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Hi all,

I'm looking to get back into the game after a long long hiatus and I'd like some advice about the many books that seem to be currently available.
- Main rule book, of course I'll need this. It seems like the core rules haven't changed much, but the way you construct armies has with different warbands each led by a hero. Does the main rule book contain the rules for this?
- The two "armies of..." books. Will I need these? I'm planning on getting the upcoming Defence of the North book and returning to my original favourite factions; dwarf and easterling. Would I still need the basic army list books or would DotN supersede them for these particular factions?
- I'm guessing all the other books like "War in Rohan" are faction specific books I won't need, but how important is the "Matched Play Guide" and "Battle Companies" books?

And then a general question about the new army building;
- Can you easily add allied factions? I'm looking at all the cool new dwarf models that have come out, which seem to fall under 3 main factions; Iron Hills, Erebor/Thorin and Khazad-Dum. I'm guessing DotN will add a new "War of the ring era Erebor" to that list as well. Can I easily run a mix of these models in the same list? Or would that be frowned upon as power gaming?

Thanks for your help!

Welcome back! It's a smashing time to be getting into Middle-earth.

- main rulebook has everything you need in regards to warbands. They introduced a tier system for heroes. Legend, valour, fortitude, minor and independant. Each tier lets you take varying amounts of warriors.

-the "armies of" books contain the faction rosters. So the hobbit book contains armies for the hobbit movies (dale, laketown, azog's legion, etc.). LotRs contains all the armies for the trilogy (Mordor, Gondor, Army of the Dead, etc.) so depending on which armies you want to play determines which book you require.

-the other books contain themed scenarios, legendary legion (powerful themed but slightly restricted army lists) and news characters/units. So they're not strictly required unless you want to use a Legendary Legion (sometimes called LL's) or whatever new hero might be in the book. They don't have amy points adjustments though so you dont need to worry about That. You'll likely want the DotN book when it drops asnit'l have all the new Easterling units in it.


Edit: End of my post got cut off....

-can't recall the allies rules as they were a section I glossed over. The allies matrix will tell you who can ally with who and how strong the alligence is. For casual play allying anyone with anyone shouldn't be an issue if your opponant is fine with it. But for matched play/competitive play the restrictions will have an effect.



If you haven't already, i'd highly recommend having a look at getting the Battle for Pelennor Fields box set. It's a properly fantastic intro box for the price. You get what essentially amounts to 3 playable armies right out of the box and you get the hard cover rule book.

Thanks Snrub!

I've got a lot of old models buried somewhere so I don't think I'll get the Pelennor Fields box, but will instead scour ebay for the rule book.