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Hi. New member here.

Q1. I bought box sets of The Return of the King and The Mines of Moria several years ago*. I painted the models but never really played the games. Now
i want to start playing them. Do I need to buy new rule books? Or the old ones are still perfectly fine?

*The Return of the Kings book has a copyright of 2001-2003. The small Rules Manual from the Moria set has copyright of 2005. That gives you an idea of how old they are.

Q2. In a LOTR game, can I freely use whatever characters/armies from the LOTR universe even though the characters do not actually appear in that specific scene in the original story?

Thank you!

Generally the rule book you have should be just fine. The mines of moria are a compressed version of the bigger rule book, but works just as well. There are maybe one or two things that ill have been updated since you bought those rulebooks - but nothing major. Concerning characters/universe you can but to a point. Your not able to mix armies from the 2nd age with 3rd age ones (e..g numenor & Gondor). Also alliances between factions also plays a part because usually elves would not team up with dwarves because of their hate of each other.

Nice to see your love of the hobby has been rekindled, hope to see you around the forum.

You may want to pick up one of the modern army lists which has up to date rules for more heroes and warriors, along with a new method of building your army (one hero for every 12 warriors)

Thanks Drumstick & Shas'o! It sounds like first thing is to understand the story line so not to mix up different ages. As for 1 hero for 12 warriors, my preference is to build elite team of heroes each has its own character, instead of a large number of identical pawns. Not sure if its acceptable.