O.K. Let's start at the beggining, I am no big fan of Games Workshop. After spending $75 for my last hardly complete over hyped copy of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and painting 40 or so Lizardmen that I will never use,I have gotten into the habit of waiting until the usual GW marketing hype has died down and they have stopped supporting the game (which normally takes all of about a week.) But being a Tolkien fan I decided I really should put my prejudices aside for a moment and at least look at the new GW game.
Well I'm glad I did. The first massive surprise comes in the price $45 dollars is not much more than I payed for the new 40,000 rouge trader rulebook, and came with a bevy of cool stuff.
Now granted you get only 48 minitures (which is slightly less than most GW games granted,) as well as the rulebook and dice, the box did not come however with a ruler (no biggie, I got plenty of those from the years of minis gaming) and not templates (which is also fine being there is no need for them in the game, so your not realy getting cheated. the box also includes 4 dice (pretty generic) and a few plastic models of building ruins (which are pretty high quality)
Now the first thing you will notice opening the box is of course the minis, they are distincly different than the traditional GW ilk, and while they are as high a quality (a little better on some and a little lower on others) than your standard GW plastics you can tell that they tried to capture the flavor to the New Line Cinema film the figures emm more lithe than the stocky eurogothic style so common to GW lines, while the figures are beautiful I kept wondering if this was actually a GW producti it just felt a bit strange, I can't explain it any better than that, not better not worse but strange.
The rulebook is also a pretty well layed out text which bears a lot of similarity ot other GW products, Although again most of the trademark GW pencil art and paintings were replaced with pictures from the motion picture.
The rules are similar to Warhammer fantasy battle, in some respects, so anyone used to the system won't be lost, in fact you will probably catch on after a half assed skimming of the rules. The rules are much simpler the game is split into several phases (priorty, move,shoot, fight, and end.) Priority is of course simple inintiative, rolling to see which side goes first) movement is done as is the standard for minis games (although they include scalse for both running the game in metric and in english measurements. Which I found fascinating) shooting is based off of a score called fighting (if your unit has a fighting with rating that has two numbers seperated by a slash the second number is used for shooting, Simply roll this number or higher to hit.) Fight of course is the hand to hand pahes of combat(the only thing i found odd is that to fight both players roll a d6 the highest roll succeeds, if it's a tie, you compare thier fighting stats and the highest fighting wins) Damage is done by comparing strength and defences on a chart and determining your chance to wound) like I said in many ways it easy to see why people think it's a simplified Warhammer.
But there is more here, the game is NOT based on the standard rank and file movement of Warhammer, and si much more chaotic in movement (to better represent those incredible but chaotic scenes of the film)
Complete stats for all of the majr protagonists in the first book/ movie are included in the book (since they are planning a second edition for the time of the release of the two towers, they did not give you anything on how to level them up to the later books) the heroes also have been given a selection of rerolls based on avoiding damage, magic and performing special actions. the units seem to be very well balanced, and seem to play well while at the same time work well within the genre. Also, they include stats for some units not in the original books, such as king of men, King of Dwarfes etc, allowing you to run earlier wars that are set pre lord of the rings ( If they only included generic giant eagle rules I could run the battle of five armies ahhh!) Scores for other characters also include a lot of variants such as wargear, who has the ring etc.
Magic is one place where the system is greatly simplified. each of the characters that is known for magic in the games includes a list of his/her staple magic effects, during the time of the book. my only real gripe is it would be nice to customize spells a bit more, but it's pretty obvious they were working from a model of simplicity.
The game also includes a collection of scenarios taken from the lord of the rings saga. While many of the scenarios do require the fellowship (which is not included) there is still a lot here to help you make your own scenarios, as well as info on modleing which again is typical of a GW product.
I would highly recomend this game for any gamers who are Tolkien fans that have wanted to try minis games but found games like warhammer to be too daunting or laborious. The game is much maybe not as customizable, or inticate as some GW products, it is a great game that is well worth the price of admission.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)