it could be possible they repack to 2 Sprue Plastic Sets with no Price increase,

I want to believe!

Out of interest, did anyone ever do a fanconversion of the WHFB races/armies into the LotR SBG system? I like the sound of the rules but I have zero interest in collecting a LotR army.

I vaguely remember seeing something like that.

The ruleset is simple enough that you could proxy stuff in or modify things slightly pretty easily.

What sort of armies are you interested in?

 Yodhrin wrote:
Out of interest, did anyone ever do a fanconversion of the WHFB races/armies into the LotR SBG system? I like the sound of the rules but I have zero interest in collecting a LotR army.

I never heard of one. WHFB is on a square base system after all, and relies on entire regiments, whilst LOTR is skirmish and uses round bases. If you were looking for a skirmish level WHFB game, you could probably translate it without vast effort though(there are monster and chariot rules in LOTR after all).

Frankly, that would have made more sense than Age of SIgmar.

 Manchu wrote:
DOL GULDUR ORCS

Well, the current plastic Mordor Orcs are already used for Mordor, Isenguard, and Angmar. If they come up with a separate Dol Guldur list, I would expect them to be used for that faction, too. I certainly would not object to a new set of plastic orcs, however.

... ahem ... I would also love to see the Gundabad Orcs in plastic, as I am sure they were meant to be.

Since we have a definitive design for these guys, and they both look different and have different stats, I would certainly hope we get plastic Gundabad's. I've got two packs of the current obscenely expensive finecast figures, but I'd gladly buy two or three dozen more if they were plastic and priced as plastic.

I would love to see a Bo5A starter set - what a missed opportunity this was ! Thanks a lot, New Line ! Well, here's the chance to make amends.

I think by the time BOFA came out, GW was just going through the motions. I think we will see a new starter set coming out with the rebranding to Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, but I'm not sure it will be a BOFA starter, given the new game is supposed to cover everything from the Battle of the Last Alliance through the final Battle of Bywater which was the official end of the War of the Ring. A BOFA starter is certainly a possibility, and IMO would be an improvement over the Escape from Goblintown as a starter but there's a lot to chose from.

I'd love it they took the idea of the "Start Collecting" box sets for AoS and 40K and did the same with MESBG. A box set for Isenguard, Rohan, Gondor, Mordor, maybe Gundabad. Each one with some infantry, cavalry, and a hero or two? Something that would be playable right out of the box. I bet that could spark a lot of people to get into the game!

Yes, MESBG definitely needs "start collecting" boxes! The issue is there aren't enough plastic Heroes.

 Manchu wrote:
Yes, MESBG definitely needs "start collecting" boxes! The issue is there aren't enough plastic Heroes.

Does the game really need plastic heroes?

Multipart plastic kits with lots of options aren't really a thing in the SBG bar a handful of monsters like the troll, and kits with optional shields, banners and horns.

I can see a valid argument for extra conversion parts in plastic kits to make unnamed captains (head options, unique weapon, cloak, unique shield etc) like the Rivindell Knight kit and Morgul Knights, but otherwise, the vast majority of heroes are named heroes and players only need one of each.

Rather than plastic heroes I'd prefer it if they focused on recreating elites and basic troops in plastic. Fountain Court guards, citadel guards, Mirkwood Elf soldiers and knights (they really should have been plastic, and the palace guard fine cast).

I brought up plastic Heroes only because I doubt that GW will make Start Collecting boxes that include Finecast Heroes.

Maybe they should. It'd naturally bump the price though.

As long as the box is a break from the price all the stuff would be separately, I think it would be okay. I am just not sure if GW would be comfortable selling any FC at a discount.

MESBG will be made by a own Division of FW, so I guess we COULD see Start Collecting Armies for Gondor, Rohan, Mordor, Mirkwood, Mordor, Isengard, Eastlings ect. WITH one Charactere made from FW-Resin.

fantastic news. I recently bought Smaug as an ongoing slow build/paint project as I expected the ruleset to die off and see the range disappear in the next year or so.

Having played the original game from release I'm hoping to see a lot of items that were a nightmare to get - the camel riders for a start!

LOTR was a fantastic access drug to the world of wargaming with its easy to learn ruleset so I hope this will recruit future gamers to keep coming in to the hobby as a whole.

They could always make some smallish sprues that have some multi part characters as well as some of the finecast/metal guys on it.

So for example a isengard one would have like 4-5 berserkers 4-5 crossbows and 3 multipart guys who could be made as shamans, captain or banner bearers or just as generic guys for people who don't need more characters but do need the crossbows/berserkers.

Moria one could have black shields and prowlers plus a captain/shaman/drum plus a warg marurder that could be made as a chieftain and 3 random goblins.

I don't want to sound pessimistic -- I really am just trying to be realistic at this point -- I don't think we are going to see much in the way of new plastic kits, especially more complicated ones the likes of which have really never appeared in the LotR or Hobbit lines.

Don't the Easterling Cavalry (Kataphrats I think?) have command options and multipart models? There is precedent for it (if only in one of the last plastic kits made for LotRs before The Hobbit came along).

I would be happy just with reprints, actually (barring elements missing from the setting, that could come later if the thing works).

But i do not think GW wants to reprint in metal, resin is out of question... so...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit sculpts are based on the artwork used in the Peter Jackson films (where applicable). It may be a case of a change in the film effects that didn't get passed on to GW for their sculpts.

That happened quite a lot with the Hobbit films. Peter Jackson really screwed GW over by making so many last minute changes to the films.

Changing his mind and having Thranduil ride an Elk instead of a horse (GW had already sculpted him on a horse).
Changing his mind and having the Dwarves discard most of their armour before charging into battle (GW had already sculpted them in full plate armour). To be fair though that was more out of necessity as the armour was far too impractical for the actors to perform action scenes in.
The Gundabad Orcs as mentioned above.
Changing his mind on Azog very late in development for the first movie and making him CGI instead of the "old Orc" design that was recycled into Yazneg. (GW had already sculpted the model, written the profile and printed the rulebook).

Is true that the Hobbit looked less inspired/coordinated, and I agree that we cannot blame GW on this. Is just that there was less care, interest and way more rush from the creators of the movie part, this time.
One could see it watching the movies critically, too - is barely in the same setting, different tone, different orcs, different quality of dialogues, incoherence, way more cgi...

The Gundabad orcs were not badly designed, but they are way too big. When the movies of the Hobbit were not planned, GW made their own gundabads (the blackshields) that are more in tone with the setting - they are moria/misty mountain orcs (goblin in the sbg game) with more metal/armor on them.
Is not the first time GW had better concepts than Jackson. Just compare the Radagast from the Jackson movie to the old metal one.

Actually, when I went to see the movie I expected a Radagast like the GW one, but I did see that buffoon

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Don't the Easterling Cavalry (Kataphrats I think?) have command options and multipart models? There is precedent for it (if only in one of the last plastic kits made for LotRs before The Hobbit came along).

The Knights of Dol Amroth and the Dark Numenor Knights have Banner, Hornblower and a Captain options too. Same for the new Elf cavalry from Hobbit.

Well, this inspired me to grab a copy of the Mines of Moria starter set

Kaiyanwang wrote:
I would be happy just with reprints, actually (barring elements missing from the setting, that could come later if the thing works).

But i do not think GW wants to reprint in metal, resin is out of question... so...

SG is basically expansion of FW and FW deals in resin so...

Personally I'm worried everything goes to resin with price hike. Basic rohirrim warriors in resin could get expensive...

It being an expansion of FW doesn't mean they can't do plastic - Betrayal at Calth is the first Specialist Games project and the SG team is also part of FW.

I'm sure we can expect new Plastics. I don't believe we will see old Sprues in the announced new Starter Set.

 Ketara wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Out of interest, did anyone ever do a fanconversion of the WHFB races/armies into the LotR SBG system? I like the sound of the rules but I have zero interest in collecting a LotR army.

I never heard of one. WHFB is on a square base system after all, and relies on entire regiments, whilst LOTR is skirmish and uses round bases. If you were looking for a skirmish level WHFB game, you could probably translate it without vast effort though(there are monster and chariot rules in LOTR after all).

Frankly, that would have made more sense than Age of SIgmar.

That was exactly my thinking tbh. I know a couple of folks who could be persuaded to play a skirmish fantasy game as well as 40K/WarmaHordes, but I'd rather carve out and consume my own eyeballs than play AoS and I did always fancy giving SBG a try based on what I saw at GW when I was younger, I just never felt enthused by the idea of collecting a LotR force. Suppose I'll read through the rules and see how simple it would be to port stuff over.

 ImAGeek wrote:
It being an expansion of FW doesn't mean they can't do plastic - Betrayal at Calth is the first Specialist Games project and the SG team is also part of FW.

Yeah they can do it but I would be expecting most to be resin(since FW deals with resin the resin is hardly out of question). But GW being GW I wouldn't be surprised at all to see plastic being resinified with price hike.

Well one can hope for best but...

Everything plastic ain't going to happen. All the non-plastic old models coming back to print are resin for sure. What's the alternative? Metal? Ain't happening. And plastic is even less likely!

If the plastic is re-released it'll most likely be with a model increase per box, but a price drop per mini, like with AoS.

 Ketara wrote:
I never heard of one. WHFB is on a square base system after all, and relies on entire regiments, whilst LOTR is skirmish and uses round bases.

The SBG uses regimented block though, right? Should make conversion rather easy.

Damn, I need to locate an SBG rulebook copy and see if I can put something together.