Spinning this particular greenhorn question off my earlier thread…

As it says, can someone elaborate on the differences between the Rulebook that comes with the Return of the King Boxed set and the "Big Blue Book" that seems to be the standard for folks choosing not to go with The Hobbit rulebook.

Thanks!

There's a good bit.
More profiles, as more units were added.
Rule Tweaks, idk off the top of my head but there were several.
The biggest difference that I can immediately remember was the unit additions

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Unit additions, a huge hobby section, and as mentioned some of the profiles were tweaked in order to clarify or errata old special abilities.

By Unit additions do you mean just new army list entries, or some larger "unit" mechanic.

New character entries. Such as additional heroes and troop types

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That's good to know. I'm not much worried about missing a few unit entries. It's only notable mechanics and rule changes that I'm concerned with.

I do like a good hobby section, but I've got plenty of those already in other books.

A major rules change between RotK and the One Rulebook was the way courage was handled after a force was broken. In RotK, failed courage check caused the model to run away from enemies and only be removed if it was moved over the board edge. This allowed returning to battle next round if the courage roll was succesful and caused lots of extra work moving the escaping and chasing models around. In the One Rulebook a failed courage check after force was broken simply removed the model from play, which made the game play quicker but it also changed the way low-courage armies worked.

I'm not sure about banners and volley fire. Were they already in RotK?

I think it was at that point when it was ruled that everyone also has a one-handed weapon if not said that they don't have it. Fighting with a two-handed weapon became a choice for each combat turn instead of choosing it in the beginning of the game.

It also collects the siege and mumak rules from earlier supplements into the rulebook.

-- Pasi