So I bought the big book on Saturday (bought the LE box too but the wife’s squirreled that away for Chrimbo) and have spent the last week devouring it, here are my thoughts (warning, I have many thoughts, long post incoming):
Firstly I don’t want to get into the whole mini rulebook/lack of profiles thing. I totally get all the arguments and frustrations but for me the starter set was exciting because of the figures, not as a cheap way of getting the rues. I personally don’t mind paying out for the big book separately.
So to the book itself, it’s gorgeous. No buyer’s remorse here, lovely full colour pages chock full of fantastically posed pics. I was particularly impressed by the attention given to LOTR, all the big battle photos are new and there’s a real sense that this is all one big game system, not that LOTR is the poor forgotten older brother. Nice to see some new scenarios for LOTR as well (alongside some reprinted ones), the new Helm’s Deep and Pellenor Fields scenarios look like they’d make great special occasion games.
There’s also quite a few spoilers about the film (and one about the 2nd film) in the book that I found really interesting and exciting but anyone who wants to go into the film blind would do well to stay away from the scenario section until they’ve seen the movie (8 sleeps!)
As for the Hobbit models, they’re amazing, I was pretty happy with what they released this month and had feared (as I’ve written before, perhaps in this thread) that we might get a release drought after this wave but it’s great to be proved wrong. The eagles, Rivendell Knights and Grim Hammers all look staggeringly good. IMO they do what great models should do: they make you want to buy and paint them despite the fact you have no need/use for any of them. I have no elf or dwarf armies but I want them all!
The alternate Radagast sculpt is also gorgeous (although probably FC) and the Goblin King throwing the goblin is awesome, so much better than the one in the box. Assuming he’s plastic I’ll pick him up too!
As for the rules, I’m optimistic about almost everything. I like the changes to magic, nerfing spells like Cast Blinding Light which is normally in play for the whole game is a nice touch and the need to expend Might should hopefully at least make Gandalf think carefully before chucking some of those 2+/3+ spells around. I’m on the fence about the weapon rules, I like the idea but do worry that it’ll slow the game down, I would have preferred a straight 1 or 2 bonus/disadvantage rather than D3 to stop all the extra dice rolling. Still, I’m trying the rules out on Saturday so we’ll see how it goes.
Big fan of the changes to monsters, they stop some of the more devious (and entirely unthematic) tactics and might well make monsters viable again, I’ll give my cave troll a run-out at the weekend and see how he gets on. It’s also great to see some age-old questions clarified, they’ve added in sentences like “the loser can back away in any direction” and “a model armed with a spear cannot be wounded or knocked down if he loses the combat” whilst these rulings were well known to us forum-dwellers there’s no doubt they caused confusion with new players and it’s nice to have it clarified in print right from the start.
As an aside, Moria goblins have really benefited from these rules no? the guys with shields and bows have swords as hand weapons and low FV so will always feint, essentially 2 thirds of your warriors can now re-roll 1s to wound all the time! Also, the channelled fury boost is potentially awesome, any thoughts on whether taking Groblog would now increase it to a 4+?!?!? Time to dust off those old Gobbos methinks!
The only thing I really don’t like, no hate, is the -1 to shooting for moving. This, across the board, harms shooting to the point that I imagine most Mordor orc and Moria players will now leave their archers at home (making models largely redundant) and even Rohan players (like myself) might think twice about depending on 5+ to hit for all their shots. Let’s face it, in SBG almost all archers move every turn, just to get better shots, I think this rule is essentially reducing every model’s shoot value by 1. In addition, it’ll be a nightmare to keep track of; in Warhammer it’s easy enough to remember that ‘this block of 20 archers moved’ but imagine you’ve got 15 elf archers dotted all over your battle line mixed in with your other warriors, are you really going to be able to, easily, remember which ones moved? It just seems like needless complication. If they really wanted to add in a Warhammer style shooting variable they could have gone for a long-range modifier, at least that could be worked out from where the model is in the shoot phase and not depend on you remembering every model’s actions. It also has a big effect on shooting based heroes (I’m thinking of Legolas here), for 11 years he’s been darting around, getting into the right position and sniping 3 shots on a 3+, now that will almost always be on a 4+ so his effectiveness in the game has been decreased significantly. It’s a real shame as it’s just about the only thing about the new rules that bugs me but I think it’s a really big game changer both in terms of shooting effectiveness and in-game simplicity.
There’s also a couple of interesting new rules which I haven’t seen mentioned on any of the forums:
Firstly, if a hero calls a heroic action and shouts “with me” then all the models within range either have to move with him or pass on their move for that turn. I like this as it’s both characterful and stops the occasional, IMO, dodgy and not at all heroic tactic of just moving one guy forward to cancel the opponents heroic move and then waiting with everyone else to move for their normal move phase.
There’s also been some changes in the siege section, primarily that you can no no longer blow up walls/towers. The only siege targets that catapults/demolition charges can now target are gates. In the Helm’s Deep scenario if a demolition charge is successfully detonated in the culvert the wall is automatically destroyed, I like this change in context as we played Helm’s Deep recently and I thought the old damage table was really unwieldy and, when the wall wasn’t destroyed, made for a very anticlimactic moment. However, I can see this annoying people who like to play other siege games perhaps?
Anyhoo, that’s more than enough for now, overall I’m thrilled with the release and the upcoming releases, can’t wait to try out the new rules/scenarios and get painting all those lovely new figures!
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"Leave Sauron to me."
