Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Galas wrote:
Specially things like Rohan and Uruk Hai infantry. And normal dwarven infantry, they are some of the older boxes and it shows. Things like Morannon, Easterlings, etc... still look ace.

The Dwarf Warriors/Rangers are some of the 'newer' plastics if I remember right. I still think that makes them over a decade old mind you. I also doubt we'll see any revamps whilst Grim Hammers and particularly the Iron Hill Dwarves are so new.

My guess is they'll start looking at Harad and the Easterlings again, since they're pretty popular and they can squeeze another 'movie' book out of them. Not sure if the loicensing of The Hobbit(tm) films would prevent it, but I'd personally love to see a book covering Rhovanion during the War of the Ring. They could slide some Easterling/Khand updates in there too.

Last time i spoke to a member of the Middle-Earth team, the licence was mentioned to be the same as before. So access to the movies, The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit novels and everything in the appendicies. So there is still a tonnage of material that can be drawn from.

Personally i think something involving Númenor will come soon. As there's already been mention of Anarion in the Armies of Middle-Earth book.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
As there's already been mention of Anarion in the Armies of Middle-Earth book.

I was actually wondering about that the other day.
I'd never seen, nor heard of an Anarion model. And yet there he is in the book.

I too hope for some more Numenor stuff. Plastic bow/spear men would be nice. Personally i'd be quite happy if they did another split kit. Elf spearmen with Numenor bow/spearmen. Complements the existing plastic Last Alliance range too. Then maybe some Numenor cavalry to fill out the range.

I'd suspect that if they were to redo plastics, The Last Alliance's Men of Numenor and High Elves kit would be a top priority.

Would be nice for Rivendell to get some love there too.

 Papa-Schlumpf wrote:
Eomer looks awesome and reminds me a lot of Elfhelm.

But the helm under the arm looks strange. Why is there a bar in there in the lower half, for stabilization ? I hope we can get rid of it, without destroying the helm.

A little fine scalpel work should be able to remove that I reckon

 Snrub wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
As there's already been mention of Anarion in the Armies of Middle-Earth book.

I was actually wondering about that the other day.
I'd never seen, nor heard of an Anarion model. And yet there he is in the book.

I too hope for some more Numenor stuff. Plastic bow/spear men would be nice. Personally i'd be quite happy if they did another split kit. Elf spearmen with Numenor bow/spearmen. Complements the existing plastic Last Alliance range too. Then maybe some Numenor cavalry to fill out the range.

Could be just future proofing. HH custodians have mention of Emperor of Mankind as lord of war.

tneva82 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
As there's already been mention of Anarion in the Armies of Middle-Earth book.

I was actually wondering about that the other day.
I'd never seen, nor heard of an Anarion model. And yet there he is in the book.

I too hope for some more Numenor stuff. Plastic bow/spear men would be nice. Personally i'd be quite happy if they did another split kit. Elf spearmen with Numenor bow/spearmen. Complements the existing plastic Last Alliance range too. Then maybe some Numenor cavalry to fill out the range.

Could be just future proofing. HH custodians have mention of Emperor of Mankind as lord of war.

I didn't think GW did future proofing by adding in entries with no model available?

Don't suppose it matters too much with Middle-Earth as it's not their IP. And to be fair there's a few entries with profiles with no models already such as the troll catapult and Azog's tower.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Don't suppose it matters too much with Middle-Earth as it's not their IP.

Can you clarify. Do you mean it's not their IP as it belongs to the Tolkien estate, or it's not theirs because they lost/dropped it? And how is it relevant to them having profiles without models?

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
As there's already been mention of Anarion in the Armies of Middle-Earth book.

I was actually wondering about that the other day.
I'd never seen, nor heard of an Anarion model. And yet there he is in the book.

I too hope for some more Numenor stuff. Plastic bow/spear men would be nice. Personally i'd be quite happy if they did another split kit. Elf spearmen with Numenor bow/spearmen. Complements the existing plastic Last Alliance range too. Then maybe some Numenor cavalry to fill out the range.

Could be just future proofing. HH custodians have mention of Emperor of Mankind as lord of war.

I didn't think GW did future proofing by adding in entries with no model available?

Not in terms of profiles but mention of entries without actual rules. As said there's mention of Emperor of Mankind as LOW for custodians so if/when Emperor gets model and rules there's no need to update custodian army list. He slots in just fine. ATM there is no rules nor models for Emperor. Just mention that he's LOW choice for custodians.

From the new Preview we get a new book and two new rangers, Anborn and Mablung.


I´m glad about the book, it looks like it will bring back a lot of life to the game with alternative scenarios.
And this two minor heroes give me hope that there will be more of their kind and someday even Lugdush, a named Uruk of Uglúks men, will get his own profile.

The book will probably be a rehash of the old journey books with the some extra stuff in it. I like it.

Ranger characters are very nice too, i've been hoping for a bit of extra ranger stuff.

I wonder how the rangers will look with the older plastics? Are they still fairly nice for the age?

I was never a massive fan of the plastics to be fair. They've got some really obvious flat undercuts, especially on the crouching ones. It's probably one of the few times i prefer the metals over the plastics. These guys will fit in though, the aesthetic is basically identical. Just a bit more detail on the wrist guards and pouches over the plastics.

Aren´t the metal ones too big? Back in the day they were bigger than then warriors of MT and they were the same size as the pastic rangers.
Or is Gondor free of the scale creep?

No, i wouldn't have really said so. Not from my experience anyway.
Here's a pic of them with Faramir and Damrod (not my pic) and i don't notice any real scale issue.

Thanks for the pic, I jut knew the metal rangers from promotion material.They look fine and don´t stick out.

Rangers are nice. Always welcome some additional heroes. Did they say on the twitch whether these were FW or GW? I'm guessing FW judging by the paintjob.

They were said to be plastic, so GW.

Well, Middle Earth is part of Forge World, so designed by FW and painted by them but if they’re plastic they’ll be available through GW.

I didn't hear plastic. But two, lesser known characters i'd guarantee FW as that seems to be standard for hero's like these.

I can't find a mention of plastic or resin, so I guess it remains to be seen? I've got a few questions out about it--maybe I'll get an answer!

Although the models look great, I'm not too keen on the idea of the book to be honest. I remember some fun fantasy fellowship campaign ideas from the past, but that should be standalone expansion with scenarios and campaign rules. To also include new heroes for Gondor (and perhaps others) in that is just very inconvenient.

They started the new edition with excellent books revising and combining all the current profiles, but the books since have typically contained only a few scattered bits and pieces. While I was pleasantly surprised that Gondor at War contained some new toys for factions other than Gondor, we're already approaching a point now where an army can easily contain profiles spread over three books (e.g. a Gondor army with stuff from the main Armies book, Gondor at War and the new Quest book - and that's before considering allies). Add the core rulebook and that's 4 hardbook books for just one army; not practical to carry around and stupidly expensive to get into for a new player. It feels a bit Necromunda-y, where limited capacity only sees the release of a few miniatures alongside increasingly many books.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Specially things like Rohan and Uruk Hai infantry. And normal dwarven infantry, they are some of the older boxes and it shows. Things like Morannon, Easterlings, etc... still look ace.

The Dwarf Warriors/Rangers are some of the 'newer' plastics if I remember right. I still think that makes them over a decade old mind you. I also doubt we'll see any revamps whilst Grim Hammers and particularly the Iron Hill Dwarves are so new.

My guess is they'll start looking at Harad and the Easterlings again, since they're pretty popular and they can squeeze another 'movie' book out of them. Not sure if the loicensing of The Hobbit(tm) films would prevent it, but I'd personally love to see a book covering Rhovanion during the War of the Ring. They could slide some Easterling/Khand updates in there too.

One of the aspects I appreciated the most with the original run of LOTR through GW, is that they were able (to a certain extent) to blend the movie adaptations with the broader Tolkien world. Expanding on the peoples who are not that well covered in either, seems like a good move from a creative-liberty standpoint.

Though I can't say much about predicting the quality of any such ideas.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Although the models look great, I'm not too keen on the idea of the book to be honest. I remember some fun fantasy fellowship campaign ideas from the past, but that should be standalone expansion with scenarios and campaign rules. To also include new heroes for Gondor (and perhaps others) in that is just very inconvenient.

Think this is first time in this forum I have read somebody wanting MORE books rather than "there's too much book bloat!"

tneva82 wrote:

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Although the models look great, I'm not too keen on the idea of the book to be honest. I remember some fun fantasy fellowship campaign ideas from the past, but that should be standalone expansion with scenarios and campaign rules. To also include new heroes for Gondor (and perhaps others) in that is just very inconvenient.

Think this is first time in this forum I have read somebody wanting MORE books rather than "there's too much book bloat!"

Eh?
I don't.
I want fewer books with more contents in each, and more importantly have those contents more concentrated rather than spread out. Releasing a few profiles for various armies in subsequent books serves only to make people require those books (and accompanying profile cards, if using those), while possibly not being interested in most of the other contents. These guys could easily have been in Gondor at War. The profile cards could be included in the miniature pack itself, so that people don't have to 1) purchase and 2) carry around another hardback book just for inluding 1 guy in their army. It's one thing for a normal supplement like the Scouring of the Shire 2.0, where there are a lot of relevant profiles for people collecting Hobbits, there are unlikely to be further books that are relevant to the faction, and the scenarios are all relevant to your army of interest, but another for something like this, which is focussed on narrative scenarios but contains (presumably) just a few new profiles for various different factions for use in matched play.

So lf they had to release narrative scenarios separately to new profiles that means splitting book into 2. Narrative and matched play basically. So you would have 1 book with narrative scenarios and another with ll's and new profiles.

You either have them together or separate books. Separate means more books

And if you want all profiles from diffeent supplements together this would mean longer time between new rules and models. Now we get new rules and profiles ever few often with models steadily. If you combine them then books every few year or two and longer gaps between new models

To me this really interesting. Didn’t buy into LotR the first time round so the opportunity to buy Frodo’s story in one book is great. Then if I want to expand with the larger battle that run parallel to his journey then there’s the other books for that. Excellent.

tneva82 wrote:
So lf they had to release narrative scenarios separately to new profiles that means splitting book into 2. Narrative and matched play basically. So you would have 1 book with narrative scenarios and another with ll's and new profiles.

You either have them together or separate books. Separate means more books

And if you want all profiles from diffeent supplements together this would mean longer time between new rules and models. Now we get new rules and profiles ever few often with models steadily. If you combine them then books every few year or two and longer gaps between new models

No, because for example these Gondorian heroes could have been in Gondor at War. They can furthermore easily release a book and not have all the accompanying models ready immediately. Yes, people claim there is this "no model no rules" idea, but that hasn't applied to Middle-earth in more or less ever. The catapult troll from the Hobbit doesn't yet have a model, nor does Azog's signal tower, nor are there models for countless of equipment options (Forlong on horse, Théodred with any thing but a horse, dismounted Sons of Eorl, and so on). They can either release rules and slowly create the accompanying models, or release models with free rules (as they occasionally did, as with the first Iron Hills release, or the Mûmak War leader) and print them in a relevant publication down the line. Finally, I don't see any need for "my army" to get releases every few months. Indeed, that seems far less of an issue in Middle-earth than for the Warhammers, as many players tend to collect multiple armies and the costs and effort of starting a new one are comparatively low.

Again, there is little benefit to this system for the players. Ideally, you need one book for the core rules and scenarios, and one for your army's profiles. In addition to the book with core rules and recently a separate publication with scenarios, Gondor and Rohan will both already be spread over 3 chunky hardback tomes which you may have to carry around to play a game. And, excluding the scenarios as they're somewhat optional, that's 125€ for the rules for one faction, 170€ including the core rules. While I understand we're past the point where they can print everything in the game in a single book, for a long time it was possible to get by with the core rulebook and a single softcover supplement, after which you could pick up any model in the faction's range and put it on the table.

You need to apply the licencing rules to that as well. Everything they do, from the profiles to the models themselves need to be approved by both the studio (is Newline still around? or whoever owns it now) and the Tolkien estate. Which slows things up a lot. So it's probably more a case of get some profiles out with books or we wait a damn age between book releases while they get bulk model and rule approval.

Personally i'm happier with quarterly books and occasional profile releases than a drought of nothing for months.