So I finally convinced the club to give LoTR SBG a try.
4 of us played out the "Long Night" Scenario from the RoTK rulebook, which was also the rulebook we used. We don't have enough LoTR figs for the game, but the club only fields painted minis so it was really no surprise that in the deep collection of one our members we found a bunch of Celts to stand in for Men of Rohan and a horde of Celtos orcs that had already been painted in a LoTR white-hand paint scheme. For our first run at the rules we played just Men of Rohan and Uruk Hai with no heroes.

Reaction to the game was mixed, but I quite enjoyed it. I hope to play again soon with heroes and perhaps slightly fewer miniatures per side.

The full battle report is here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/201 ... -game.html
A few pics from the report to whet your appetite.

Sounds like fun. If your club is mostly composed of people who are already familiar with the basic principles behind wargaming, then Heroes should be included as soon as possible, including banners, cavalry, monsters etc. These add a lot of depth and strategy to the game, and create a lot of its appeal. If you use the Hobbit SBG, playing with warbands gives just the perfect balance of heroes to warriors. Playing with warriors by themselves can be a little boring and lacks variation. Also, if some of the guys in your club are familiar with the books and films, re-enacting their favourite scenes or specific battles is loads of fun. Glad you enjoyed it!

_________________
The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

Thanks,
We are indeed experienced wargamers, our average involvement in the hobby is probably 1-2 decades. I think we'll definitely add heroes and monsters next time. I wanted to keep it simple since our first game was 4 players, but I clearly underestimated both my players and the ease of play of the rules.

We probably won't be playing the Hobbit SBG due to a combination of the cost ($5 for ROTK vs $80 for Hobbit) and many players disdain for the Hobbit films. However, I'm very interested in trying Battle Companies at some point. As for recreating the films/literature it's kind of a mixed bag among the club members. Some find that appealing and some would rather use the rules generically with whatever minis we choose as we already do with rulesets like Kings of War and Song of Blades and Heroes.

Either way, I like the rules and think this could really meet my desire for platoon level fantasy ruleset. I'm already looking at some of the underground scenarios and just itching to get out my cliffs/rocks scenery. And then there's the task of painting all the LoTR figures I've been hoarding.

The SBG is a great system. To experienced players, it can infact seem a little too simple, but it is really very tactically challenging and deep once you add all the adavnced rules. (The game by itself is like dry bread, the advanced rules are the spice.) Its beauty lies in its simplicity and adaptability. We would personally recommend upgrading to the Hobbit SBG if you really like the rules, as it further deepens them and adds even greater tactical challenges to the old Lotr SBG. (Monsters are more powerful and complex, the use of weapons more realistic, the number of Heroic Actions doubled, etc.) You do not have to buy the big 80$ Hobbit rulebook though. You can purchase the small softcover rulebooket either in the Escape from Goblin Town Boxed Set or else from Ebay. It has all the updated rules in it for a fraction of the price! For years though, we just stuck with the Lotr rules.

Never tried Battle Companies ourselves, but we're certainly planning to!

Good luck with your painting! We still got whole grey and silver armies that need priming....

_________________
The Sons of Elrond

We have the Appearance of Men, the Souls of Elves, and Behave like Dwarves.

Great report! Makes me wish I still lived in the Chicago area as I become more and more interested in skirmish level games as I get older and have less and less free time for huge, all day events.

_________________
--
Mike

“The Ring has awoken, it’s heard its masters call.”
– Gandalf

Thanks. The club does mostly do skrimish gaming and even our big games are fast-playing, like KoW. We're all 30+ year old adults with lives. We only meet one evening every other week so we usually stick with fast playing games without too many miniatures. We do only use painted minis though. Life's to short for games that don't look great!


I had the Hobbit softcover for a while, but I didn't find enough in it to make me want to try and sell the idea to the club so I sold it to fund the purchase of more figures. With ROTK being as cheap as it is, I was able to give each member their own copy of the rules to keep!

Painting minis is kind of my bane right now. I've got several major'ish terrain projects that need to be finished up and then I've got to decide whether I'm going to paint up a new warband for the annual summer Song of Blades Campaign….

All the while the lead (and plastic) mountain grows.