I am sure that GW wanted to do LOTR mini's before the movies were even released. I also heard someone mention here that GW may continue a licence for middle earth but not the movie licence as it is more expensive. Therefor we could still have our game but with GW's own miniatures, not from the movie.

Just speculation and hopefulness but I could easily live with that if it happens given the negative rumours that have been going around.

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Personally, I would be very apprehensive of GW making any great effort to monetise the licence further down the line. Yes, I'd love to see a bigger range of models, but in terms of games design, if you look at their other offerings, they don't actually have a great track record. SBG is the only decent game they make, and their general strategy for making money out of a "big" game is to change the rules every 2 years to drive sales by making last years new-best-thing obsolete.
SBG isn't an especially balanced game, but it's a whole heap more balanced than fantasy and 40k...

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Yes lotr might not be the most balanced game but it is much more balanced than any other i have seen so far and the problem comes when you expand the range of miniatures then its harder to keep the game balanced at all.

As for increase the sbg range around middle earth, that is outstanding idea !
and it would be really profitable to start reviewing old armies now as everyone has gone mad with the oop models (those that nobody really buyed when they were on production)

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Armies:Fiefdoms, Eastern Kingdoms

They already had a Middle-earth license, in the 1980s. The results were...mixed . They actually had a whole bunch of licenses, before going all the warhammer, all the time. Some of the distinctive flourishes of Warhammer figures are uhm, inspired, by some of those older licenses.

As to whether they'd continue the range without the movies? I suspect not. The non-film figures haven't been anything special. I suspect LOTR's power as a potential core-game was based on the pop culture extravaganza that was the films. If they were to make a future LOTR SBG, without movie elements, it would be some very small, obscure game. Probably not worth it.

Gavin

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Don't presume to speak for everyone, I think that most of the LOTR community will. Many people already play with non-GW miniatures, I don't see that trend magically ending if GW themselves quit supporting the game and selling the miniatures.

Take a look at almost any other game that GW has dropped, but that still has an active player base (Mordheim and Blood Bowl spring to mind first) - the communities that keep those games alive welcome non-GW minis with open arms. Now obviously LOTR is a bit different since the minis are based on a big movie trilogy, so as with something like Star Wars there are going to be certain iconic characters and designs, which won't be well served by third party miniatures, but many other LOTR characters can be easily replaced by non-GW miniatures that are still a good aesthetic match for the GW line of figures.

I love most of GW's miniatures for LOTR/TH, and I'd rather play with them than another manufacturer's if given the chance. And I would of course be more than happy to loan out some of my figures to a friend, but I also understand that many gamers like to have their own minis, not just loaners, and I'm not going to begrudge someone that opportunity for a game that is no longer supported by the company that made it in the first place by telling him I'll only play against an army of discontinued figures, and that he had better start scouring eBay.

I'm not saying that you're opinion is wrong, it's a matter of taste, just don't expect to recruit many players with that attitude (in the hypothetical future in which GW no longer supports the game). If you already have a group of like-minded players, I say go for it. Play the game the way you want it to be played.

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Well, that's my 2 cents.

Just a ponder on this, from what I have read in the past, the greatest expense in making minis, is the tooling to make the molds for the plastic figures... so if they have gone to the expense to make these... I would like think they'll keep churning them out... so I hope this fact alone might keep some life in the game for years to come...

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