Wherein the club tries LOTR SBG.

[eilif]

So I finally convinced the club to give LoTR SBG a try. 
4 of us played out the "Long Night" Scenario from the RoTK rulebook, which was also the rulebook we used. We don't have enough LoTR figs for the game, but  the club only fields painted minis so it was really no surprise that in the deep collection of one our members we found a bunch of Celts to stand in for Men of Rohan and a horde of Celtos orcs that had already been painted in a LoTR white-hand paint scheme.   For our first run at the rules we played just Men of Rohan and Uruk Hai with no heroes.

Reaction to the game was mixed, but I quite enjoyed it.  I hope to play again soon with heroes and perhaps slightly fewer miniatures per side.

The full battle report and my impressions of the game here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2015/05/game-report-lotr-strategy-battle-game.html
A few pics from the report to whet your appetite.

[Timbor]

Nice writeup!  I have not yet played the LOTR SBG rules yet, but hope to do so sometime in the next year... 

[eilif]

Thanks,
     If you're not sure about it and don't have the rules yet, I highly recommend the ROTK rulebook.  Only $5 and I couldn't find any holes in it.  It seems that later editions mostly added and tweaked rather than made any major changes.

[Momotaro]

Great stuff!

One thing - I'd say that heroes really are the heart of the game.  Even if you try minor heroes like captains, rather than the big badasses, you'll find their ability to act out of turn, their Courage and their resilience are important.  The hero's higher Courage, along with banners and spears/pikes, encourages you to group your troops into "units" without forcing that straightjacket on the game (good bottom-up design)

Big Damn Heroes are a lot of fun to play.  If you look closely at the sourcebooks, you'll notice that named minor heroes get a special rule and Might/Will/Fate bonuses compared to captains, and usually for only five points extra - consider that if you want to personalise your forces.  The game is also very god if you play heroes vs heroes or heroes vs small force of enemies - the Fall of the Necromancer sourcebook is good for small but powerful battles.  Scouring of the Shire and Battle Companies are good for smaller low-power games.

The core mechanic can be quite bland otherwise as you say - it's basically "gang up on the other guy".  It can often lead to dogpiles, where every mini on the board is fighting in a massive melee in the middle.

You may consider dropping the Defence scores a point to keep things flowing (certainly Dwarfs are pushing the limit with their defence scores, especially in small games), and objective-based scenarios can break up the "one big fight" effect.  The Hobbit SBG also introduced rules for specific weapons and special attack types for monstrous creatures.  Generally though, the RotK rulebook is pretty solid.

The big thing that limits the game to Middle-Earth is magic - consider using Mordheim magic as a template.  Warhammer Fantasy stats are easily converted.  Missile fire is deliberately weak in LotR, to stop Aragorn being shot to ribbons every game, and that shows in the likes of Legends of the Old West, where it often makes more sense to gang up and beat someone to death rather than have a shootour

[Admiral Alder]

As Momotaro mentioned the "Hobbit" rules book added new rules for specific weapon types, however most gamers may find them a bit of a faff to be honest, as it means that troops have to be rolled for individually, restricting larger games. Also the new source books are a mess quite frankly. The SBG are a good solid rules set, but GW keeps trying to ruin the franchise, I'd recommend staying with the previous edition of the rules manual to the current, and picking up the old "codex's", because the newer editions have fewer units and heroes.

[eilif]

Good stuff to know. Thanks folks.  I'll check out Battle Companies, though Scouring of the Shire seems to be going for way too much online.

I'll be sticking with the RoTK rules. I have purchased the Fellowship and 2 Towers rulebooks and a couple of the supplements (whatever I could find less than $10 shipped) to get more scenarios.

I had the hobbit mini-book, but I sold it away. No point in me having that one when everyone else has the RoTK book.  Both because of cost any out of disdain for the Hobbit films, I've no plans to use "The Hobbit" rulebook. To be honest, for expanding my army lists I found PDF's online of the more recent army books that GW has let go OOP.