Here here Draugluin! It has turned bowmen essentially into Evil Bowmen. What they needed to do instead is improve the quality of Evil Bowmen, if you ask me.

I think the -1 penalty to shooting was a way to balance Dwarf Rangers with Throwing Axes, Cavalry kiting, and Elven kiting. It does slow down the ability to kite extensively.

But the new penalty makes evil bowmen a joke.

About the axe fix by Draugluin:

I like the idea and debated it myself for a while, but the problem is +1 strength is rarely useful. In general, it is only useful against models of defense 6 or a model with a strength 4…both of which occurs infrequently in the system. A -1 defense also, in general, does nothing. A -2 defense is rather steep for the benefit you gain for the +1 strength for many of the models in the game. Now, a +2 strength at a -2 defense is a better balanced rule as you are guaranteed to increase the wound roll by 1, but you are also guaranteed to have your ability to be wounded increased by 1. However, this makes axes far superior to two handed weapons, IMO, since a -1 to the die roll to win a fight is much steeper in terms of LOTR in play than a -2 defense and you get an axe for free whereas you would pay 1 point for a two handed weapon.

I also think the other weapons are just not nearly as good by comparison still.

We are doing some playtesting of other ways to make the Wargear work. I am not entirely sure which way we are going yet to really say much about it now.

Happy Gaming,

Commoner

I'm really glad I never invested in archers for my orcs, now.

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Talaan-u rûk-ir tor Urûk
Nauru-ir agh kragoru nûrsu grishûrz
Nork-ulu furtun agh goð
Mordor-ob bot-tuk

SBG has always been about acts of violent combat. Towards the end of the previous edition it had become a volley fire, normal bow fire, throwing weapons vs ... all hero?

It was nearly impossible to field an army without bows and be successful (bar all hero)

In the edition, people have to rely more on fighting to win. I've seen more hard fought battles than in the old ed where I would see battles won or lost by how lucky your bows were.

It would have been nice to have some excemptions such as heroes don't suffer the penalty but hey.

I think the new system is a vast improvement.
I just shout "faint" or "axing" each combat and then make sure I throw my wounding dice separately. Doesn't really slow hte game down (and with ToS we have 2.5 hours PER GAME)

Whenever I use my goblins I state that they will all be feinting as they have a lower fight value before the start of the game. Then I just have to remember to split the dice

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12th GBHL 2013.
13th GBHL 2014
9th GBHL 2015


Mid Sussex Wargamers

Thats a good idea, I generally say before the game that all my Goblins are going to be using the weapon special rules unless I say otherwise. In my experience, a d3 for every 2-3 fights doesn't slow down the game.

Haven't played with the new rules but I agree on the point that GW doesn't playtest their minis to see if they are balanced or overpowered or even playtest in order to find gaps in the rules and correct them.(Hence all these FAQ's and errata's for ALL their books)

This in my opinion is sad because they give me the feeling that they lack of professionalism in what they do and they should't because they are the biggest company around.

Just to throw my 2 cents in, but even as a dude with two shooty armies, I really don't mind the -1 to shooting when moving (apart from the penalty to throwing weapons maybe) I only have a couple of games experience either side of the rules but can imagine that previously bows may have been overpowered for what is effectively a skirmish based game, rather than them now being underpowered...

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*5th in 2014 GBHL

I know you were talking in reference to a houserule, but two handed weapons also have strikes. Two handed axes and swords are actually quite amazing for many armies! Though I'm not sold on two handed bashing or anything else.

I enjoy playing with the new rules at the moment, however I also have some similar issues with it. As others may have said here, I also think it's now pointless to equip any troop that's not an elf with a bow, because they can't hit if they want to keep up. When I play games now with my bro, I ignore the rule of rubbish archery when moving because it makes shooting completely pointless for Evil forces.

Monsters are incredibly over-powered with their new combat rules. I don't really use monsters in my armies, but when playing the introductory scenarios in the EfGT box, the Goblin King was way too tough. In 2 turns, he took out both Thorin and Balin by simply Hurling them off the platforms, and then charged Dwalin and destroyed him up close within another couple of turns.

The weapon special rules slow down gameplay considerably in larger battles, however they work better in small narrative-based circumstances. When I have played battles with my brother, we both end up not using the weapon special rules after a few turns because it delays gameplay too much. Most people will try to equip every model with an axe because they are simply the best of the weapons. Swords are good for a Good Hero battling Goblins or Orcs, but aside from that they are somewhat ineffective/risky. It can make the previously-indestructible Dwarf armies more vulnerable if their Defence is lowered by two or three due to a failed weapon strike. I'd only use them if you're playing Fellowship/Thorin's Company campaigns, Battle Companies, or small (2-3 warband) battles. For larger-scale battles, we have an agreement to just not bother because it gets too confusing in larger battles if half the troops are using different special rules to the others.

Overall, the new rules make it better to be played in skirmish-type battles, but make bigger games like Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith or the Battle of Five Armies much less practical to play using these rules.

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See my WIP thread here. viewtopic.php?f=50&t=25624

They do, they just have a very different understanding of what playtesting is and what its results shoud be than everyone else does. My theory is if their playtest games throw up a bunch of "cinematic" events (this is the watchword at the core of almost all current GW game design) they hoot and holler about how much fun it was and slam a stamp of approval on everything involved and consider their playtesting done and dusted.

Things like "balance" and "practicality" and "effect on the metagame" and "what the hell is wrong with you why would you do that" used to be left to external playtesters to sort out, and as a condition of the Hobbit licence (to preserve secrecy) GW axed external playtesting. They don't do it for WHFB or WH40k either, now, which means WH40k playtesting now mostly consists of matt ward running around with a flyer model in each hand making zooming noises while phil kelly keeps a tally of how many times everyone has to arbitrarily stop and roll a bunch of dice for random Cinematic happenings and uses it as a metric of how much fun is being had.

On topic: special strikes are a really nice idea with really horrible implementation. Different rules for different weapons are great when you only have a few of the weapons they apply to (see power weapons in WH40k) and more importantly when you get a goddamn choice of weapon on your miniatures (see WH40k power weapons also)

Different rules for different weapons in a game where miniatures come in identically armed sets is a horrible idea, and it's compounded by the dubious fluff that results from some weapon choices being absurdly better for some troops and creatures than others. Feinting with a sword is something you'd expect a skilled swordsman to do, a finesse move characterised by skilled footwork and precise timing. In fact, it's almost the sole domain of goblins and other things with lousy fight values to whom the penalty makes no difference and the potential benefit is so good that there's absolutely no reason not to do it constantly.

A hallmark of poor game design decisions is the presence of something so good, so without drawbacks, so obviously superior a choice than its contempories, that there are no circumstances under which a player would opt not to use/take/include it, no sensible reason they'd opt for something else in its stead. Feint seems to be a great example as far as low-fight troops go. Hurl is definitely another.

But hey, it's Cinematic. And you roll more dice.

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Talaan-u rûk-ir tor Urûk
Nauru-ir agh kragoru nûrsu grishûrz
Nork-ulu furtun agh goð
Mordor-ob bot-tuk

Luckily the weapons rules (the only ones I'm not much of a fan of) are optional.

The main issue I have is the warband system... I hate it, it's just too 40K. Why would an orc horde line up in nice groups of 12...?

I know it's not the Hobbit rules as it came out before the new release, but that's what I don't like!

Sorry!

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Leonardis
Army blog:Http://www.thewarofthering.blogspot.co.uk/

The problem is the basic game favours quantity over quality, so you have to have some artificial boundaries to mitigate that. Otherwise, in 500 points you could take a goblin captain and 92 goblins, and you'd probably own every board, if you could handle the severe tedium.

LoME rules were okay, but still suffered from the "need for numbers", so Legolas and 40+ wood elves, or Shadowlord + Harad at 500 points ruled the day. Still tedious...not to mention that the high points of strategic uses of Might were limited.

So how would you fix the inherent bias the game has towards quantity?

I see alot of people chatting about a system whereby heroes can lead upwards from 12 troops depending on their status, i.e a model like Aragorn can lead a warband of 24, while a dwarf king/Durburz can lead 18, and standard captains/lesser heroes lead warbaneds of only 12. I feel this would largely fix the issue.

Buy more models :¬D
LOL - Just kidding, I have found the new rules tend to push towards shield wall vs shield wall (both backed up by spears).

I like the new monster rules, just don't like the restriction of 12 in a warband! Although I do like the idea of different class of hero leading different number of troops... interesting.

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Leonardis
Army blog:Http://www.thewarofthering.blogspot.co.uk/

I found that the game has always pushed towards that and it was worse in the past. Until 'Hurl' was introduced the only thing that stopped all games boiling down to 'who has the best shield wall' were those scenarios that required you to spread your army out a bit. Previously while Good had 'Sorcerous Blast' and 'Natures Wrath', Evil had no practical way of disrupting a spear block.

The increased value of heroes thanks to new heroic actions has also increased the 'skirmish' feel of the game, which is great. Having great games with less models is better for your wallet. There's always WoTR if you want to go big.

The idea of heroes leading different sized warbands is interesting, but unnecessary. The game works fine with a fixed warband size. Higher level commanders would not personally lead more troops either, that would be delegated to Captains. Theoden has Hama to lead his Royal Guard, for example. Warbands is a good idea because of that delegation of command.

Quantity vs Quality is much better than it was. There are specific issues that need a bit of attention, such as Theoden and a few other heroes being a bit underwhelming (and the crappy implementation of Special Attacks), but people are now taking Trolls in their armies again, channelled spells make wizards more valuble and having lots of might (or free might) got better with the addition of new heroic actions.

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Titans Wargames Club

http://s10.zetaboards.com/The_Titans/index/

That's the tedium...



I can't be sure of course, but we don't experience that much and I think it's because we really litter the board with terrain. The rules say 33-50% of the board, and we're probably barely at the low end of that. It really breaks up formations. Yes you can get small shield walls here and there, but tactics are still fluid.



I don't think I'd go with "class of hero", but I think there is some room for special rules there. Durburz seems like a good candidate, as do the Twins. You could make a case for Theoden, the Witch King, Aragorn, and maybe Gothmog...and maybe the opposite case (fewer warriors) for the other ringwraiths (except Khamul). But this introduces major balancing issues.

I don't care for the -1 while moving. Some one at GW does not think it is fun to shoot That is why space marines can charge up hill against fixed heavy weapon post and get into combat at all.
Joking aside. This discussion comes down to style of play. The card counters and number crunchers can always find ways to power game.
The mechanic's of this game are sound. Balance depends on the scenario and terrain as much as the army list. Fun is an attitude.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

the game is more fun to the detail but the details also and still favours quantity over quality..
This systems what do to them?

- limit the numbers they take per group formations, 12 goblins vs 12 elves or 12 uruks or watever dont seems balanced being what a goblin is..

2 good this came out of this:
- unnoticed larger amount of goblin captains and shamans you had to place on your list, before with 3 or 4 you could have enough to get a big army going leaving you room for even more goblins, now I see there is more likely to see 4+ goblin captains or shamans running around and each being cheap and contributing might for the army, in the end this poor quality type army get least 1/3 might store than most armies which can be really annoying (limiting them in 1 side and empowering them on the other).
- weapon special rules (Raukov is right saying goblins benefit even more with this edition... ) their fight is soo soo low decreasing most of their weapons bad side (fight values or even defence) from 2 to 1 its a steal compared to the benefit they gain in case they win a fight :P


About the -1 for shooting when moving... I dunno but the current 33% bow limitation seemed that was made to counter the overpowering excess of bows on the army, this rule of the -1 only balance grey company and rohan which their large bow amounts actually can decrease their overpowering effectiveness, now smaller and more expensive armies like elves, which are the best race in middle earth with the bow users suffers heavily with this rules. and again evil side is kinda random, shooting at 5+ or 6+ in % its not as a big deal than hitting a target on 4+ rather than 3+.

but in general seems people need to be more awared of new rules.... and sometimes forgetting them being so unique each model fight style according to his weapon lol