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The great thing about LOTR, is that the basic plastic armies are still available for cheap. To copypaste from GBHL:-

Last weeks video that Stephen Kemp and myself did talked about how you can get into the hobby with as little as £55. To follow up here is a look at Gondor as the Kingdoms of Men book is now back in stock!!

What you need to buy:-

Commanders of Gondor boxed set (captain, knight of the tower, horn blower, standard bearer)
2 boxes of Minas Tirith Warriors
This gives you a nice little 350 point army!
Captain, shield
12 warriors (banner, horn blower
Captain (no upgrades)
12 warriors

In this army I have proxied the Knight of the Tower as a captain with no upgrades. If your opponent is ok with it, you can play 355pts and use him as an actual Knight of the Tower But a solid start to the army - and the hobby!

Next level - 500pts - £34. Buy Faramir and a box of Knights and take:
Faramir, horse, shield
5 Knights, shields
For 150pts

Boom! 500pt army! At this point juggle the list around so you can take the Knight of the tower as he is intended. But what a fantastic army to start with, a lot of fun to play with, and a solid foundation for any Gondor based army. Is it fully competitive? No! But it's not too shabby either, and you can now play in lots of events and learn the game for yourself - and it's an easy army to tweak and expand as you wish (Fountain Guard, Citadel guard, other characters).The potential is endless! But the initial investment of £55 to get 26 models for a nice 350pt army can't be overlooked!
And what a nice and easy paint project!

Following on with the Kingdoms of Men I now take a look at building a 350 point army of...
Rohan!

Eomer, on horse, shield, throwing spear (either add a spear bit OR ask your opponent if they don't mind that the model doesn't have a spear, but is using one)
Erkenbrand, on horse
12 Riders of Rohan, 4 with throwing spears, all upgraded to Westfold Redshields (so a juicy fight 4!)
It's actually 346pts - so if you are handy at conversions why not add 2 more throwing spears to the list to get your even 350pts

It's widely accepted that Eomer and Erkenbrand are BY FAR the 2 best named heroes for the Rohan army list - and as such this forms a SOLID start to your list. Your only using 12 warriors right now - so can easily add 12 more warriors to max out the warbands and increase your points values without buying anymore heroes! The cost?

73.50 GBP (Sorry, my keyboard only has $!) brand new from GW - so not taking into account second hand, trades, etc, just the sticker price. A marvelous price to get yourself a decent start to a fun faction. Is it competitive? No! But we play for fun - and when you master this kind of force it has it's own appeal and allure.
So what are you waiting for?

 Ketara wrote:
The great thing about LOTR, is that the basic plastic armies are still available for cheap. To copypaste from GBHL:-

Yeah the old stuff is still cheap (though not nearly as cheap as when it was first released).... but the new stuff has to sell if this game is going to get off the ground.

A lot of people were enthusiastic about The Hobbit but didn't follow it up with purchases due to pricing.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
As excited as I want to be, one of the big things (IMO) that killed The Hobbit was pricing.... if the new releases are going to be resin and at FW prices, I'm sort of expecting this to flounder the same way The Hobbit did.

You forget the epic fails of Jacksons design choices.

RazorEdge wrote:
You forget the epic fails of Jacksons design choices.

I'm sure that was part of it, but there were still lots of people enthusiastic for The Hobbit (talking about the game here specifically) but didn't really buy much if anything. There were some pretty nice models initially, but I don't think people wanted to pay multipose Space Marine prices for monopose Mirkwood Elves, or almost $200 just to get the 13 Dwarves + Bilbo, or $10 per Knight of Rivendell, $40-45 for a character on foot + mounted, $25 for 3 Gundabad Orcs and so on.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:
You forget the epic fails of Jacksons design choices.

I'm sure that was part of it, but there were still lots of people enthusiastic for The Hobbit (talking about the game here specifically) but didn't really buy much if anything. There were some pretty nice models initially, but I don't think people wanted to pay multipose Space Marine prices for monopose Mirkwood Elves, or almost $200 just to get the 13 Dwarves + Bilbo, or $10 per Knight of Rivendell and so on.

Precisely! I love the Hobbit as much as the next guy, or to be honest a lot more than most, and I was ready to go all-in if the prices had been in line with even the repackaged LotR stuff. But when they're asking the same for a dozen pretty poorly sculpted monopose Elves as they are for a 180-odd piece Tactical Squad, or most of a Leman Russ tank, or even 10 much better (from a technical perspective) WFB Elves (the last few waves of Elf plastics were great), it's just not something I can justify.

Couple that with the fact GW made the smallest possible effort after the first film, and basically just released slightly different and more expensive Gandalfs and Bilbos each month, and it was easy to let it pass me by, and channel the enthusiasm the films gave me into finishing up my existing LotR armies instead.

Give me good models, a good game and reasonable prices and I'll hand over the cash, especially for franchises/settings I like. There's a reason I don't baulk at paying for Knight Models' DC and Marvel stuff, or FFG's X-wing, because the quality is there and at a mostly reasonable price point (though I'll take discount when I can get it! ). But the cost, limited options model-wise and lack of real support killed off any grand plans I had for Hobbit armies going into the trilogy.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
but the new stuff has to sell if this game is going to get off the ground.

I'm not too worried about that. The game hasn't been making a comeback because of GW's new releases, but rather, in spite of them. If they released half a dozen new insanely priced resin kits, and nobody bought them, the gaming scene would just be exactly where it was as of six months ago, aka doing perfectly fine. The GBHL isn't going to vanish if GW screws up, and I'll keep on enjoying my game just the same (playing an independent tournament circuit and buying new models from the three or four other third party companies that have sprung up in the last year).

For what its worth, someone on the LotR side of Dakka did some resin analysis, and Forge-World, and I can't believe I am saying this, should actually be able to product these for less than GW currently charges for Finecast.

Considering I just gave them $37, for one mounted Boromir... I can't see FW being any worse.

Plus, as others have said, the bulk of models any army needs are in plastic. Building the game to playable levels is DIRT cheap compared to most table-top games, and then the premium character models are there if you want to go to the next level.

Any indication when the other source books will get released.

Also, given the information we gained earilier in the year I thought the re-badging of The Hobbit to Midlle Earth SBG for later this year/ early next was just that, a re-badging so that all the Tolkien stuff was under a single title that made sense.

 Imateria wrote:
Any indication when the other source books will get released.

Also, given the information we gained earilier in the year I thought the re-badging of The Hobbit to Midlle Earth SBG for later this year/ early next was just that, a re-badging so that all the Tolkien stuff was under a single title that made sense.

Supposedly they're committed to doing "new releases, or reprints" every week, so I expect the other sourcebooks very soon. Presumably each week a couple out-of-print models will come back with their matching book, just like this week.

 Ketara wrote:
The game hasn't been making a comeback because of GW's new releases, but rather, in spite of them. If they released half a dozen new insanely priced resin kits, and nobody bought them, the gaming scene would just be exactly where it was as of six months ago, aka doing perfectly fine.

LOTR hasn't been popular around here for years. I'd suggest it hasn't been popular anywhere for years given GW were slowly letting stuff go OOP. It's curious they are picking it up at all, I guess after the Perry's left someone made a good enough argument for its potential.

The range might not be as large as WHFB was, but it's still pretty large, I'd be surprised if GW support it for long if it doesn't pick up.

If LotR was doing well for you before, it probably doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference that GW are doing anything now. For me and my gaming community, LotR/Hobbit needs something to pick it up, not just more of the same.

....The GBHL....

I must have missed it... what does GBHL mean?

GBHL is Great British Hobby League, a club who play the SBG and do events and such (I'm sure I'm selling them short as I know they do a lot for the LotR community but I don't know what exactly).

 Ketara wrote:

Put it this way. Having just invested money in a brand new print run of rulebooks, what do you think the odds are of them invalidating those rulebooks within three months and making them effective junk stock? Financially, it would make absolutely no sense for them.

Honest question or just trolling? Didn't they spent all that money on making books and rules for End Times like was suggest? How about 40K 6th edition? NOT EVEN 2 YEARS and a new edition came out. (true GW never said it was 7th edition, but non the less that book invalidated a lot from the 6th edition book.)

How about GW claiming that making molds is expensive so they have to keep the prices high for making molds. Funny I thought that would be the price of doing business but let's give them that excuse. So now GW makes new molds, but only sells 1000, ONE THOUSAND minis only. So much for molds and designing takes time and lots of money theory now.

Lastly, GW was so silent on The Hobbit. I saw GW take out the point costs in the mini rule book of The Hobbit. GW wanted me to fork over another $100 just to get the point costs. After seeing how GW changed the rule book on all 3 Lord of the Ring movies, I expected The Hobbit to be invalidated in year. GW was quiet didn't say this was going to be the case and The Hobbit rule book actually lasted more than one year. Question is, did GW do this because they wanted to have a lasting rule book or GW just didn't want to spend more money and resources on something that didn't sell? Again, GW was quiet then and IS STILL QUIET NOW. I just can't trust GW in what they are going to do. After seeing how much people spent so much money on books for End Times, and it was invalidated IN LESS THAN 6 MONTHS, yeah I am going to trust GW now.

You don't have to prove me wrong. I don't have to prove myself right. This is MY OPINION. Only GW can change it, and this is how I view GW. Yes they have done a lot of good since January and brought me back. I am still leary when it comes to GW and thier printed books and how valid they will be. It's up to GW to gain my trust into them, and so far GW hasn't done nothing yet to earn my trust that blindly.

 ImAGeek wrote:
GBHL is Great British Hobby League, a club who play the SBG and do events and such (I'm sure I'm selling them short as I know they do a lot for the LotR community but I don't know what exactly).

Ah ok, I guess me not being in GB probably accounts for me not knowing (and not caring ) what that was.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:
You don't have to prove me wrong. I don't have to prove myself right. This is MY OPINION.

Yeah I don't think I could blame anyone for not trusting GW won't invalidate a book soon after release these days. Their release cycle on 40k has gotten very fast and they've demonstrated they're happy enough to print books just to stop selling them shortly after.

I doubt it costs them all that much to reprint books they already have (no further editing, typesetting, etc). As long as they sell most of the books they print I'm sure they're happy even if it gets replaced soon after (and we have no idea how large of a print run they've done so we have no way to gauge that).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
]LOTR hasn't been popular around here for years. I'd suggest it hasn't been popular anywhere for years given GW were slowly letting stuff go OOP. It's curious they are picking it up at all, I guess after the Perry's left someone made a good enough argument for its potential.

That's actually where you're wrong (about it not being popular anywhere, not its locality to you).

The GBHL runs two-three tournaments a month up and down the UK right now, varying in size from 18 players up to (at the moment) 140. The playerbase size has been steadily increasing over the last three years from being almost dead. It's reached the point whereby a single recast OOP 25mm metal model that's handy in the games can go for thirty quid on ebay. The OOP rulebooks, slim volumes with nothing more than stats, have been going for up to £50 a pop! (they retailed at £17 originally)

The reason it's making a comeback is because GW has seen their figure sales steadily increase along with it, and half of the stocks run out. As such, they belatedly made the decision to bring back some support. Make no mistake, the game isn't making a comeback thanks to them choosing to, these new releases are them wondering if they can squeeze some more milk out of a teat they thought dead which has gradually started swelling again.

That's why it doesn't trouble me whether or not GW bother to support it or not. The community has revived the game, championed it, and third party model makers have even started springing up to supply it (I can name at least 4!). GW could drop it tomorrow, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to us. They haven't supported us in years after all!

You don't have to prove me wrong. I don't have to prove myself right. This is MY OPINION.

Davor mate, you can believe whatever you like. I'm simply trying to reassure you that in this particular circumstance (we hear quite a lot on the grapevine, with the current GW LOTR team having been active GBHL members they've retained a certain amount of contact/openness), that the new set of books will last you at least a year. It's possible (or indeed, likely) that there will be a general rules re-release at some point. But it's not imminent right now.

Heh, I was going to get in to the LotR minis game, but they halved the boxes and raised the price. It's pretty bad that now it seems almost reasonable to pay 27.50 for 12 monopose troopers, should have kept it at 24 dudes in a box and made it 32.50, not a great price, but the price/value remains.

xraytango wrote:
Heh, I was going to get in to the LotR minis game, but they halved the boxes and raised the price. It's pretty bad that now it seems almost reasonable to pay 27.50 for 12 monopose troopers, should have kept it at 24 dudes in a box and made it 32.50, not a great price, but the price/value remains.

They halved the number of models in the boxes like five years ago...

 Ghaz wrote:

xraytango wrote:
Heh, I was going to get in to the LotR minis game, but they halved the boxes and raised the price. It's pretty bad that now it seems almost reasonable to pay 27.50 for 12 monopose troopers, should have kept it at 24 dudes in a box and made it 32.50, not a great price, but the price/value remains.

They halved the number of models in the boxes like five years ago...

Plus it's $50 for 10 say space marines but $30 for 10-12 troops in lord of the rings so still 20 bucks cheaper and the books are significantly cheaper at about half the cost of Fantasy and 40k army books/codexs
Point system is played ~500-750 points so you need less models anyways still a good value!

Going to be making an order once the fallen realms book comes back in stock. I wonder why they didn't release all the books at once? The minis I can understand more though, slowly re-release them is fine.

 judgedoug wrote:

Both the Ruins of Osgiliath and Laketown terrain is plastic; and Osgiliath has had a price decrease. Even at full price it was one of the best terrain kits available from anyone.

I don't see it on the GW site, is it comig back or was it a games day only thing?

The advance print run was at games day, there will be a regular re-release down the line. Same for the books and minis that were available there.

In Germany and Austria there were two or three guys who put much effort in spreading and reviving the system via facebook and youtube, resulting in a country-wide increase of tournaments. The whole scene seems to be healthier than ever today, just because people now know each other and realize despite GW not caring for years there are still a lot of people around to play.

 Ketara wrote:
GW could drop it tomorrow, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to us. They haven't supported us in years after all!

I care whether or not a game is supported because it affects how hard it is to get new blood in to the game.

LotR probably had the advantage that it was so popular back in the early days that there's a crap ton of stuff on ebay (or was at least, I haven't checked in a while). But I've always struggled to get mates in to games that aren't well supported enough to just buy the models and rules off the shelf.

But then maybe it's just me and my group, we tend to favour games where we can spend more time playing and less time finding models/rules that are hard to buy and opponents that are sparsely distributed.

Great.. apparantly Adam Troke said the prices were around death korps. So £40/€51 for twelve short dwarves. A great example of getting cake and not being able to eat it...(is it just me or is my writing tiny?)

 Da krimson barun wrote:
Great.. apparantly Adam Troke said the prices were around death korps. So £40/€51 for twelve short dwarves. A great example of getting cake and not being able to eat it...(is it just me or is my writing tiny?)

Have to admit that dampened my enthusiasm also. Was planning restarting mordor and gondor(shouldn't have sold them in the first place...). Bummer. But that's not price I'm willing to pay for miniatures.

To be fair on the price, that's still cheaper than they are in finecast blisters right now. And they'll be sold in boxes of 12 (full war band size) rather than blisters of three. So it's better than it is right now.

tneva82 wrote:

 Da krimson barun wrote:
Great.. apparantly Adam Troke said the prices were around death korps. So £40/€51 for twelve short dwarves. A great example of getting cake and not being able to eat it...(is it just me or is my writing tiny?)

Have to admit that dampened my enthusiasm also. Was planning restarting mordor and gondor(shouldn't have sold them in the first place...). Bummer. But that's not price I'm willing to pay for miniatures.

The current models are still at their old prices so if you wanted to start adding to an existing army its not going to cost you too much really. The retreaded models are also at their old prices too and the books.

I don't get why people are so down on the prices, considering most of the range is still available, and is still much much cheaper than essentially any other table-top game. $100 can get you to 600+ pts (a very full sized game), with banner, hero-models, and all, in your chosen faction.

Only new releases, which mostly exist to fill catalogue gaps will be coming out of FW, and even then, $55 for 12 resin, GORGEOUS Iron-Hill Dwarves, is better than the $50 for ten Space Marines people seem fine with.

 Da krimson barun wrote:
Great.. apparantly Adam Troke said the prices were around death korps. So £40/€51 for twelve short dwarves. A great example of getting cake and not being able to eat it...(is it just me or is my writing tiny?)

That's excellent, USD$5 per model is super super cheap.

Cheaper than current Hobbit finecast prices - $25 for 3, or $8.33 per model
and also cheaper than LOTR finecast prices - $26.50 for 4, or $6.63 per model

In fact, it's as cheap as current LOTR metal blisters - $15 for 3, or $5.00 per model

Bring on Forge World price decrease!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
LOTR hasn't been popular around here for years. I'd suggest it hasn't been popular anywhere for years given GW were slowly letting stuff go OOP. It's curious they are picking it up at all, I guess after the Perry's left someone made a good enough argument for its potential.

The range might not be as large as WHFB was, but it's still pretty large, I'd be surprised if GW support it for long if it doesn't pick up.

If LotR was doing well for you before, it probably doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference that GW are doing anything now. For me and my gaming community, LotR/Hobbit needs something to pick it up, not just more of the same.

People did not stop playing because they did not like the game or were over it. In my area, LotR died 6 months after WotR came out. WotR launched well and most were enthusiastic, but GW raised prices with new releases...a box of 20 went from $20-$24 USD to $29-$36 USD. GW did that to standardize it's prices as it's new releases were significant improvements over the older range and did not want the new boxes being priced at $5-$10 higher than the old boxes coupled with only 10 models in a box. Everyone I know stopped buying, only played with their current collection and moved on to other games to satisfy their desire to buy new stuff.

I think there is pent up demand. Prior to any of this being announced, over the last year and a half, I am seeing folks play LotR again, in spite of the lack of new stuff, books out-of-print, etc. Friendly competitive play (an excuse to play a lot of games in a short period of time) is springing up and well attended. I dusted off my collection as a result and have begin playing again. The news of GW supporting, re-printing and offering new releases; at least based on what I have seen over the last 18 months; seems to be a response to that grass-roots resurgence rather than the cause of it.

Obviously though, that's no good for those of us that have always thought the Finecast stuff (LotR and Hobbit) was ludicrously overpriced and not touched it with a barge pole for that exact reason. If it was just one set that was needed, I would pay it, but when you're looking at £80 for two Warbands, and Dain probably in the region of £25 at least, you're spending over a hundred quid just to get the basics of an army going (and you'd need to buy/convert a captain or other hero too). That same £100 could easily build a pair of decent LotR armies even at GW prices, or even more second hand.

There's just no reason for the models to be that expensive. I recently bought some top notch resin miniatures from a small Spanish company for a Euro a model. Now I appreciate this is ludicrously cheap, and that FW have both licencing and much larger overheads to pay, but the prices are just too high for something you're going to need at least a couple of sets of. I'd have happily paid £30, maybe even £35 for a set or two, but at £40 a pop they're just too far over the line for the amount you'd need.


@NTN: The reason those who've been with the game are annoyed by even the GW prices is that they used to be literally half the price! The 12 man boxes they're selling for £15, while still reasonably cheap relative to a lot of their products, is still irksome when that same £15 used to get you that sprue x2 a few years ago. I appreciate prices go up over time, but the particularly egregious doubling of the prices is still sore to those who were used to what it was before.

What we need is more threads about how GW has had price increases over 15 years.

I feel that people who are complaining about the price of plastics aren't those who actually play the game - if they were, they'd know that usually one box of plastics equals a warband, and usually about two is all you need for an army. It's the special metal and Finecast models that start racking up the costs.

Forgeworld resin dwarf infantry and $5 per model beats the snot out of trying to play Rivendell/Eregion and paying almost $7 for a Finecast Elf with Spear & Shield.