Weeeell, that's your fault. lol

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Agreed. I've long thought Trolls and the like should have at least had cavalry bonuses when charging. These are way more potent...but possibly too much so.

That's not very nice...

Anyway, what's your source? Certainly Thorin's fall wasn't covered in the book.

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Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

Besides, you have a whole year and a half to forget we said this.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Right, in the book

They seem (from the blurb on the back of the action figure) to be making Bolg into some kind of badass in the film. In the book, damn near all that is said of him is that he's Azog's son and that he leads the Goblins at the BoFA.

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Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

I for one don't care to see my game turned into another version of some other companies game. If Warmachine is based around monsters (LoTR equivalent), and its a "feel" GW is changing LoTR into it...then the entire game has changed. Also, I have never been a proponent for changing something cause a small core of players play strictly for tournaments. If there is something broken at that "level" then make a supplement tournament rule-set and don't change something that ain't broken.

The game I fell in love with was built around basic line troops lead by captains and 1-2 hero's. Change is good, but for the right reasons. If its a change to get people to buy more monsters which cost way to much money (the rhino and mini-balrog) and reduces the troop count on the table then and you're all for that...enjoy.

For me and my circle we'll still play with the old ruleset and occasionally play with the warband rules. As for 'hurling', 'barging' and such we House Ruled that a while back. Hurl is, as stated before, Blast but w/a d6" range and uses up 2atts, and we have Bull Rush, which is basically granting monsters a one time cavalry bonus.

LoTR built around monsters...crazy. Hope its not going to be where we'll only see hero's and monsters with troops acting as meat-shields.

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Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. -B.M.

That doesn't sound much like LoTR or The Hobbit though. If you want masses of troops that's what 'War of The Ring' is there for. Tolkien's stories are all about the heros and villans: Thorin's Company, The Fellowship, The White Council, The Nine, Sauron, The Balrog, Smaug, Beorn, Saruman etc.

I started playing Warhammer (with Dwarfs) over 20 years ago because of The Hobbit, so what I want from these new rules is for Thorin's company (and The Fellowship, including the hobbits) to be viable forces for pick-up games. How much discussion is there on this forum about how to use The Fellowship...... none, beacuse it's seen as a 'special scenario only' force. That is basically wrong. The game balance should allow for highly thematic forces to be just as viable as a convential army from Mordor or Gondor. I want to see heros, monsters and troops in perfect balance. That means everyone gets multiple builds from each list and the potential for theming forces and still having a close fought game goes up.

I want my horde of Moria Goblins to be viable under the new rules, but if I decide to swap a load of it out for The Balrog I want it to be just as competitive, just a different build with different tactics.

I'd like to take Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas with my Rohan army led by Eomer or Erky, because that's thematic, but not feel like I'm burning points on heros. Maybe I'll stick Treebeard in there too, just for kicks.

Wouldn't it be nice to see Osgiliath themed forces led by Faramir, with Frodo, Sam and Gollum added, or maybe you turn up for a game and you end up facing The Last March of The Ents, beacuse that doesn't suck anymore.

That sounds more like stories from Middle Earth to me.

As for the Warmachine comparison........ google 'Adeptus Titannicus'. Back in the '80s GW released a game where massive bipedal war machines blew 7 shades of proverbial out of eachother with a variety of ranged and close combat weaponry. It was very cool.

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Titans Wargames Club

http://s10.zetaboards.com/The_Titans/index/

Firstly, we don't know if the new rules will be affected by the Warmachine or, whatever else, game. Someone just dropped a comment and we are taking it as an absolute....

Secondly, everyone likes a different aspect of the game and I respect that. Nevertheless the official version should be balanced and should not allow units to be rendered useless. My adding new abilities to the monsters, GW is at least addressing the issue, albeit other imbalances will probably still exist or be created. Hitherto the capabilities of monsters were not in accord with Tolkien's works. I have not seen the rules, but if they manage to make monsters useful I'll be happy.

As you stated, you house-rule two abilities for monsters when you play. Thus in order to house-rule monsters you must think that their previous status was debased. The only difference with GW doing it is that the problem will be centrally addressed so that players won't have to do so by themselves.

For what it is worth, as a WarMachine player, you might be surprised by how infantry heavy the game can be. I field about 40 minis, versus my fiance's force being monster-heavy, and fielding maybe 15 minis. And yet, it almost always feels balanced, while letting individual feel heroic. And this is at what, in LotR terms, would probably be a 500-700 point game.

I know people are very loyal to their game systems, but honestly, there are worse games to be compared to, and if Hobbit/LotR SBG has as much diversity, and scaling with great skirmish rules as WarMachine, I think it would be pretty great.

I am happy to see some extra punch (pun intended) to monsters in SBG. Except for Hero-type monsters (Troll Chief / Treebeard ) most of the time they are not worth the points to field them. This is disappointing. They should not become a core requirement but we should at least be able to field a competitive force using a 100 pt Troll as we could using 100 points of Morannon Orcs. Right now that is no where close to the case. A few extra options to the monsters such as this is probably a safer move than making their profiles even stronger or dropping their points. But if it shifts much and everyone feels they need a Troll/Ent/Whatever or else they auto-loose to someone else then it's a failure.

And regarding the word competitive, don't take it to always be the same as 'tournament'. There is almost no tournament support for GW anywhere within an 8 hour drive of me so I've only been to one "official" tournament (and even then, when SBG was strong and popular, GW gave pathetic attention to it compared to their other lines). But even when I play locally I want to have a force that I feel can stand up to anything my opponent brings as long as I play smart. And I don't want to have to play one of a few patterned army lists to achieve that. I should be able to field a competitive list based around a horde of generic Orcs with perhaps a Troll or two, or my Wood Elves should be able to face off on their own or with an Ent or Eagle joining them. Rohan cavalry should be able to charge forward in rows of fully mounted terror while a Mumuk stomps forward ahead of Haradrim riders. In the early days of SBG when there wasn't as many 'options' most forces could be built to be competitive against equal points (Rohan being a key short fall here) but now it is getting harder to find justification in many models. If they can balance some of this out again I'll be happy, but not holding my breath.

My biggest worry from this discussion has been the mention of new Heroic Actions. The uses of Might in SBG are already good I feel and I think many will agree that the Heroic Actions were some of the most abused and unbalancing aspects of the War of the Ring game. I dread what GW may push into SBG looking back on that.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Just found the Hobbit Rules thread that touches more on this.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

I mentioned my take on what the game was based around. I feel that the named hero's from the books/movies are more geared to specific scenario's not day-to-day game playing.
I agree with what most have said after my post. I too like to keep my forces in line with the books. Though my departure is that I like to field more captains than named hero's. I see my games as side adventures, allowing the named to complete the story from the books. Thats a "me thing." I have and will field named, so don't get me wrong on the use for them.
Also as mentioned before, and I took it as a given, GW doesn't have a good track record of making balanced changes. Its more of a pendulum swing, and in time they'll put out another "balance" rule-set.
Also, we are all understanding that most of this (or all of it) is guess'mations. I for one am not keen on seeing monsters given Might points. True it may justify the extra abilities while limiting the number of times they can be done.

Any way. I enjoy how we play SBG.

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Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. -B.M.

I am shortsighted but even I could read the pictures.

I don't think heroic actions apart from heroic move are overpowered in WotR. The point where it gets cheesy is when someone combo's totally bullsh!t stuff together to make something work (Gimli+Aragorn and Dain +Elendil in one army to take advantage of Epic Rampage?). Oh, and heroic duels can be overdone a bit with Epic Strike in them, but most armies have a counter-card for this.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

With Heroic Strike, Aragorn suddenly became a really good monster killer. Unless you use his free might earlier in the turn, he has a minimum of F7, with a pretty good chance of having F10! Now Anduril might be worth taking, because he can win against monsters so much more easily now.

_________________
"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

The thing that annoys me is that some random captain can now have a higher fight than an ancient elven king with thousands of years of combat experience. I'm speaking from a perspective of a recent game I had where I was forced to use a might point with celeborn to have a higher fight value than vrashku in order to help win the fight it was incredibly annoying.

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Fight! Fight to the last man!

If this was to be our end then I would have them make SUCH AN END as to be worthy of remembrance

Think of it as Vrasku putting all (or at least a third) of his energy into winning against Celeborn. Once he runs out of energy (might), Celeborn goes back to having the advantage.

_________________
"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Ya I guess that makes sense but, I liked the way it was before...

_________________
Fight! Fight to the last man!

If this was to be our end then I would have them make SUCH AN END as to be worthy of remembrance