"Wargaming Tolkien" Topic

When it comes to wargaming Tolkien what is your favorite period?

1st Age: The battles against Morgoth, The Dwarven sack of Menegroth, or perhaps the Kinslaying at Alqualonde.

2nd Age: Voyages of exploration and expansion by Numenor or the Dark Years of Saurons almost total dominion of Middle Earth.

3rd Age: Founding of the Kingdoms of the Dunedain, War of the Last Alliance, The conflict with the Witch King, The fragmentation of the Northern realm, The wars of Gondor or Rohan, or The Dwarf Goblin War.

4th Age: The Wars of Expansion and reunification under Aragorn.

There's a lot to game here it's hard to chose but my own preference is 1st Age followed by 3rd age games foccussed on the fragmentation of the Northern Kingdom but its all good. How many groups are gaming these other Tolkienien subjects and what systems are you using?

The wars for Arnor/Arthedain and the War of the Ring.

3rd followed by 1st for me. But it is all good.

3rd age based on the 3 LOTR films and the Hobbit book.

The War of the Ring and the Battle of Five Armies. But it would be fun to expand into other ages. (Hmmm… must… buy… more… figs…)

You can't have a Tolkien battle withont massive deus ex machina resolutions.

Whenever Good wins, Bad always has to whine, "Aw, that's just not fair!"

First Age for me.

I'm with Mick…I like the stuff from the movies.

War of the Ring and Battle of Five Armies for me, as I've not read much Tolkien other than The Hobbit and LotR.

To me, the War of the Jewels (1A) and War of the Elves (SA) are most interesting, with the wars of Arthedain and Angmar pretty interesting periods in the Third Age. I like it all, but the War of the Ring is played out for me for now.

Almost forgot: the wars between the Dwarves and Orcs is also something I've toyed (heh) around with a bit. Lots of potential for battles above and below ground.

3rd Age for me

All good,
but 3rd followed by first if I had to choose.
Still searching for the perfect elves though.
Okay that would be Thunderbolt, but he needs to make more
or go 15mm.
Mike

Yeah, 3rd Age.

Thanks,

John

I am looking at the fourth age, see here; TMP link

But could happily do the 3rd age. The 1st and 2nd, would probably need an aponent who shared a similar interest in middleearth to prevent then just being "another game".

So far I am fleshing out my own.. 4th age chronology, starting 500years in, to ensure enough has changed to be new to the players but not too much as to loose relavense of geography etc..

There is a Yahoo Group from a guy in Houston who is doing a 4th Age cycle for Middle-earth. I can't recall what it is called though.

There is a scene from Smith of Wooten Major (probably my favorite Tolkien story), where elves return on a boat from wars over the sea on the edge of Faerie. No description of the actual wars, just a description of the singing warriors returning.

This, fleshed out by hints of purging dark things from the wild places in Beleriand in the 1st Age, are my favorite inspirations. I'd prefer gaming battles inspired by these stories than refights of battles from books or movies.

andy

I'm still trying to figure out where Tom Meier's Elves fit into the Tolkien Legendarium.

There are far too few of them to be First Age.

And they don't seem to be Third Age either (although they could be, I suppose).

I'm planning to use them for Second Age, but I'd still need to come up with Númenóreans (and the Thunderbolt Mountain Byzantines aren't really enough to fill that gap).

Tolien elves, from what I can gather, have several periods of "spread".. some going east, some west, some dissappearing. I will see what my merp books tell me.

MERP???

OH! Middle-Eearth Role Playing.

I've only seen a few of their things, but I don't much care for them.

They paid almost no attention to the philology of the languages Tolkien created (although, admittedly, doing so would have been cost prohibitive).

I have been talking to the Tolkien Professor about a lot of this stuff.

He has agreed to help us with our Digital Humanities project to do the various cities of Middle-Earth as 3D renderings (based upon Roman, Byzantine, and then Dark/Middle-Ages architecture).

If we can find a suitable artist (who can do figures) we plan to do some 3D people as well (Humans, both civilian and military, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc.) in the styles of the various periods.

We figure that the Early 1st Age Elves probably had the most advanced and developed armor, and that it declined slightly due to the inability to replicate what they had made in Valinor.

Parallel to that would be Númenóre, with the most advanced armor and weapons coming from Númenóre in the Second Age, and then declining as time went by after the Fall.

Regular Clothing is something of a heat topic, especially for elves. Seeing as the High Elves (Noldor) came from Valinor and the standards of living there were remarkably high, and the technologies for weaving cloth were equally advanced. They very well could have had ballistic cloth woven from spider's webs.

But we figure a lot of very high quality Cotton/Linen and Wool for most Humans, and Silk from Valinor (or varieties of cloth/synthetics that would be equivalent).

If silmarils can be equated with small fission-reactors, then I would like to game the first-age battles… I am sure this is how they worked.

1st Age all the way. Tolkien's descriptions of Dagor Bragollach and Nírnaeth Arnoediad have been stuck in my head for 30 years….Especially the latter – 100,000 orcs, trolls, balrogs and dragons facing off against almost as many elves and men.

I would love to game it if I had the resources or better yet see it filmed / CGIed

I've always wondered about the 1st Age "Battles."

In the 600+ years of the First Age, Tolkien describes roughly 6 to 10 "Battles" (I can't recall all of them, but the Battle under the Stars, Then the couple of Battles that fenced in Angband, then the Dabor Dragollach and the Nírneath Arnoediad, The Sack(s) of Nargothrond and Gondolin, and a few skirmishes that he calls "Battles" with the various characters).

This is really odd considering the number of battles that existed in the ancient and medieval periods. It seems like every three to four years there was a sizable battle in Europe from 300AD – 1400AD, especially just considering Byzantium.

I wonder how many "Battles" there were in Beleriand, in the 1st Age that didn't get described because they didn't deal with a "named" character, and then only had a few thousand troops per side?

Now that I think about it, the same thing can be said of the Second and Third Ages.

The War of Sauron and the Elves is something that presents itself as a series of many Battles over a period of many years, but there is little detail described in them.

As would the battles after the Númenóreans arrived. Tolkien makes it sound as if this was a period of sustained warfare and conquest.

And, it also represents the period where the Nine would have gained their rings and been put in charge of both leading armies of Númenóreans (King's Men) in conquest of the Wild & Dark Men of Middle Earth, or in leading the Dark Men of Middle Earth against the Númenóreans (as we know that Khamúl was an Easterling and that the Witch King was probably a Black Númenórean. And there were probably at least one Northman, at least another Númenórean, and Southrons/Haradrim and Easterlings who gained rings as well). It is not likely that Sauron just had these men sitting on their asses with those Rings, and they have roughly 1750 years until the Third Age.

And then, going on to the Third Age… He mentions periods of Warfare, but these don't seem to follow the typical patterns of any European Wars of the equivalent lengths.

So it is likely that Tolkien just described key battles in these wars, and neglected to mention the many non-decisive battles of the wars that in all likelihood did take place.

For instance, the Wars against the Wainriders after their first attack in 1851 TA, Gondor and the Northmen are at war against the Wainriders for almost 100 years until the Battle of the Camp in 1944 TA, where Eärnil slaughters the combined armies of Khand, Harad and the Wainriders.

Surely that 93 years wasn't wholly devoid of attempts by either Gondor, the Northmen (who did stage an uprising against their conquerors during this time), or the Wainriders to continue to war war against their enemy.

YOu are correct. Tolkien sketches broad swathes of history in a fashion similar to ancient chronicles or legends and then focuses in on key characters/events.

And the '6 Battles' in the Silmarillion are more like campaigns (since the Elves and Morgoth were always at War, the times of non-combat in between Battles were more of a Cold wAr or 1940 Phoney War). Then again the "Battle for Normandy" in 1944 lasted a good 6 weeks, didn't it?

3rd age WOTR/4th age.

War of the Ring for now, since I don't have my dwarves painted yet. Later I will do Battle of five armies and Dwarf/Goblin wars.
Another great story is the slaying of Elwe King of Doriath by Dwarves who steal the Nauglamir which contains a Silmaril. This sparks a war between elves and dwarves and even the Ents got involved (page 235 of the Silmarilion Hardback first addition)

1st Age all the way. Tolkien's descriptions of Dagor Bragollach and Nírnaeth Arnoediad have been stuck in my head for 30 years….Especially the latter – 100,000 orcs, trolls, balrogs and dragons facing off against almost as many elves and men.
I would love to game it if I had the resources or better yet see it filmed / CGIed

Completely agree. I think we should kidnap Peter Jackson after he finishes the Hobbit and force him to make 3 films based on the Elven wars with Morgoth. We definitely need a trilogy of trilogies. Three films covering the Silmarillion, 3 for the Hobbit & 3 for LOTRs. Yes please.

My vote is for later 3rd Age, post-The Hobbit up to and including the War of The Ring, since those are the characters that drew me into Middle-Earth, but I'm mostly interested in small skirmishes.

1st Age gaming is appealing to me, but I don't have any armies for it at the moment. I would think that the same 3rd Age orcs I have would suffice, and a lot of "high elves" would probably be OK too, although I'd like a different look for my dwarves and men (other than the fairly generic stuff like rangers, bandits, etc.).

Have only ever done 3rd, but the 1st is appealing.

I had always had a yearning to do the War of the Dwarves and Goblins, where "many dark deeds were done by both sides."

Been doing all of it from 1st to 3rd age for 35 years since the unlicenced days of MiniFigs 'not-Middle Earth' range link

My favourite period for skirmishes would probably be the 'Mormegil' guise of Turin Turumbar in the 1st age.

John T

The Rangers are one of my favorite groups from the lore, so I would enjoy gaming the wars against the Witch-king in the North, skirmishes in the wilderness to protect the folk in Bree and The Shire, etc. I've also been interested in gaming the battle for Dol Guldur, even more so now that it looks like we'll be seeing it on the big screen next year. As my tense indicates though, I haven't actually found any opponents for LotR gaming yet…it's more of a sci-fi crowd in my area.

Good points Dunadan. Faramir's Ithilien Rangers would be great fun too: ambushes in the woods against Orcs and columns of Haradrim. There's just so much good stuff in Tolkien to game.

And so little time!

John T

First Age, especially recreating the skirmishes in the North – Turin and the Outlaws against Orcs, or bands of Noldor protecting the Marches against Trolls and wargriders.

But Second Age, with the Guild of the Mariners and Elves fighting off evil Men and things, would also be a nice peiod, allowing a greater difference in armies.