Greetings.

(I tried to post once before but I think the post got lost or something)

I used to play the LOTR miniature game back when the films were released. I still have the FotR rulebook.

I feel like picking up this again, but first and foremost I am curious what rulebooks I should be getting. I am particularily interested in dwarves and the war of the ring battles with Dain and Brand.

I understand that the RotK rulesbook has the scenarios for the battle of Dale (right?). Should I be getting that book or is it completely obsolete? I am not even sure if you still can purchase it.

Thanks

Alhvar

Welcome to the forum and welcome back to the hobby.

I never had the RotK book but I am fairly confident that it did not have anything in it about the war in the north. It was just about the movies for the most part. Anyway, it is several editions out of date at this point, though you might still be able to find it on ebay if you just want to see the terrain stuff and all that. The main rule book is now the Hobbit, an unexpected journey. You can find a large version of the book on GW and there is also a smaller version from the starter set that you can get off eday sometimes. The supplement for that is the There and Back Again book which covers the second two movies worth of models. A new edition is supposed to be coming out in 2018 so you might just want to pick up some models and get by with borrowing the books.

As for the war in the north I do not recall that GW did all that much with it in any supplement they released. Perhaps that will be an area that GW go into in the near future. But the Lonely Mountain and Iron Hills for the Hobbit era are in the newer books anyhow.

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if its any help, they did 2 sets of rules where they touched (albeit briefly) on war in the north. The first was the original ROTK rulebook released as part of the boxed set game back in 2003/2004 I believe? It had a few scenarios in the back detailing the attack on Lorien in particular (but also has a map with notes on the attacks Sauron made) & the other was 'Ruin of Arnor' which also took place in the north, but before the WOTR & focused on Arnor & the Witch-King.

If you look for the ROTK rulebook on eBay / Amazon it will be the one with Aragorn riding Brego and a load of minas tirith warrior models on the front, not the journeybook. Hope this helps

Thanks for the answers!

I suppose the Hobbit books will cover my needs for dwarves and Dale men. Is there anything in there thought that could be used as easterlings?

A genereal question; I guess that the Hobbit rules are used for official tournaments and such? Is there no room for using characters from LotR (that are not also in Hobbit) in offical tournaments anymore then? For I suppose that they do not have any rules in the Hobbit version rules?

The good news is that the Return of the King rulebook (as mentioned not to be confused with the Journeybook of the same name) shows up on ebay often enough for very little money. It contains 4 scenarios related to Dwarves and the men of Rhovanion, culminating in the Siege of Erebor.

That said, it's some 14 years old now and rather badly outdated. The core rules to play the game have since been updated twice, and are due another revision within a year. Although perfectly playable in any incarnation, any opponents are likely to follow the latest version. When in comes to the main rules, I would hold off on purchasing any given the relatively imminent release of a new (and likely rather good from what I've seen and heard) edition, although the small rulebook in the current starter set can also be gotten for a nice price second hand every now and then.

Of course, you can already get started on the figures, which will stay relevant regardless. As the Return of the King book has been out for so long, they used the then-available Dwarf warriors and Khazad Guard for Dain's troops in Erebor and men of Rohan as proxies for those in Rhovanion. While these are perfectly serviceable, the Dwarven range has since been expanded several times, while figures released for the Hobbit (Lake-town and Dale) may be a good fit for similar people in this later setting.

As the Strategy Battle Game is a great little system with a huge array of possibilities in points match and historical scenarios, I would recommend simply getting the figures you like, form a points match army with them (the most common way of playing) and simply adapt or design scenarios to depict the chapters from the books you want to recreate. As it happens, I have also toyed with the idea of a Battle of Dale/Siege of Erebor themed force, which can easily be made using the recently released Iron Hills troops led by Dain as his Erebor forces and having Girion (representing Brand) leading Warriors of Dale (meant as historical troops from Girion's time, but equally fitting during the War of the Ring).

If you have your heart set on Dain and his clan, you will want "There and Back Again", which has their profiles and scenarios. If you are playing with friends, I don't see why you can't use the old rules. If you want the new ones, they are in the "Hobbit" sourcebook, the big brown one. Profiles for all the Hobbit trilogy figs are in the two of those books and they are bundled for a decent price at games-workshop.com

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers