Uruks, too, are a different breed. Which is exactly the point he is making. There are hundreds of different breeds that all look different, and no-one ever complains.

My problem with the new goblins is not that they look different (actually, if you think away the boils and bumps, they are pretty similar to armour-less Moria Goblins), but the fact that some poses are absolutely ridiculous.

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

Uruk just means orc, Uruk-hai however are a different species, so to speak, rather than a just different breed of orcs. I think most of them look pretty good, a few have humpbacks that are overly huge, but I can deal with that.

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

Not even. Book Uruk-hai are war orcs, soldier orcs. So maybe those bigger orcs were chosen to breed for bigger, healthier traits (he says, as delicately as possible). Saruman's army - in the books - are half orcs, bred ehhh, let's not go there in a family message board. But they are taller, not affected by sunlight, and as tall as a man. There's some Uruk-hai in his army too, but the big focus are his half orcs. The half orcs also make good spies, since they come across as funny looking humans, not as obvious orcs.

So rough family tree:
- Morgoth Orcs
--> orcs of Mordor
---("Mordor")Uruk Hai AKA Black Uruks.*
---Soldier Orcs of the War of the Ring
--> mountain orcs (Moria Goblins)
-->Orcs of Goblin Town
--->Saruman's Orcs (were mountain orcs)
---->Half Orcs

The movie also gives us Saruman's uruk-hai which are "perfected" Orcs, probably made from half orc, mountain orc and Mordor Uruk Hai

* The Black Uruks are attested in-text as having been sent to Moria by Sauron to organise Orc forces there for his armies.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

Well, Bolg has always been "the son of Azog". I think that is pretty explicit - if Orcs just spawn, how can there be a father-son relationship? Also, as has been said before, Orcs were originally members of other races (I think final canon was Elves) corrupted by Morgoth, so they'd have to follow the reproductive method of these - Morgoth couldn't create life, he could just corrupt existing life.



Technically, no. "Uruk-hai" is just the name larger warrior Orcs (both Sauron's and Saruman's) give themselves - it just literally means "Orc-people". Sauron's Uruk-hai are just really large, almost man-high, pure-blood orcs. Of Saruman's Uruk-hai, some were also just big Orcs. Only his Orc-human hybrids were a different species.

EDIT: Agh. Aelfwine beat me to it.



I think the 'hate' mostly comes from the fact that the new Goblins look just a bit too goofy/diseased - their visuals just fit better with what we're used to from WHFB (Nurgle, anyone?) than with anything in the LotR range. Their proportions and some of the poses just are way out of whack. That is mostly PJ's responsibility, though. I'm intrigued what the BoFA goblins will look like - if the Goblin Town goblins are just an isolated group of oddballs while the rest of them look more in line with what was seen in Moria, I'll be very happy.

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Rohan - as it should have been. A house rule project.

True about the half orcs, I always think Uruk-hai when I think half orcs.

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

Well, this thread took a curious turn.
Still on the issue of the goblins I will concede the point, as I might over the elves (those I want to see in play). But the characters are clearly on a different level than the previous characters. Seriously. Bolg kills... some important characters... and he has stats to challenge just about any hero in the game. Eomer, on the other hand, cuts through the entire host of Mordor, gets stranded in the middle and still continues killing, is covered in blood from head to toe in the end and all he gets is +1 st on the charge... Seriously? Same applies for Azog.
LotR might not be WHFB or 40K, but GW is still GW. They will use all of the same tricks to sell the new army.
On the issue of aesthetics. Dont remember who posted the second post but he was basically agreeing with me in diferent words. The LotR bad guy aesthetic was unified, even if they looked very different. Ie. they were all designed by the same design team (i mean the movie design team not the sculptors)
The new hobbit aesthetic took a completely different turn, and judging exclusively from the models I don't like the turn it took, and find it too different to the old models to be applicable.

I can't put into words just how much I agree with this statement! The problem is this: for someone who hasn't read the books - which, sad to say, is the majority of players I know - all this doesn't matter at all... they look at Bolg's stats and are happy about it - he is a huge Orc (that, hilariously IMO, doesn't get any screentime at all in Part I) after all. It's only when you take into account the context given by Tolkien in the books, that the painful discrepancy you stated becomes obvious: if Bolg gets the stats and special rules he gets, what will Beorn's stats be?

Sadly, the book-given balance has always been ignored at best, sometimes even reversed, by GW: Riders of Rohan, the best cavalry Middle-earth has ever seen, are lower F (unless upgraded via a character that fluff-wise should be the only Rohan character to focus his benefits on infantry) than Harad Serpent Riders - who in the book get absolutely slaughtered by the vastly outnumbered Rohirrim. Weirdly enough, their tactical MO is reversed as well - Book: Rohirrim have long spears (=lances), Haradrim don't (Scimitars only); Game: Haradrim have war spears (=lances), Rohirrim don't. Seriously, WHY?

Théoden in the book gets compared with the God of War himself, outrides the rest of his army, easily kills the Haradrim Chieftain (cf. Suladan) and then some - yet his game profile is mediocre at best and does he get any cool Bolg-like special rules? Nope. Sure, he dies in the only real battle he fought (though he did some butchering at Helm's Deep, too). But. So. Does. Bolg.



Indeed. It really began with the release last January (?). They released unfluffy, but powerful (and overpriced) stuff nobody had asked for: GBoG (ok, this one is semi-fluffy), out-of-scenario Watcher-Crab, mini-Balrogs, three Goblins riding a warg, etc. rather than stuff people had been begging for for years but which wouldn't have fit their draw-new-(kid)-players-by-releasing-"awesome new"-monsters-MO that can be seen in WHFB and 40k as well. Plastic Rohan Royal Guard, new options for High Elves, and all the other stuff that would have made existing players happy just wouldn't have served as well as a gateway drug. You can't blame GW for that, but you sure can despise them for it on a Tolkien-level. ^^

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Rohan - as it should have been. A house rule project.

Now I'm getting all riled up again. I think GW is wrong about this marketing strategy, current and potential LotR players are not sucked in by "new awesome monsters" in the same way WHF and WH40K players are...liking this game at all requires having a different sense of aesthetics and expecting some cohesion with the books.

Some day after the Hobbit movies are all out and GW has finished releasing stuff I'm going to revisit By the Book and refactor everything...I swear it!

I'll help out when that day comes

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

Awesome!

You can count me in as well. You know that GW will eventually kill the system or move it to specialist games, because they can't just keep making stuff up like they do for their own IP.

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Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies

For many players in the Warhammer community, it seems that the day the SBG is relegated to Specialist Game status cannot come soon enough.

Personally I've had it with GW. I'm slowly building up an historical Anglo Saxon army which I will also proxy as an infantry heavy Rohan army (or make up my own rules). Just today, my order for 14 metal miniatures arrived from Musketeer Miniatures (Aella and Bannerman, plus 12 Gedriht elite Hearthguard from their Early Saxon Range. Only cost me £24 for 14 (£6 for the character and bannerman,and then 3 packs of 4 troops of £6). That would have cost me around £60 from GW in Finecast.

I mean, seriously, how freaking cool is this model??

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My (more regularly updated) painting blog:
https://www.facebook.com/Pindergorn/

So will I! I'm really looking forward to it.

@King Ondoher

Agreed, that is a really nice model.



The thing is, they don't even have to come up with that much stuff of their own (like the mini-Balrogs) because there is such a huge wealth of stuff in Tolkien's work that hasn't been touched: Wainriders, the Balchoth, the Kin-strife, the Fell Winter (Helm and Fréca et al.), the War of the Elves and Sauron (Celebrimbor), Thorongil and his exploits, and much more - and then there's still the off-chance they get (even if only limited) access to Silmarillion material.

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Rohan - as it should have been. A house rule project.

The more the merrier!



No kidding. Even just staying in the 3rd age, there's the kin-strife (as you said) and the whole decline of Arnor which became 3 kingdoms (more models and characters in there, as Rhuduar turns evil), Scatha the worm, the capture and rescue of Elrond's wife (mother of the twins)...really endless.

The problem is, GW is lazy. Sure, theres a wealth of material in the books for GW to build on, but without pre-existing designs, concepts, characters etc from the movies to use as a crutch they won't do it.

They'll make a half arsed attempt at some things which have some sort of connection to the films and for which they can draw inspiration from New Line/Jackson but things like the Balchoth/Wainriders, or characters (Elrond's wife), never featured in films we probably won't see because those would require a lot of original work and concept designs.

Sadly, the SBG is more of a movie tie in, rather than being based directly on the books so once we see the last films set in Middle Earth and public interest in Tolkien begins to wane once more, I think GW will quietly drop/reduce support for SBG.

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My (more regularly updated) painting blog:
https://www.facebook.com/Pindergorn/

Without wishing to stick up for GW (there are things I would have liked to have seen by now & plenty of models not good enough for the books/movies), but we don't really know how much they're allowed to do.
The licence with Newline and Middle Earth Enterprises is probably fairly tough and anything created would have to go through them.

Anything contained in Lord of the Rings (including appendices)and The Hobbit is within their license.

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

To be honest, they got the ridiculous Dwellers in the Dark and Three-Goblins-on-a-Warg through (still beats me how they managed that...) so Tolkien Enterprise's can't be that tough on them... if those made it through, I don't see a reason why more established things like Wainriders shouldn't. They're within the LotR Appendices, so they're covered by the license, as said by Lord Hurin.

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Rohan - as it should have been. A house rule project.

What special rules does Bolg have?

Uuuuh, careful. Asking for (and giving) rules isn't allowed here for copyright reasons. Let's just say: Bolg gets nastier (and scarier) the more enemies he kills. He starts as a very powerful fighter, and by the time he's in full Enrage-mode, he'll overshadow even Aragorn.

_________________
Rohan - as it should have been. A house rule project.