LOTR / The Hobbit SBG

Was a decent scan of the Battlehosts book they did for WotR ever put up? I was always curious to read it but haven't found one.

Yeah, the LotR and Hobbit books are all compatible with the current Hobbit Rulebook, which is nearly identical to the old LotR blue rulebook.

Here they are:

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/27764819/

If you want to get started with the game I would buy Battle Companies this weekend. It has rules for using one box of figures a side.

Been painting some LOTR recently, my Orc Banner Bearer.

LOTR was the best game ever made by GW with some of the best models. The hobbit is shit.
Play lotr and use the return of the king rulebook. That was the shit

The Song of Durin also has "metal wrought like fish's mail", with mail here as a generic term for armour. So the Dwarves sometimes used scale armour even if actual mail is far more common.

Theoden's armour is pretty good overall but really should have been worn over a mail shirt given the many large gaps in coverage. When Theoden is injured defending the gate at HD kills me, the Uruk goes to stab him with a spear and instead of going for the armpit gaps which the red tunic worn underneath advertise he just thrusts right through the centre of the breastplate. Then again since orc arrows effortlessly pierce Gondorian plate, armour is of questionable value in the movieverse. Does it ever save anyone other than Frodo in Moria?

Looks good, his skin reminds me of an Uruk-hai though.

All those old links are dead. Are there any newer ones?

If you want to start slowly op, the battle companies rulebook has literally gone up for pre-order today. It's all about starting small and growing your force over a narrative campaign.

Would tidy the cloth unless the silver is just the sheen of the light

Battle Companies are a fun change of pace but I'd honestly not recommend them for a beginner.

So they have.

I have a copy of them all, I'll upload them to a MEGA. Give me a few minutes.

I would. It starts small, the core rules are still there and you learn to play over a campaign. Couldn't get much better for a beginner

Well the Orc is thrusting through a gap in the door so he probably can't aim with pinpoint precision.

I really want to get Dain's stuff from Forge World but it's way too expensive and I'm not going to get recasts. Oh well, looks like I'll just have to do the battles in my head again.

Many thanks, mate.

I just play Durin's Folk and use the Iron Hills with mattocks as khazad Guard. Best of both worlds.

Here you go.

mega.nz/#F!tHh3hYxL!UWFKTk5cpn8MhKempQtxKQ

I use this MEGA for the Warhammer Fantasy General so I can't promise it will be there forever.

nice eye

But Khazads have axes. not mattocks. Axes are better I think, for special strikes.

Mate the difference between a two handed axe and a mattock is minimal. Khazad Guard have no choice in their weapon anyway.

Thanks m9

GW has some sets for the launch of Battle Companies on their website, one of those £30 sets and some heroes is probably enough for a 500 point army.

Looks great! Always nice to see Orcs receive some love.

(can you post Andúril pics please, user?? I know it's you).

Oh, hey, I remember you from the 7th Sea kickstarter threads. Don't you do fight and stunt stuff for film? Did you work on LOTR with WETA at all?

Well done post, btw

Could this be the beginning of a glorious new era for the SBG?

I tried to get a general running last week, seems like interest is taking off now that FW has control.

I hope so.

Nature of the community will mean it sticks to the Facebook group rather than posting here

so this new rules will be like mordheim?

whats the main group for lotr sbg?

Basically yes. But since SBG only needs like 20 models there wasn't really much need for it.

GBHL - Great British Hobbit League.

Similar sites for other regions, but as the bulk of the community is British, and the rules writers post there, the bulk of the community would use that one.

Rate my Dwarf list lads.

Warband 1
Durin - 160
6 Khazad Guard - 66

Warband 2
Balin - 75
12 Dwarf Warriors - 96
12 upgrades to Hearth Guard - 24
12 Dwarf Bows - 12

Warband 3
Dain - 125
12 Dwarf Warriors - 96
12 upgrades to Hearth Guard - 24
12 shields - 12

= 690 points

I have 10 to burn. This was originally an 800 point list but I realised I had too many warriors and not enough heroes (3 more Khazad Guard and three Vault Warden teams).

With all respect, can you blame them with how Veeky Forums acts up? There was actually an extremely good sbg thread a month or so ago, but it's not going to be easy to get people to come here for this places reputation.

Damn, I've also realised I'm over the bow limit now as well. I'll drop two bows for Dwarf warriors with two handed axes.

I wanted to get back into this but I'm not sure if the two core books are worth it. Do they have the info for the new Fw armies and the old lotr armies?

you've got some expensive as fuck hero's in there eating a lot of points. I'd be tempted to drop Balin or Durin and get some more generic captains or Floi in that list.

The main rulebook is the key part, but i'd say hold off on that as a consolidated book with some tweaks is coming out in the new year. There and back again is only good if you want the hobbit campaign and the lists for iron hills, gundabad, mirkwood and lake town. all the other lists are in the 5 supplements. mordor, free peoples, kingdoms of men, fallen realms and moria and angmar.

There and back again has all the FW stuff in but the LotR armies are still in separate books. See the MEGA above.

I know Durin is expensive but he makes all of your army unbreakable. Balin is only 15 points more than a regular captain but has a lot of extra stuff.

Nice. With the new rules you think we are going to see reprints of old models?

FW have said at the last open day that they want to bring back all the old models but with two caveats.

1) If the master cast has been destroyed they would have to make a new model.

2) They probably won't bring back different sculpts of one character, so we'll only have one Boromir from now on.

Although maybe the Fellowship was a bad example, they might get an additional sculpt.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll have to keep an eye out for some FW re-vamped Dol Amroth models

OP here, just bought 24 unpainted goblins for £7.50 on ebay. This is so much cheaper than 40k.

he's also only on model and will fold like wet paper if he gets surrounded and trapped. if you're playing for theme, then go for it. if you're play competetively, you'll soon learn bodies on the field over high powered characters. there's a reason you never see aragorn in play.

you should have been around when the old de agostini magazine was. issue 1 99p and have twelve goblins on a sprue. i went to all the corner shops and bought two dozen of those magazines.

Bizarrely it always was. One of the few examples of a licensed product being cheaper.

For core troops anyway. I think they made up the difference with characters and big beasties.

even then it wasn't that bad. characters used to be i think it was £10 for a foot and mounted version and the most expensive monster was the metal balrog at about £30. even now i think the most expensive monsters are the great beast of gorgoroth and drake at £44

I seem to remember being annoyed with the Fellowship price but I was only 12 or something.

Depends how you define expense. On a model by model basis it can be very expensive but because you only need a handfull of boxes a big army is probably going to be cheaper than a big 40K army.

old fellowship was like £20 maybe 25. wasn't that bad for the whole team in general.

Yes, and no, respectively. I was *just* getting into the industry back when LotR was in production, didn't have my SAG card, and it was practically impossible for the LotR production team to employ Americans in non-critical roles over in NZ in the first place.

>When Theoden is injured defending the gate at HD kills me, the Uruk goes to stab him with a spear

In fairness, the Uruk was thrusting through a broken gate in a mass battle; fine tip control isn't really a thing in those circumstances. Also, "not actually stabbing your actors" is a thing.

>Does it ever save anyone other than Frodo in Moria?

There's some background shots of Mordor orcs with short blades skating cuts off of Gondorian cuirasses. In general, though, not really. We only see two common kinds of attacker/victim interplays in LotR:

1) Inhumanly strong attacker kills human-ish defender. Uruk are strong enough to pull a (WETA-canon) 300-lb warbow. They simply ignore armor. Also qualifies for things like Mumakil stepping on people, or Orcs (slightly stronger than Men, as per WETA) using long weapons to gain leverage and defeat armor. It's also worth noting that a fair number of Orc v Man fights end when the Orc simply knocks down the Man and keeps advancing, leaving him to be stabbed at leisure by follow-up attackers (such as in the seige towers hit the Minas Tirith wall scene and the night assault at Osgiliath).

2) Humanly-strong attacker kills defender not wearing much armor, or strikes so precisely so as to avoid the armor the defender actually wears (...elves). Most all interactions at the Pelennor Fields work like this, when the human kills the orc. Orc armor is patchwork enough that it's reasonable to assume the human struck *around* the armor, rather than through it (ie, the armor limits the target options).

The time armor would be expected to help is against an opponent of roughly human strength (ie, Gondor vs Haradrim). Which isn't in the films.

>1/2

WETA's Orc canon is fucked. Tolkien describes regular Orcs/Goblins as hunch backs, usually a head shorter than a man and cowardly pathetic specimens. Uruk-hai are at parity with a man but not ever described as significantly stronger (they are better equipped than other Orcs though).

The other thing to keep in mind is, as always, the practical issues of filming. Specifically, armor as shown on-screen is 99.999% of the time not REAL armor, and can't actually take significant hits the way real armor does, even from a rubber or bamboo weapon (ie, stunt weapons). Even if the armor is thin metal (a fair amount of WETA plate was ~18ga steel), the connective points won't take the abude (the armor will fall off or dislocate), and/or the armor will dent andyou have to spend time taking the armor off, hammering it back out, and putting it back on.

So you simply *can't* actually use the prop armor to absorb battle damage the way you can with real armor (pic related). You can SOMETIMES do it with "hero"-grade armor, because that's actual protective gear bought specifically for close-up work and tight shooting; this happens in the Caspian v Miraz fight in the Chronicles of Narnia movie. The actors were wearing real armor and they would occasionally just strike the armor as part of the choreography. But you can't do that with 350 extras.

Next, stunties aren't actually trained to use real armor. The stunties on LotR are fighting exactly the way stunties do on, say, Vikings: by targeting large body zones where padding can be put underneath clothes and "drawing" the cut through that location. Of course this makes no sense if you're wearing real armor...but who's going to take 5 years and re-train 100 stunties to fight in a completely different way from the way they've been training for a decade? (Amusingly, though, this would work perfectly fine if the LotR characters wore mail armor).

Finally, not to put too fine a point on it, but harnischfechten looks really crappy on film in 99% of cases. It just doesn't "read" well, even if well-choreographed. You wouldn't want to watch a film where they're fighitng in a way that actually takes advantage of the armor; evey fight would be 3-5 Orcs piling onto a soldier and, taking them to the ground.

>WETA's Orc canon is fucked.

That may be true (IMO, it is), but it doesn't matter. You have to take the films on their own merits if you want an explanation for *why* something happened in the films.

If you want to know *why* Uruks basically ignored Rohirrim armor, it's because Uruks were made to be roughly twice as strong as a man in the pre-production process. That simply the logical outcome of deciding they were that strong.

Whether we agree with it or not is immaterial. That's (one of) the reasons why what we see in the films happened.

>NickFurySinceItsAStupid-AssDecisionImGoingToIgnoreIt.png

I thought things could never get worse than when legolas rides that shield down the stairs at the Hornberg.

Do people play this game? I've never even seen anything for sale except a small package with a bilbo and gollum in it.

I wish I could play it.

I got (or had) an action figure of Legolas; uruk skate-shield included. Also had an action figure of the Witch-King both in his Weathertop and Pelennor Fields appearances.

Grew up to become a true bookfag though.

Eh, elves are basically hax in LotR anyway, and given all the rest of the shit they do, whether in the films or the books, skateboarding a shield down a flight of stairs while shooting shit is small potatoes. I've tried the "surfing the shield" stunt myself; it's not that hard (shooting is a whole different story). I've mostly made my peace with that particular scene. If an elf noble can 1-on-1 Morgoth, I can't really get butthurt about a stunt I can half-replicate myself.

The way they got him onto that horse in the Warg Attack in TTT, though. THAT bothers the fuck out of me. Has for 15 years.

>not saying it was good idea in the first place, just that IMO it's not worth the energy to get mad about.

Well I was the same, I was only 8 when the movies came out so I saw them first as well but it lead to the books so I can't complain.

> had

Don't fucking lie, you still have it user.

games-workshop.com/en-AU/Middle-Earth-Generals-Accessories-Pack-GW-2017?utm_source=warhammer-community&utm_content=HSBGDec2&_requestid=3445599 Thoughts?

I genuinely couldn't give a fuck about scenes like that or the mumak. you have to realise that to transition from book to movie, you have to insert occasional scenes like that just to play up the characters and the tone. you have to play to the audience.

games-workshop.com/en-AU/Middle-Earth-Generals-Accessories-Pack-GW-2017?utm_source=warhammer-community&utm_content=HSBGDec2&_requestid=3445599

He hobbit minis are very ugly and their source its a shit movie.

LoTR its the superior range. I never noticed how pretty and good looking the dol amroth in plastic where. I should get them.

Don't be a tard. The hobbit range are mostly fine and sculpted well. The Mirkwood rangers especially are gorgeous as are virtually all the character models. The only ones that suffer are the finecast troops and that's the material more than the models.

Even by GW standards, that's ludicrously overpriced. I work in small-volume printing. Assuming they've printed a run of between 10,000 and 20,000, the total per-unit production cost of that pack isn't more than $7, and is almost certainly actually between $4.50-5.50. Guaranteed. Charging an MSRP of more than $20-25 (25 to allow for licensing) for it is complete fucking robbery.

£12.00 for 24 warriors.
£12.00 for 6 Cavalry.
Around £8.00 for a hero on foot or a blister of three elites.
£25.00 for a boxset of up to 9 heroes, of which there were a variety of themes

Some kits still are those priced to these days. Hobby may have only seemed expensive due to the age of many of the playerbase at the time.

They must have made the money back by selling them by the bucket loads. Has to be a reason eBay is still flooded with miniatures

It's just a lotr version of these things with a few extras in there games-workshop.com/en-GB/Warscrolls-Sylvaneth-2017-eng

Time to get them plastics before then.

The movies were shit but I can separate the game from the movie.

Its minis are also shit.

I dunno user, I'm pretty sure they disappeared when my parents (and I) moved when I was like 18 or 19.

Yeah I reckon I was 9 when Return of the King came out. When to see it in the cinema with my dad and everything. I still remember covering my ears when the nazgul shrieked because that shit was loud as hell, and my eardrums had not yet been ruined by satanic rock music.

you're shit. shut the fuck up and get out of a civil thread.

In what way are they shit?

It's gloss varnish.

Have my WIP Minas Tirith Banner Bearer as well.

Am I that transparent?

Here is my Anduril, literally one used in the movies. It's nearly two metres long and looks amazing.

Tell me guys, where do I start if I want to play with some heavy dwarves against asshole elves? What do I actually need to play this game? I heard that LotR and Hobbit are the best GW systems but they were not supported at all. Now my gf noticed that GW released new book for these games and we want to give it a try

>literally one used in the movies
No, it's a cheaply made Chinese replica. A wallhanger that wouldn't have survived long on set.

>It's nearly two metres long
135cm is nearly two meters? Yeah, by those metrics I guess yours is just like the "hero prop" sword Mortenssen swung around.

The game has always been supported, it just went through a hibernation stage for a while. But if you want to run the army of Thror, you'll want the rulebook and there and back again. The army is bases around Grim Hammers in your pic and warriors of Erebor. Your hero selection is decent, including Thror, Thrain and the young versions of Thorin, Balin and Dwalin.

For the biggest FU to elves you go with an Iron Hills army. Not for everyone given the Forge World pricing however.

400 pts is a nice sized game for beginners. Armies are currently created using a Warband system. 1 Hero and 0-12 Warriors make up a Warband. Can have as many as you want in an army.

If you want to go with the GW Dwarf ranges you have Durins Folk (pre-Hobbit) and Army of Thror (Hobbit prologue). Both have plastic troops so are comparatively cheaper to collect than the Iron Hills.

Mortensen never used a prop. He was the only one of the cast properly trained in swordsmanship. Every scene you saw him in he was using a proper steel sword.

>He was the only one of the cast properly trained in swordsmanship.

No he wasn't. Nobody is properly trained in swordsmanship. The hackjob choreography you see is movies isn't swordsmanship, fencing is a shit-tier sport, and "historical" european martial arts are pure fakery based around suspect materials and without a living tradition.

The only real swordsman today are those few of us who practice kenjutsu with an unbroken living tradition. That's it. It's physically impossible to use a European sword and claim legitimate training or skill.

go away and stop shitting up the thread with your opinion that nobody asked for. be a darling alright?

the new book will have a kind of smaller scale I think where we will build a company of 10 something units and they will gradually gain xp and new items and such. like mordheim games.

I think.

I always thought that guy in the top left looked like a hammer thrower, give him a kilt paint job and replace his hammer for a ball and chain and he'd fit perfectly

The pike goes into his armpit my dude, it hits a gap

How is LotR model wise these days? I presume GW still have some stuff but all the metals replaced with resin?

The original skirmish rules were pretty much designed for small units like that. (just with no campaign system)

Of course it wouldn't be GW if they didn't try to upsell everything and slowly creep up the points limit the class as a "standard game".

Alright guys. So myself and a few friends have been looking at this for a bit. I have no idea how the rules work or what I should buy but I really like the look of elves. What should I buy for elves to start a small army?

>Battle Companies is $70
Welp, there goes that.