I played a fair amount of GW LotR game for the first couple of years of its incarnation but haven't played it in a long while and I seem to remember at the time being concerned that bows were overpowered for their points cost... does anyone find that bows dominate the games too much with the Hobbit rules?

At the time I felt the need to nerf them with range penalties (I'm happy enough using house rules - don't get me started on how pikes work in game and how they worked in RL) but would like the opinions of regular players before I start tinkering this early!

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"Torture Elves for long enough and you get Orcs do the same to Dwarves and all you get is dead Dwarves."

Well if you were once worried that they were overpowered then fear no more. The Hobbit rules have changed that drastically. First and foremost, all models that move at all and try to shoot receive a -1 modifier to their Accuracy. Also, the new rules put players starting in close combat since the standard scenarios often have you deploying halfway up the board (which is a good thing and quickens games). Lastly, Heroic March has allowed models to speed toward archers much faster which prevents the shoot and move strategy from being abused like it once was. Overall, archery rarely dominates anymore. That is also why we are starting to see more and more models that ignore the bow limit.

Hello, rather than editing I chose to delete the post that was hostile, and all references to it.

@ZS: we don't tolerate that kind of "in your face" stuff here, beginner board or not. Besides, I don't think you have any idea what the game was like 10 years ago.

@ffoulk: if you played pre-Legions of Middle Earth, then bow fire was pretty potent. LoME set a 33% bow limit on all armies except Grey Company, which did make GC overpowered and no fun to play against.

There are a few things that have improved this situation. First is the warbands deployment rules, which means your forces are likely going to be deploying within combat range right from the start. The days of volley fire and slow advancement followed by slow retreating are over. (Very welcome change IMHO.)

Second, the current Hobbit rules have nerfed bows by applying a -1 penalty to shoot after moving. Personally this bugs me, because it means xbows have effectively received a boost. However, this means some armies can now have a 50% bow limit without being overpowered, and it allows models like Riders of Rohan and the new Rivendell Knights to be armed with bows and not count towards the bow limit.

So I don't think you'll find a need to tweak the rules.

Many thanks - it was a niggling doubt that was stopping me fully committing to new purchases.

I have to say that on first reading the Hobbit version of the rules seems both 'the same' yet very much an improvement on the original rules.

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"Torture Elves for long enough and you get Orcs do the same to Dwarves and all you get is dead Dwarves."

Yes, the mechanics are the same, but there are some very welcome additions. My favorite are the special monster rules, potent but balanced. In the past you just fed a monster a model per turn to tie them up...do that for enough turns and the game might be over before they get to do their thing. Now, you can still do the feeding, but it's much less effective, monsters are now worth their points.

This video should help you with the changes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoBewAiVmu8

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Nice advertisement there thermo!

Ahh sorry, didn't mean to be rude.

Haha it's only an advert if you're making money from it! But it does go through the changes to shooting so should help someone

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Subscribe to the GBHL YouTube for daily SBG content http://Www.youtube.com/gbhlpodcast
*5th in 2014 GBHL

Great video. Worth every penny.

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"Torture Elves for long enough and you get Orcs do the same to Dwarves and all you get is dead Dwarves."