LOTR. What rules have you used?

[Ivan Sorensen]

For gaming in Middle Earth,what rules have you used OTHER than the GW ones?
Skirmish or big battle?
The known heroes or your own gits?

(I should clarify, I adore the GW LOTR game, just curious what other people have done too)

[Mike Headden]

I’ve used Warmaster to do big battle stuff from LotR.

I’m slowly (very, very slowly!) creating a Haradrim Army based on the Lizardman Warmaster Army List. Mumakil instead of Stegadons, one of the Ring-Wraiths rather than a Slann Mage-Priest, armoured knightly types as Raptor Riders, Ogre/ Troll types instead of Kroxigors and so on.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Alex Bates]

I’ve only used the GW rules, but I haven’t done much LoTR gaming other than a brief flirtation with MERP in High School.

Eye of the Cyclops pre-orders now available, for a short time only:

https://eyeofthecyclops.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

[Piyan Glupak]

I have used Hordes of the Things, and to a lesser extent, DBA for massed battles.  I don’t know why, but on the whole I liked the feel of HotT better, although I tended not to use too many fantasy specific troop types.  For instance, if Gandalf didn’t do any major magic against the enemy army he didn’t count as a magician.  On the other hand, I have used the WADBAG house-rule ‘Brutes’ (permanently double-based warband for 3 points) for Ents.

For skirmishes I have used my own skirmish set ‘Wilderland’.  (I believe that ‘Wilderland’ used to be on the free wargames rules site; it was certainly on my website when I had it.)

[Rhoderic]

Piyan Glupak wrote:

For skirmishes I have used my own skirmish set ‘Wilderland’. (I believe that ‘Wilderland’ used to be on the free wargames rules site; it was certainly on my website when I had it.)

I haven’t heard of it before, but I just have to say, “Wilderland” is an excellent name for a Tolkien legendarium skirmish game 

[Blackhat]

I’ve had some good games using Kings of War and the lists that are free on the web…

 

Mike

[Ivan Sorensen]

Piyan – I always liked HOTT better than DBx, felt a bit less “stuffy” maybe?

[Paul]

Ah, MERP. Many an hour was spent in high school consulting critical tables. MERP gets a bad rap about being complicated, but that is a really undeserved reputation. Always wanted to GM a raid on the tower of Cirith Ungol. ICE really did some fantastic supplements (Cirith Ungol and Angmar: Land of the Witch King were my favourites).

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Ivan Sorensen]

Yeah, MERP was awesome.
From what I’ve read, it was the second best-selling game of its time (after D&D) but the way kids go on nowadays, you’d think it was literally written in Elvish.

[MartinR]

Back in the day,  the old Skytrex  Middle Earth rules (with the original Minifigs  figures)  and more recently ,  HoTT .  All the Armies were “historical” .

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Maff Sparkes]

SELWG rules for me too and the minifigs. More rccently I’m thinkng Dragon Rampant.

I never really tried HOTT though. And yes Wilderlands is a great LOTR title

[craig cartmell]

I have been using my own Blood Eagle rules which seem to suit the skirmish nature of many LotR encounters very well.

For figures I am using the GW ones as I have a shed load of them (I bought them bed=fore I read the rules).

I am looking to build a Chamber of Mazarbul set to use as a participation game at shows.

[Maff Sparkes]

Goes to show that a good range of rules work for LOTR. I think the key point is to get the ability of say aragorn and faramir to fight on when hope is gone and hold their force together in the face of darkness but for Boromir (and possibly Eomer) to simply go down fighting.

The GW rules did that quite well I thought because tough as Aragorn was, he couldn’t be everywhere and while Boromir had a huge supply of might, sooner or later he’d run out of it……

[Christopher Lundgren]

I have played GW LOTR for years. But often overlooked is the Hero Clix sets. In fact, the Hobbit sets even have campaign rules.http://heroclix.com/category/heroclix/lord-of-the-rings/

A great store that sells all of it online very honest is Majestix games http://www.majestixccg.com/

 

I love the Hobbit sets from the movies for HeroClix https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/155588/heroclix-hobbit-unexpected-journey

There is no such thing as a Dead Game as long as there is two playing it.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Maybe this is going to sound dumb, but I:

A: Never knew there was a Clix Hobbit game
and
B: Have never played a Clix game.

What’s it play like?

[irishserb]

Actually, I’m kind of curious what rules I played myself.  The only LOTR games I’ve played, were a couple of role-playing games in the mid 1980s.  The games used a published set of RP rules (targeting LOTR, though may not have been meant exclusively for that), and though I was aware of them, I never saw them in our local stores.  The games I played used miniatures and involved a lot of skirmishing.  Anyone know what they might have been circa 1984-1986?

[Ivan Sorensen]

If it was officially licensed, there was only MERP (Middle Earth Role Play) from ICE at that time.

The next licensed game was the Decipher one and that’s post-films.

However, that wasn’t really mini’s oriented, so could have been something else?

[Baz Baziah]

I have used ICE’s War Lore to play middle earth battles

http://www.nobleknight.com/productdetailsearch.asp_Q_ProductID_E_13499_A_InventoryID_E_0

But have mainly used DBM rules with army lists from here

http://lukeuedasarson.com/MiddleEarthintro.html

I’m now looking to use Impetus rules for the same.

Jim

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