"Lord of the Rings Rules?" Topic

I have Dragon Rampant, that is an obvious choice. Are there any lists for LOTR? Also, I was curious about the GW rules, what's current? What GW rules are good to use if not the most current set?

I have the GW rules on clearance, but I think they're quite good and use them myself:

link

Dragon Rampant is the ruleset that caused me to dig out all my painted LOTR GW models.
I haven't found any army lists so I select unit builds that fit how I feel I want to play a given force.

Small, hard hitting elite forces (Black Tower/Minas Morgul/White Hand Uruk Hai) heavy infantry with an upgrade or two. My favorite combo is my Easterling hvy infantry with a ring wraith in the middle as a wizardling upgrade. Looks good.

Glass tiger hordes: bellicose foot with fear (point cost reduction) for that extra horde element. Having the minus 1 on morale tests right at the start only causes me to be more aggressive with the nutters -cause causalities before taking them. I usually run them with the shiny armor upgrade as without it they die like the scum with the hand held battering ram at the main gate at Minas Tirith.

For a troll model, I usually use lesser warbeast unit type as the elite foot unit only has a movement of 6" and is slowed down by terrain. It is fun to play around using different unit designations for the same model in different games.

I'm a big fan of Dragon Rampant. It's relative straight forward and is simple enough to modify for how you want your games to run. In the beginning I played a bunch of 12pt games to get experience with all the different units and play around with various upgrades/downgrades. You can also run reduced model counts (use gaming aids for odd hits/kills).

I can go on and on, so look over what miniatures you have (or want to have in your cabinet) and play around.

I'll tell you that the GW rules are *good.*

There are things I like about them and things I don't. I feel the rules top out at about 50 miniatures a side because more than that it becomes awfully grinding.
you can find LOTS of MESBG reports on youtube to get an idea about game play. I do think the narrative scenarios are a LOT of fun.

the books ARE expensive but then it's GW. I have the main rule book, the army list book, and the Gondor at War book and that was enough for me.

I don't like special rules for units, especially derived from specific movie scenes. And I generally play Tolkien-inspired fantasy (using GW's LotR figures plus some miscellaneous) rather than Middle Earth re-enactment, so prefer some flexibility. I usually use One Page Rules Age of Fantasy with custom army lists (though many of their lists just work).

I would enjoy GW's Middle Earth rules if they had custom-build stuff, but of course they don't. Get rid of unit-specific rules, collect a lot of general rules to use in common, add a point system, I'd be excited to try that out.

I have Dragon Rampant, but haven't tried it yet.

andy

t's not that the rules derive from specific movie scenes, it is my belief that the scenes were inserted specifically to fit in with the rules ! They certainly weren't in the Tolkien version.

Consider "The Ringbearer" rules from 1975, if you can find them.