"GW LOTR Lord of Rings Game - Journey Books - any good?" Topic

Does anybody have the GW LOTR Journey books?

Are they worth buying?

Specifically, are the contents of the Return of the King Book the same as the 2004 version of the rulebook?

Mick

I like them.

I need to confess to being a LotR fanatic, however, and so long as GW continues to put New Line Cinema's logo on books, I'm all over them.

The Journey books gave us new Tolkien book based scenarios, even a few that stretched credibility (like the Rangers trying to fend off the Black Riders). Now, the original GW Fellowship scenarios often seemed unbalanced, and unplayable. The Journey book offered much better, fun, and contention-worthy battles to fight through. Of all the series of Journey books, I found this one to be the biggest improvement over the original material we bought.

The Two Towers scenarios had suffered through some bloat through GW's history (remember the rewrite of the Helm's Deep scenario, when they were proposing fielding 10,000 miniature fighting Uruk Hai), and the Journey book trimmed that way back to playable scenarios again. I have some angst against the Isengard Troll and Feral Uruk-Hai, but still some new scenarios were provided and some old ones polished up a bit. Many centered around new heroes (those found in the book, but not necessarily the movies) that hadn't been explored.

The RotK Journey book struck me as the least impressive of the three -- not that it didn't follow the same path of either new or now polished scenarios. It's just that by the time GW put out the original RotK book, I felt they were doing a much better job of offering us fun things to play. The Journey book adds to this, but can't find much that needed fixing from the original scenarios. Certainly there are new scenarios featuring the figures that were coming out new at the time -- now you'll see Gondor's Cavalry sporting shields, so go out there and buy them (again, for some of us).

I'm glad I own all six books.

Thank-you thosmoss – I will buy one and have a look.

I enjoy these books, they are quiet common at shows in the 2nd hand stalls, i got three for £3.00 GBP each at Triples.
I like the modelling sections, they are inspiring in the most part.

Gondor's Cavalry sporting new shields?

I am helping my Roommate make new shields for his Gondor cavalry (and to put barding on some of the horses, so that there will be a difference between the "Knights" of Gondor (He's done some head swaps with the Guardians of the white Tree) and the regular Cavalry (Caras Rochiryn… I think he said that was Sindarin, or Noldorin. I don't know enough to tell the difference, but looking at Caras, I am guessing that it is Sindarin, from Caras Galadhon, where "Caras" means "city." So "Caras Rochiryn" would be "City Knights" or "City Cavalry").

Anyway, the point is that he is trying to differentiate the "Knights" or Chivalry, from the regular "Commoner" Cavalry. He has a bunch of shields cut out of styrene in the shape of the Shields that are used on the Swan Knights, and he is making little embossed devices for the shields, so that each base (he bases them for FoG) will have it's own device and insignia:

• Knights of the white Tree
• Knights of the Steward (which have Denethor's Tree and Two Sea-Birds in the shape of the crown)
• Knights of the Ramas Echor
• Knights of the Tower of Ecthelion
• Knights of the Great Gate
• Knights of the 'nth' Gate

And so on…

Although… I can't see Gondor as ever having that many knights, save for maybe back in the days of Cirion, or one of the earlier Stewards.

So… What's this about GW doing new shields for the Gondor Cavalry?

Sorry to be nit-picky, but it is TMP after all.

The Rangers did indeed attempt to fend off the Nazgul, at Sarn Ford. Aragorn wasn't present. It ended badly, as you might expect…

Mick

I really like them. I have almost all the sourcebooks now as you can often find them dead cheap on eBay and I just really enjoy browsing them quite frankly!

I'm currently playing through the journey books as a campaign, painting figures and making terrain as I go. I'm just making the Brandywine River and Buckleberry Ferry. Great stuff.

Chris

> What's this about GW doing new shields for the Gondor Cavalry?

The original metal cavalry had no shields (like in the movie). When they were re-imagined in plastic, they now sport shields.

> The Rangers did indeed attempt to fend off the Nazgul, at Sarn Ford.

Yeah yeah. Weren't in the movies, weren't in the books (at least the main narrative part). Probably got mentioned in the appendixes, and everything including the Easter Bunny got mentioned eventually in the "Lost Laundry Lists of JRRT". When GW starts plumbing the archives to get us to buy more miniatures, I try to not get too excited. I do anyway, but that's my own cross to bear.

It is a shame they lef the Gray Company out. The Rangers were with Aragorn pretty much from the Rohan muster forward (paths of the dead, corsairs, black ships, etc.). Too bad that the films had ghosties instead of Dunedain as the deus ex machina.

Lost Pict

Thanks everybody.

I got two of the Journeybooks – The Fellowship and The Two Towers on Ebay for £15.00 GBP including postage to Switzerland.
Mick

I received the Journeybooks – The Fellowship and The Two Towers. I have to say that they look very good.

There are several scenarios that look like they are practical and fun. Some of them can be customised as book versions or film versions.

The painting guides are very good although, I have already painted several hundred LOTR figures so this is no longer relevant to me.

There are some excellent scenery building guides. They are quite simple but effective looking. They appears to be very well thought out so that they can be combined in different ways for other senarios.

Overall – impressed.

Mick