Well i have made this thread to see what House Rules other people use and so others can see them and it may help them in some situations. Or just for general sharing.

Anyway, here is my house rules that me and a few friends use.

1. In Points-Matches, Good never gets priority on the first turn, it is instead settled by rolling a dice, and any ties re-rolled.

2. Depending on how big the game is, we use the RoTK rules for courage (i.e retreats, not casualties), this is generally for small games, to represent the fact that in small armies of 20 warriors, individual ones would not generally leave the field by themselves, as they would be noted for it and as these warriors would be at a personal level with their commander, the consequences may be worse. Also it makes the game last a bit longer.

3. Something important which i can't remember , will post later i suppose.

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One house rule that my friend and I play is that no unpainted minis are allowed on the field of battle as it wrecks the aesthetics.

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Yes, that is a good idea, but i find my friends generally don't have time to get all the models they are going to use for a game painted at the moment because of exams, but perhaps when i have a bit more spare time. It certainly encourages people to paint or else their army will not be allowed.

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when they fare away over the fishes' bath,
until the brine-stallion they bring to land.
OERP

Eerh.. we don't have really house rules,
but the shop where I play in, has the rule that unpainted miniatures are not allowed.

In the first club where I used to play didn't have that rule.
Anyways, we had the same rules concerning courage etc. even in big games (which never ended somehow..)

There was a website.. I don't remember which website, but you could create your own captains etc. for lotr. Every race and "culture" was included, and say increasing your might would increase the points by 5.
But.. what I wanted to say, is that we had the rule that we where allowed to play with "home made" captains.

Let's see.. mounts never left the table unless they where killed, they did run towards the nearest board edge if they didn't make their courage test.
Thanks to that, there where a lot of options concerning mounting horses.

We did play a couple of siege games.. but thats not really a home made rule.

I miss my old club

Yes i always thought the newer rules for courage were a bit abrupt, but like you say, it is to stop games dragging on forever as you chase minatures around the board.


http://membres.multimania.fr/l01c/lotrcostcalc.html

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Sun is by sea-men always hoped for,
when they fare away over the fishes' bath,
until the brine-stallion they bring to land.
OERP

Our rule: the Spider Queen's broodlings can't be shot. They have to be stomped to death (in melee).

That makes sense to me.

In the last few games I've played, we rolled for priority on the first tur, because it was my Ghosts of Angmar army against his troll army. We also dropped the Terror rules, because every single model on the field was Terrifying, and the game would have lasted forever.
I wound up forgetting to use the Harbinger of Evil rule as a result, but I still won with the Fell Light of my Specters - Troll armies just don't work!

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I play with quite a few house rules. For instance:

1. Always use RotK courage rules.
2. Bows, Elf Bows, Dwarf Bows, and Crossbows cost an additional point. This is a balancing experiment, and is still in progress. The idea is to make orc bows a more attractive option, and to encourage melee armies.
3. No power gaming (very important!)

There are others, I will post them if I can remember them.

We sometimes use that if your fight value is tied you move on to strength and then if that's tied too you roll.

We only use a couple:

All warriors do not carry a hand weapon (however, all Heroes do), and unless stated in their profile may only carry one type of weapon (an example being riders of Rohan, who are stated to be carrying a hand weapon and bow). This is primarily to make orc bows more attractive - we use the old "bladed bows" rule from the original edition. This also makes the decision to add a two-handed weapon less of a no-brainer.

Will can be spent to add 1 to Courage and Fate rolls, just like Might.

We also occasionally alter some of GW's profiles by slapping on a few extra Fate, and charge 5 pts per Fate . We don't throw it around willy-nilly, though, just for characters that we feel GW didn't really do justice (for instance Gil-Galad, who seemingly gets only 1 Fate because he died at the hands of Sauron).

Other than that, we occasionally use a few house profiles which I posted in another thread, but that's about it.

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Well, that's my 2 cents.

Can't Will already be used to boost a Courage roll?

Yeah, sorry my post was a little misleading. I meant that we let it affect Fate in addition to Courage.

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Well, that's my 2 cents.

I posted something on this before http://www.one-ring.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16913

Essentially, we allow for adding to heroes' starting M/W/F, up to double their starting amount for 5pts per extra point of M/W/F.

If a hero starts wiith zero of Might, Will, or Fate (such as Theoden's will or Boromir of Gondor's fate) they cannot have more than a single point added.

Profiles with an asterik or 'Special' value in any column cannot have any points added (Necromancer/Sauron's fate for example).

This makes for some very interesting games and allows for more tactical options so all games play different that than those before.

srry for commenting on an old post, but what is rotk courage rules?? it sounds like something that me and my friends might like to pick up

Wow, so you could give Boromir 12 might for just 30 points!

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After a force is broken, models who fail the courage test retreat towards the nearest board edge, instead of being removed.

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http://napoleonicstrategybattlegame.yolasite.com/

Me and my friends also though about a special rule for cavalry when it has to fight pikes and spears. Since a model in charge would be probably transfixed facing infantry with such weapons, we decided that when a knight attacks pikemen or spearmen he loses the knock down bonus. This represents the fact the knight is approaching enemies more carefully.

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I used to play with that if horses pass their courage tests when the rider dies, it will stay there and can be mounted by another guy.

Also, for models that have retarded profiles like the Mahud, I have created house rules that my friends allow me to play with. I barely use them anymore though. The rules are take off 1 attack and minus 5 points.

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Me and my group play that, when in a Combat, the Fight values of all of the combatants from each side are added together and added to the winning dice roll. E.g. RoA 5 vs. 2 Orcs, RoA roll 4, Orcs roll 4 and 3. The RoA adds his Fight value to the dice, equalling 10, and the Orcs both add theirs to the roll of 4, equalling 10.

We've found that this is really good for Heroes and the like. So now, Gil-galad won't be taken down by a super lucky goblin. But he could be taken down by a whole bunch. Or even better, by archers.

Obviously, supporting spearmen don't add their Fight value to the dice.

Peace

Doopo

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Kill WOTR, yeah?

Interesting rule, doop. How does it affect game balance and point costs?