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.

why?

Because it is simple to play, relativly cheap, and not nearly enough play it

Ive never played it before, but i have been interested.

To sum up what ive seen from it:

1: Some great models, good sculpting at times.
2: Great choice of armies, can create a unique army pretty simply.
3: Simple rules give the game a somewhat quick and smooth run time.
4: Price. The models are pretty cheap compared to 40k/WHFB, meaning a larger army very quickly.
5: Its part of something much bigger, meaning there should be alot of new updates on a regular basis.

As ive said, im yet to play it (due to spending too much allready) But it does look interesting.

Depends on what you want.

LotR was designed for very small-scale, story-driven skirmish games, to allow fans of the movie a way to re-enact scenes from the movie or the books. For this, it works okay.
If you want a fun skirmish game with lots of cinematic action, you should also look at Legends of the High Seas- same rules, but with pirates, and with Mordheim-style campaign rules as well.

Naturally, a lot of the wargamers went crazy over the idea of recreating the mass battles of LotR, and collected tons of miniatures, a practice GW encouraged by making lots of cheap plastic grunts. Alas, the LotR rules are not well suited for large battles, and really the last thing you need is lots of cheap troops. In fact, when you start getting more than around 20 models on a side, the game can quickly bog down (especially if one of you has slow-player disorder).
GW released LotR:Strategy Battle Game in an attempt to meet the need, but it met with limited success; trying to port the rules for a skirmish game into a mass-battle situation, it was neither one thing nor t' other. And LotR:SBG still tends to bog at larger scales- 60 to 80 models on a side is probably optimum.

Finally GW released WotR, a true mass-battle game for Middle Earth, and it is good. Very good indeed. But you need a surprisingly large number of troop figures to play, and this a long-time WHFB player sayin' that.

WOTR fills my need to recreate the mass battles, which were the only thing I was really looking for from the films anyway. LOTR just didn't do it for me as skirmish just wasn't exciting enough. Like fellblade said, it depends what kind of game (small or large battles) you want to play.