LotR / Hobbit / Middle earth SBG / mesbg general

Finally

I played a three-way game the other day with Harad (me) vs Goblintown and Far Harad. I didn't take pictures though so there's not much to tell. I was suprised at how expensive/tough Mahud are (8ppm for D5); I guess I had assumed they'd be cheaper and weaker hordes. Half-trolls absolutely wreck Goblintown which is hilarious. For my part, I mostly just had bow Raiders taking potshots at everyone and charging with war spears whenever one of them got dragged into combat.

Far harad used to be stronger.
What, like 12ppm and f4 a2 c1.

Today, it is cheaper than AOS for 500-700 points?

Depends, no way are the BoFA forces like Iron Hills and Azog's legion cheaper, especially with "Start Collecting!" existing for Age of I hate it.
Some you can't even get since they're oop or out of stock.
If you want to play good, a Mirkwood force shouldn't cost that much, Legolas and a box of Rangers + a captain and a box of regular wood elves.
Evil? Kinda cornholed into Isengard or Azog's hunters. Even then, two boxes of troops and a couple blisters of heroes will do you good.
It also helps Elves and Isengard are both elite armies and you aren't gonna field that many models.

Simply by virtue of being one of the most well known and beloved fantasy stories ever you can also get alternative miniatures for LotR from other companies.
Some people prefer the more historically inspired stuff based on Tolkien's descriptions as opposed to the movie designs.

So if you consider that it is way cheaper.
A single character for AoS costs about as much as a box of troops for just about any historical game.

Food for thought.

Because LotR/HobbitSBG/Middleearth is a garbage system and only hardcore fans of the universe off autistic faggots too bad for 40k still play it.

>is a garbage system
did you ever play it?
Aside from Epic Armageddon it is usually considered one of the best games GW has ever written.

>did you ever play it?
Yes.

>Aside from Epic Armageddon it is usually considered one of the best games GW has ever written.
Appealing to a nebulous consensus isn't really an argument.

Whats the actual rulebook for this game? Is it battlr of five armies?

>it is usually considered one of the best games GW has ever written.

I see this all the time in these threads but who exactly is saying this? I love the system but have never heard of anyone who thinks its one of GWs greatest

I'm not making an argument, but you aren't either.
Saying it's bad is just stating an opinion. Which you are allowed to have of course.
Unless you care to elaborate on what specifically you don't like there isn't much point to sharing that tidbit about yourself though.

So while I didn't explicitly say it my reference to a nebulous consensus was meant to express my genuine surprise about your sentiment.

I might be inclined to consider it bait under different circumstances, but baiting a thread that hovers around 10 individual posters seems a waste of effort.

The guys from my FLGS, which have played loads and loads of games that I've never even heard of or tried. I guess if you work in a gaming store you get to try out more stuff than the average hobbyist.

>I love the system but have never heard of anyone who thinks its one of GWs greatest
The few dedicated autists who still play this stuff.

The old minis are potato quality and monopose, the new minis are terribly designed.
The rules are too tedious for too little depth (see: Fight values, Elven Blades, Will points, Fate points).
Rules are supposed to be a skirmish game but numbers are so vital that Hobbit spam lists are top tournament lists.
The Wound table mean that some armies pay for upgrades that are 100% useless in some games, which is terrible design.
Magic is a both a terrible representation of how it was described in LotR and ridiculously strong.
Cavalry by and large is terrible because of how the Fight system is all or nothing and large bases mean you lose fights more often. So unless you're an Elf or an Elf-descendent Knight, you stay on foot.
Throwing spears cost 2 points (lol).

The rules are swingy due to lots of contested rolling and very little ability to manipulate rolls, encourage just clumping your shit together.
The Initiative system is non-involved with the rest of the game and at the same time actively replaces skill with gambling.

And that's the theme for the entire game, it's very much more dependent on luck than 8th for example because so much situations come down to who gets Initiative, or who gets to heroic-move first, or who wins combat coupled with lots of rules that do very little except necessitate additional bookkeeping.

>encourage just clumping your shit together
That should have read:
The way Banners and Spears work mean the rules encourage you to just clump your shit together, which results in two Infantry blobs mashing together.
There's just barely any emergent tactics in this game.

>There's just barely any emergent tactics in this game.
That's interesting. You are comparing it to 40k's 8th edition right?
From what I gather 40k, although, involving melee as well, is mostly based around shooting weapons though, so naturally maneuvering is a little different and area denial, especially considering how sitting on objectives work, is inherently more important.

So in that regard I'm wondering if that comparison is fair. Although I haven't played 40k since 4th edition, the number of ranged weaponry you get in a LotR game is limited for obvious reasons so the clumping may just be a result of the genre, i.e. swords and boards.

Are there games that handle those things better, you think?
/awg/ is pretty fond of Song of Blade and Heroes or Chevauchee as skirmishers, although I haven't played them either they are based around medieval warfare as well.

It's better to think of the game as small units manoeuvring around each other in free form, and getting your formation flanked is actually bad.
How the combats are ordered is also important ad you can capitalize on your own pushes by killing banners and trapping models or outright preventing those things.
Just last week I had a game where an orc schiltron kept dancing around woods to avoid Boromir and knights of Minas-tirith to rush some WoMT and then push in on the flank of a group of fountain court that my uruk phalanx was engaging.
Didn't work out that way.

I mean I'm just one random internet user, but my preference for GW games would be LOTR > AOS > 40K

>That's interesting. You are comparing it to 40k's 8th edition right?
not exclusively

>From what I gather 40k, although, involving melee as well, is mostly based around shooting weapons though, so naturally maneuvering is a little different and area denial, especially considering how sitting on objectives work, is inherently more important.
It's more the factor that 40k has objectives you need to hold combined with higher mobility. Also you have rules interaction with how much ground you hold (deepstrike denial for one) and auras are much more forgiving to spreading out due to how models are organized in squads.

>So in that regard I'm wondering if that comparison is fair
I'm not saying LotR needs to copy 40k mechanics, but a lotr game currently runs on autopilot after deployment, but still requires you to roll a million dice, and 40k shows how that can be mitigated.

Think of it this way: A game is a series of interesting decisions. What decision making is there in your average game of lotr of mashing your shieldwalls into each other? Does it REALLY matter whether the third or the fourth Uruk Warrior with shield from the right dies?

>It's better to think of the game as small units manoeuvring around each other in free form, and getting your formation flanked is actually bad.
Except why maneuver like that at all? It's not like KoMT do fuck all.

Because they were led by Boromir.
A 3 attack fight 6 6 might monster of a man that ensures they're always gonna run you down, and orcs match them in fight value so odds were not I'm their favor.
At best a flank charge would mean I get 2 on 2 combats and then with a heroic combat Bromosel and his goons could have eaten half of the orcs and then push my phalanx from the rear. Essentially GG.

of course your games are going to be smashing boring blocks together if that's how you build your boring ass army lists

But I don't wanna play Hobbits.

In 8e 40k I just pick the long deployment then sit my Iron Warriors in a building for the whole game. Really complicated stuff :P

>Appealing to a nebulous consensus isn't really an argument.
This is reddit levels of very smart.

>Bromosel
Made me laugh, thanks user.

So I noticed that mordor and angmar were not on battle scribe. What do you guys use to stinker tinker? I want to start expiramenting with some spooky list building up in here!

I download the pdf and then use pen, paper, and a calculator.
Man, I hope they don't just make gundabad orcs troops for Angmar. It's the one army where the humble orc is the backbone instead of an uruk-hai wannabe and it also presents a great drawback to using the army of spooky and scary.

Idk, I am still prepairing my army. From what I've researched the humble orc seems fine for the debuffs. I find debuff-y armies tend to have crap troops anyway

Post your rosters. Now!

Leutenant - goblin with two-hander (old battle wound)
Sergeant - goblin with two-hander (leg wound)
Sergeant - goblin
7 orcs from goblin town (two with torch).
3 influence.

What do you guys think of my first stab at a 700pt Angmar list?

Dwimmer
4 shield orcs
5spear guys

Burdur
2 trololos

Shade
5 shields
5 spears

Barrow + 3 ghosties with the mosties
699 if my math is right.

and what's keeping you from taking orcs for isengard? what the fuck are you talking about

Isengard is the army where the backbone is specifically the expensive elite models. Or Dunlendings if you want to go that route for whatever reason.

because you say so

...

All entries gone?

Think we'll get a new starter set at all?

What would you want in it?

Does anyonr know if the new nazgul are getting rules to go w/ the sculpts?

They are but there are only going to be 4 or 5 profiles with some covering 2 of the new models rather than 9 unique profiles.

bmup

Ah well that could be interesting, if the old profiles are still an option

They should be in “there and back again”

so I made some Khandish horsemen, because I dislike working with metal. Thought you all might like it. The green stuff has a had some smoothing since this so his underarms are less bad, but all in all I'm happy that they prove the concept, I'm working on a pair of chariots too, but don't know whether to put two riders or one.

No. Not at all, but I love it.

Looks good! What did you use as a base?

the horses are from Victrix Greek Heavy Cavalry, the body and the head are from warlords range of plastic Feudal Japanese and the legs are from Fireforge mounted sergeants.

Here's another with some paint, he has had his bow replaced since this.

kinda makes it more amazing than normal because it finally isn't a half-assed lotr conversion or just straight up historical

Well, I'm glad someone else likes them, it was kinda just a perfect storm of having the bits lying around and the inspiration hitting as I was checking out the A Shadow in the East sourcebook.

On that subject does anyone know what size base a Khandish Chariot uses? I can't work it out from the pics on the GW site.

It's better than any of my conversions, which are basically just uruk-hai with dark elf crossbow arms.
Pretty sure it technically is highly illegal as well.