I’ve been meaning to review the Games Workshop (GW) Lord of the Rings (LOTR) skirmish games for a while – having got the first release just after the first film came out. Oh well, by the time this is printed no doubt I’ll have the Return of the King expansion as well.
GW have the license to produce figure games based on the LOTR films, and also to expand the game material to cover aspects of Middle Earth not covered in the films (e.g. Tom Bombadil). They have approached this by releasing a boxed game based for each of the films released so far. These share a common rulebook, with different figures etc. related to the particular film.
The Fellowship of the Ring box comes with 24 Moria goblins and 12 each of high elves and men of Gondor as depicted in the “Battle of the Last Alliance” sequence at the start of the first film. All of the figures are moulded in hard plastic and are true 25mm scale – so they are smaller and are also less cartooney in their sculpting than GW’s usual offerings. This is actually a rather odd pairing of figures, as the Moria goblins are depicted as a smaller type of orc, whereas the Mordor orcs shown in the battle are rather larger. And, of course, it is the Fellowship of the Ring itself which encounters the Moria goblins!
However, the figures are quite nice, and are good representations of the depiction of men, elves and goblins of the film. The joins for shields onto the goblins and the men of Gondor are a little crude, but these are basically nice, well sculpted, figures. In addition to the figures there is the rulebook, with additional material such as starter painting advice, scenarios, making terrain and of course lots of “padding” – photos from the film. The box set is rounded out with dice and some terrain features – the walls of a ruined building – that can be used to represent Amon Hen or a part of Moria.
The Two Towers box set is very similar, except the figures are now 24 Uruk-Hai orcs of Saruman and 12 mounted riders of Rohan. Again these are very nice figures, and with the figures from the first game allow the Siege of Helms Deep to be played out along the lines of the film. The rulebook is similar to the Fellowship rulebook but is somewhat longer as it also covers sieges, has more detail on mounted figures and new creatures such as wargs and warg riders.
Game statistics for characters common to both films appear in both rulebooks, but there are some exceptions (e.g. Gandalf the Grey is only in the Fellowship book, Sauron is only in the Two Towers book). The same ruined buildings as in the Fellowship boxed set are provided as terrain features - I thought that this was a bit miserly of GW. They also seem to have skimped on the quality of the boxes, as they are a lot flimsier than the usual GW game box. But these are fairly minor niggles. For the price - £40 - both games offer good value for money. The figures alone bought separately would be this much.
The game is deceptively simple. The turn is divided into 5 stages -- initiative, move, ranged weapons, melee, morale. Having won initiative one side moves all its figures, the other side then reacts. Archery is worked out for both sides, and then melee. The combat system for melee is very simple, each figure rolls a D6, and the highest roll wins. For multiple attackers or figures that get more attacks, multiple dice are rolled. Ties are determined by the fight skill of the participants – highest wins. All on the defeated side retreat 1”, and the winner of the melee also rolls to see if the opponent(s) are wounded. Most figures are killed on one wound – heroes and large monsters have more.
The subtlety comes in partly through the use of the fight skill, but also because the heroes have three attributes – Might, Will and Fate which can be used variously to “absorb” wounds or to modify die rolls in their favour – but only a few times per game. This allows heroes to defeat large numbers of assailants, avoid the fatal wound and so on – for a while. Used too recklessly they soon run out of “luck” and are hacked down by the hordes of goblins and orcs. On top of this is a magic system which is fairly low key – powerful enough to help win battles, but not on its own. Several of the example scenarios also make use of the presence of the One Ring.
The way the rules have been written – with the characters adding the heroic colour to the battles – mean that quite large skirmishes can be played in a fairly short time. Games where one side uses the whole of the fellowship with the other side being hordes of goblins with a troll or two also make good solo games: set the fellowship an objective and then randomise entry points for the goblins. The Fellowship will hack down piles of goblins, but in the end they’ll start to fall as well. For some reason in the games I’ve played, Legolas seems to always be the first to go, but that’s probably because I use Strider and Gandalf to protect the pretty weedy hobbits!
The game is also being supported with “non-film” supplements, the first of these is the Shadow & Flame booklet. This consists of 50 pages (including covers) for £8, and gives more detail on dwarves and adds characters left out of the films such as Glorfindel (shamelessly replaced by Arwen in the film), Tom Bombadil and Goldberry the River Woman’s daughter. In such a slim booklet it’s a bit annoying to have so much space given over to what is in effect advertising - for example the colour catalogue pages of figure releases to date. However, it is a nicely presented booklet with a lot of useful game information and is recommended for anyone who wants to use dwarves in their games.
There are also a large number of figures available to support the game – if you think that the LOTR film depictions of elves, men and creatures of evil are spot on then you’ll probably want to buy some of these. As mentioned above, the LOTR figure range are smaller than the usual GW fantasy fare –- being “true 25mm” (whatever that is!) and so fit in with older figures from the time before 25mm started creeping towards 30mm. However the figures are expensive even by GW standards - the set of nine metal dwarves released to support the Shadow & Flame booklet is £20. That’s £2.22 each – if you want a sizeable warband it’s going to be painful to the pocket. I won’t labour the point, but personally I think that this is steep for nice, but not really “must have” figures. The Ral Partha fantasy army dwarves (available from Minifigs) are probably as nice, and about 60p a figure. It really depends on how important having the official figures is – personally I just dug out some orcs and hobbits I already had (plus the Mithril miniatures Tom Bombadil!) and used them. I may buy the Balrog because it is such a lovely figure, and I’m also tempted by the Sauron figure but feel £20 is a bit much for what looks to be an approximately 54mm Sauron and one dead human!
It’s probably worth mentioning at this point the Battle games in Middle Earth part-work which appeared in the early part of 2003. This contains a not very useful magazine and either a sprue of plastic figures or a single metal figure for £3.99 (Issue 1 came with figures, paints, dice and a paintbrush). This (£3.99) is good value for the plastic figures, and apparently is also good value for some of the metal heroes as opposed to buying them in the boxed sets. Back issues can be ordered from the publishers – DeAgostini (telephone 08707 299 399 for back issue ordering) - and this could be worth investigating. Of course the whole series might get a “re-launch” following the release of the third film.
In brief, I’d recommend the boxed games. Due to the overlap of content the Two Towers set is probably the better value of the two due to the more comprehensive rulebook (implying that the Return of the King set will be even better value?). The figures are nicely sculpted and good representations of the film characters, but a bit pricey for what you get.
GW's Return of the King [LW147]
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