I thought I'd take a moment to explore a little bit of the structure of the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. It's structured a little different than some of our other battle games, so it makes it a prime candidate for a rumination. Rather than reviewing the book as a whole, I'll be going over just a few of the things that really make it stick out from Warhammer. Namely, those things are turn sequence and army building.
On the whole, this ruleset is very simple and elegant. The fight sequence is a simplified version of Warhammer's involving fewer rolls, and terrain is given a treatment that makes each piece a different beast than in our other wargames.
In actual play, the game is a lot more, shall we say...focused? Models fight mano e mano, and multiple combats usually involve no more than three models. It's more like a skirmish game in that respect - armies tend to be a little smaller...though if you're running goblins you might end up with just as many models as your Warhammer 40,000 army!
Players share the same turn. That is, after rolling for priority (who will be going first in each phase), we progress through the turn together. So in turn 1, I get priority over you. The turn sequence is Move, Shoot, Fight. I'll take my moves, then you take your moves. Then we do my shooting, then yours. Finally, we do the fighting (which is resolved at the same time).
Pretty simple, and players of other wargames might even find a familiar ring to this sort of ruleset. Just remember to rotate players phase by phase, rather than turn by turn. In the Goblin King campaign, this was an issue that was misunderstood by a lot of folks.
The second major divergence is in army building. The main rulebook lists a lot of models for different forces, but what are Warhammer players to do who are looking for codified lists? Well, your lists are by and large all contained in Legions of Middle-Earth.
This book lists all the 'tournament' style lists for the Strategy Battle Game. The armies are divided by region, and then by list. For example, the Bastions of the Dark Lord section contains five army lists (Dol Guldur, Cirith Ungol, The Black Gate, Barad-Dur and Minas Morgul). You choose from one of the lists, but each list has plenty of options to ally with other lists. For example, you can get your Minas Tirith force together with some Grey Company or members of The Fellowship. Whatever, really...the lists are really loose and there are a lot of options for making customized forces.
Games Workshop has published several supplemental books to the line over the last decade or so, and while a few of those are basically obsolete (save for a few scenarios and collector's value, of course) only a few of them are worthy of mentioning. Fall of the Necromancer, Harad, Mordor, A Shadow In The East and The Ruin of Arnor are fantastic and actually have lists and statistics for new models. These books come closest to being "codeci" or "army books", though none but the main rulebook is truly nescessary except in a few cases. A lot of the rules for new models gets published in White Dwarf.
We'll be doing another campaign with Lord of the Rings sometime very soon! In the mean time, remember that Middle-Earth is part of the Wargate!
