I'll take that as a "yes".

Anyways, it works like this:

1) Select a battlehost (such as Guards of Ecthelion, Riders of Theoden, etc.)
2) Pay the normal amount of points for each company/formation/hero/etc. in the battlehost, following the restrictions for what companies/formations/heroes/etc. that battlehost is allowed.
3) Pay the additional points value of the battlehost (it seems to be either 25, 50, 75, or 100pts).

Each battlehost has special rules, for example: all formations in the Army of the Dead battlehost gain the berserk rule.

My favourite is the Army of Gorgorath. It consists of one orc formation with between twelve and eighteen companies. It counts as equiped with shields, bows, hand-weapons, and two-handed weapons. And, whenever it's captain is killed, for whatever reason, another orc takes his place and becomes the new captain (with D3 Might).

I apologize if the names of the battlehosts, or the special rules, are slightly wrong. All I've said is from memory. (There is also a small chance that I didn’t understand it properly, and everything I’ve said is wrong... )

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

Did you see anything on the Easterlings?

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A shadow rises in the East...
The Easterlings march to war!!!

Not really, I sort of glanced at them. From what I can remember, there's only one (maybe two ) battlehosts availabe for Easterlings.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

I am overall very pleased with how this release is shaping out.
The morgul knights and KoDA are both superb....the best things i've seen come out in the lotr range for quite some time but as awesome as the know KoDA are I think the morgul knights take the cake...huge improvement over the old metals.
the rest are decent for the most part. mauhur and his comand are good the blackroot archers are good but I think dunhir looks a little funny with his shakespeare style leather chaps and tight shoes.
Faramir isn't brilliant but hes not terrible either.
Overall not bad, not bad at all...soo much better than what we've been treated to lately especially with the harad release. THOSE were the ugliest things I had ever seen

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"Thou fool! No living man may hinder me!"
Witch King, RoTK

I really only care for the plastic sets. I will definitly be getting the Ogiliath set, but probably neither of the boxes actually containing miniatures (I may get the SKoDA somewhere down the line eventually).

Whats going on with Faramir? What drove GW to feel the need to create a miniature like that? I just really don't like it. I also don't like the continued expansion of GW invented characters, but I suppose they will do what is necessary to not only attract Warhammer players but continue to recieve sales.

But there aren't any invented characters in this release. All of them are directly from Tolkien.

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" I think I'm... quite ready for another adventure!"

Bilbo

The Dwimmerlaik was not named the Dwimmerlaik. There was no name for the 9th nazgul. And the background was made up.

Indeed, both Mauhur and Dunhir are both legitimate, albeit obscure characters from Tolkiens works.

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"Thou fool! No living man may hinder me!"
Witch King, RoTK

Sorry, I was refering mostly to the named Nazgul. The unecessary broad generalization is entirely my bad; I scrolled through the other characters and assumed they were also made up.

I apologize.

No need.

The Dwimmerlaik slipped my mind, as he is indeed a GW invention. At least the name is drawn directly from Tolkien though. I agree with you for the most part, I've never been a fan of GW's made up chracters with a few exceptions. Suladan I like a lot, though he at least draws some inspiration from an unamed Haradrim Chieftain in the books. I also like most of the invented Dwarves.

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" I think I'm... quite ready for another adventure!"

Bilbo

I reckon those paintjobs would look absolutely fine or even great on 1:1 scale miniatures. Don't forget that the images on your PC are scaled up by about 1500%.

2x Swan Knight boxes
2x Morgul Knight boxes
2x Uruk Guy
2x Uruk Scout command
1-2x Faramir
1x Nazgul
2x Ruins
2x Archer Command
1x Archer Guy

Why? And why multiples of each?
Future-proofing. I'd guess all of the metals here will be on GW Splash release, and only available for 1-3 months, then only from GW direct afterwards, which makes them a right pain to get hold of (from the UK) or inoordinately priced (from GWAU) here in Australia where the figures at retail cost double the exchange rate.

The other reason is that the Uruks and Archers seem a little more generic than many of the other "named" figures. I might pick up a second Helmingas Command at some stage to simply be a Rohirrim foot banner and musician.

And probably a second Faramir for my wife to paint, mine will probably be standing in for Imrahil.

edit - added after reading the full thread:



What? The ridiculous cartoonish-looking "Conan" Bloodletters? The new plastics are miles ahead of them. They went back to the original designs to base the new plastics off. Realm of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness circa 1988.

A lot of the old-style piling on GW bashing going on in this thread as well. I'm all for criticism, but a lot of the posts here just make me laugh as they're the same comments almost word for word that I used to hear from some people more than 10 years ago about new releases and such for 40k and WFB etc.

I look forward to seeing pictures of some of theOneRider's latest sculpts as well. I checked out your gallery, and while you have some nice models, I don't think you're at the same level as these releases at this point.

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scipio.au AKA Azazelx.

http://azazelx.wordpress.com/
My miniatures painting blog.

I think Suladan is actually in the books but he isn't named.

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"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russel

The new Faramir is to be used in one of the Battlehosts. I have a feeling there will be a Battlehost including the Swan Knights and a Morgul Knight Battlehost, which is why these minis are being released with Battlehosts.

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Better, though difficult, the right way to go, than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress

Suladan is in the book he is called the black serpent gw just gave him a name he was slain by Theoden

what about the new spray gun?

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The Uruk Hai Shall Live ON...

As I said, I had a look yesterday at the Battlehost book. There is a battlehost that is entirely Dol Amroth; not sure about Morgul Knights.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

That was an April Fools Joke.

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No one feels as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

I havent read through the whole post but i got hold of a copy of it yesterday and from what me and my friends worked out there arent that many battlehosts that are too brilliant pointswise.

Some of the special battlehost rules do seem quite nice for the points cost but some are ridiculously overpriced, same for the new fortunes and fates which are available only when you buy a battlehost from that faction. I looked mainly at the dwarves and elves ones, and a couple of them looked pretty awesome, many looked simply useless or overpriced.

The other problem is that there is no WoTR FAQ in it like some people thought there would be.

Also, my gw is giving out a free sprue of swan knights or morgul knights when you buy the book. No idea if it will be all gw's but free sprue is never bad.

That is not Suladan. That is an unamed Haradrim Chieftain, who is implied to be either their leader or a high ranking officer. GW used that character for inspiration, and also combined him with the historical figure Saladin, thusly making Suladan. They then wrote quite a bit of fluff about him in both The Battle of Pelennor Fields book and the Harad book.

Free spures with the book? That sounds very generous of them. Has anyone seen the new spures in person? And, would anyone who has possibly be so kind as to give us a bit of a rundown on them?

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" I think I'm... quite ready for another adventure!"

Bilbo

I've seen the Dol Amroth sprue. Do you have any specific questions about it?

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings