Thought it might be interesting just to find out if I'm a complete fluff addict, seeing as every list i make has to have some background to it, and if i win with a list this isn't realistic or themed, i don't get much satisfaction from it.

Anyone else like this?

_________________
Sun is by sea-men always hoped for,
when they fare away over the fishes' bath,
until the brine-stallion they bring to land.
OERP

I can't stand ridiculously cheesy list and prefer a fluffy list (weird phrase) but I like to allow some leeway.

_________________
"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

I'm with the third choice. I play Gondor and I really like using Thranduil. I have loads WoTR instead of Numenor's and I do use Isuldir instead of Faramir. Same goes with the Osgiliath Veterans who don't really fit with anything but Eorl the Young. So I'm trying a little but in the end I field what I like playing with.

_________________
http://drinkingwotr.blogspot.com/ - Links to my CrAzY House Rules, Games and 'poor man's' terrain.

I'm the only one so far who doesn't give a fluff then

_________________
A new power is rising

I think that all armies should have some sort of theme, I hate ridiculous armies such as allying impossible characters (isildur and aragorn for an example) although LOME has stomped alot of that out.

I very much prefer to fight with themed army lists. I don't mind playing around with "what-if" scenarios and the like, however, playing with un-themed forces just doesn't feel right to me. Part of the fun for me is in recreating and exploring the world of Middle-earth and I don't like things, even game mechanics, that take away from the realism of the exercise.

_________________
Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies

I have a bit of an issue with the choices you have given us.

I prefer fluffy armies and once I have the basics of playing the game down I will look to making up fluff and a backstory for my armies, but not in Middle Earth.

I pretty much view WotR as my default generic fantasy wargame and actually prefer to not be tied to Tolkien's cultures and backstory but to set my battles in a different world where I can have more creative control and can imagine my battles having the level of significance that I want.

I understand where you are coming from, some people like their armies themed, but not around a theme that is present, one which they either make up, or can assume would have happened.

_________________
Sun is by sea-men always hoped for,
when they fare away over the fishes' bath,
until the brine-stallion they bring to land.
OERP

Without sounding like too much of a prick (because I'm not trying to be, and I'd like to know the reason) why do you play WoTR rather than WFBG then? I've done both, and quickly decided I wasn't a huge fan of Warhammer. I love Tolkien's world and creatures, but do sometimes wish the Lord of the Rings games had the same following as GW's two mainstays.

To answer the original post, I love playing theme armies. Battle of Helm's Deep, Pelennor Fields, etc. I just don't understand people who play Lord of the Rings but don't LIKE The Lord of the Rings.

_________________
Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

Because the Warhammer games have HORRIBLE rules sets and require expensive army books. The LotR figures look better and are less expensive. I could use LotR figs with WFB but then I have to worry about coming up with adequate proxies for certain very distinctive WFB units. Also, WFB is slow and tedious (because of the crappy rules) and doesn't scale up to large armies as well while WotR will allow me to fight truly huge battles in an evening. (although economic concerns lately have been preventing me from collecting the truly huge army that I want).

When WotR came out I was flipping through the book and when I came across the picture of the Pelenor Fields battle on pages 284-285 and read that they really played such a game I said to myself "If these rules can actually handle a game like this, I want to play this game"

I am a huge Tolkien fan, but I don't want to feel constrained to follow his fluff. For example, the one area where WotR fails for me is that for 25 years now I have wanted to command an undead army. Not ghosts and spirits like the Angmar list, but a powerful necromancer commanding hordes of animated skeletons, and summoning forth even more during the battle. Animated skeletons and zombies don't fit middle earth particularly well, but that is what I want to play. when I get around to it I'll probably start by proxying skeletons as orcs in an Angmar list, but I eventually want to craft a new army list for the game that more accurately captures the feel of such an army, including a new, necromantic spell discipline for manipulating undead.

So the short answer is, I guess, WotR has awesome rules but the fluff of Middle Earth doesn't precisely match what I want to play and it is easier to fix that than WFB which has fluff that sort of matches what I want but horrible rules that would be almost impossible for me to fix on my own and that I would have a much harder time convincing others to play.

I used to like fluff alot and only really played the game using Durins Folk/Minas tirith army lists, simply because the heroes were not named and thus i could go about converting. I didn't specifically name any of the models, to me they were still dwarf captains and kings, i suppose i just felt cheap using the named heroes. However upon returning to the hobby a few months ago i realised i only posessed two named heroes amongst a 200 model collection: Gimli and Durburz. At first i thought "i can't be bothered to buy any more heroes, i've got enough tactical leeway without them. However i realized how bad the "generic" lists in LoMe are, all that i could field with my dwarf king was basic warriors and khazad guards, whereas if i were to use gimli i could make good use of my rangers and whatnot. I scanned through the book and realized i needed more good heroes. For evil i had durburz, a wraith and the spider queen, so i was kinda set. Since then i've been fillinh up my collection with the "essential" good heroes (legolas, saruman etc etc) and luckily they are all incredibly cheap on ebay due to the abundance of abandoned BGIME magazines that existed. Unfortunatley there are alot of non movie heroes whom i quite like that i cannot go around buying due to how expensive they are from GW (the only versions on ebay are the "pro painted" ones)

Ok, fair point there, ForgottenLore. The thing that has bugged me (and I was exposed to a LOT of it!) were people, especially young kids and teens, getting into LotR SBG because it was the cheapest. Because they didn't care for theme or fluff, they would bring out things like Legolas and Elf archers on top of a Mumak, or Gil-Galad riding a Dragon. While this pains the Tolkien purist in me a little, the most infuriating part was that they insisted on being allowed to play these things because "Elves can ride dragons in Warhammer!"

_________________
Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

Aack! Yeah, very first reaction to that is "So go play warhammer."

Now, if someone wanted to go to the effort of converting the WFB High Elves army list and characters to WotR stats because they like the WotR rules better. I would be OK with that, but just using the other game's setting to rationalize using a middle earth character inappropriately, no.

In fact, over on Warseer, there was once a (very) short lived attempt to adapt the WFB army lists to WotR rules. Creative differences killed it pretty quick though.

That does sound cool. This was more like him taking a unit from the Evil side, slapping a few extra Might and GG's special rules on it and giving it the Monstrous Mounts rule all for 400pts, iirc.

_________________
Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

I would rather have LotR played as a sort of "Historical Fiction"... and no annoying things like allying Orcs and Uruks so you can have the heavy armour on the outside and all the cheap weak stuff hidden back...

Just my opinion

_________________
Behind My Hedgerow

I saw this post a day or so ago but I did not have time to post. Now I understand better I will take the poll. First, when I play The Lord of the Rings I want to go by the fluff. However I use the WOTRFB rules for all kinds of games. I use it for pirates, cowboys ,dark age ancients, cavemen, pulp,sci fi and WWII.I played Warhammer from the first addition. At one time The Warhammer ,Rouge Trader,Siege and the Role playing Games were compatible.I still play Warhammer Ancients.Sadly GW won't leave the rules alone. WOTRFB rules have replaced Warhammer for me. When I want to play The Lord of the Rings I want to play The Lord of the Rings. Now Undead Dragons and elephants, and chariots that sounds like fun. I am ready for a game but not in Middle Earth.

_________________
But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning,

The way I see it, if you don't care about the theme at all, then why play LotR?

_________________
"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

I agree with General Elassar, but some say because they like the rules better.

_________________
"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

Because people like the game of one of the best skirmish games at the moment?( in my opinion.)

I voted for if my list is possible I just do it. But I don't care that much about fluff about army's in tournament. Most combiniations actually happened in the books, so mostly my lists are thematic.

_________________
"There are only 4 things you need in life: Lasagna, beer, a girlfriend and of course a gondor army."

Because it's a person's favourite game. I don't really care about the theme, but rather the mechanics and playability of the game. I don't care about GW inventing new models. I'm not an insane follower of Tolkien, I'm just someone who likes playing with good toys Anyone can invent a fluff for their army and who's to say that they are wrong?

_________________
Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League