There are many experienced players here, and i must finally ask this question..

Back in the old times, an army was legal as long as it had 1/3 of bows, and had at least 1 hero leading per "faction". For example, an army with 1 goblin captain, 100 warriors and 3 trolls would have been legal. Of course, unit limits were used (locally), but army making was quite free.

Now, if you want to play with mordor or moria, you cannot anymore use cheap units as an effective meat wall. I have tried some matches where mordor orcs loose pathetically to elves because of their low defence against elf bows. Normal orcs aren't worth it anymore in many other situations as well. I find it sad, because they look good.

This is just an example, but let's keep it simple... Does anyone think it would be silly to go back to play with old rules where it comes to army structure? Are warbands good or bad?

The game is ultimately based around heroes and their skirmishes, I do think certain heroes should be able to lead more than 12 followers however.
The spirit of the game is about smaller battles with greater importance on the actions of individual models, it's a good thing to remember.
Since the warbands system was put in place 5 years ago the game has become more playable, less time deploying models means more time playing.

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http://grungehog.blogspot.co.uk/

Personally, I think warbands have been good for hordes.

Before warbands, a lot of formats enforced a model limit (50 in 500pts for example) simply for playability. You can't really fit games into a tournament time slot very easily if there might be 100 goblins all moving individually.

Goblins in *that* environment were unplayable. If the enemy could have ~50 elves in 500pts there was no such thing as a horde of goblins. Now that a large chunk of points have to be tied up in heroes those model limits have dropped away and 5 warbands of Moria goblins is actually a very effective force because they *can* heavily outnumber the opposition.

Any format is going to favor some armies over others, but by and large I think warbands do a fairly good job.

Idk how elf bows are ripping your orcs to shreds. You should have shields on your front line, fury behind the line maybe a shadow Lord would be useful if you know you're playing against Elves.

Warbands is generally good. I have issue with some things but generally I like it. I don't think it's fun playing against one goblin captain and 100 goblins.....

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

Warbands are better but if locally you and your opponent's want to play the old way then keep a record and let us know how it go's, if there's any weaknesses or strengths to it and if you find the new gw gt missions suit it or not?

Well, I would say that way... The greatest concern of warbands is the smaller battles. For example a 300 points match has so many different ways to be arranged with older rules than new rules.

New rules kind of stabilizes army making - 300 points = 2 full warbands and 500 points = 2-3 full warbands.

I have very recently tried one tiny match with old rules with a friend, it was pretty fun. It is sometimes refreshing to simply flood enemy with orcs... In bigger points of course quality comes over quantity, or boredom comes over... u say it to end.

This is the best explanation I have ever heard for warbands. I really enjoy warbands, and as mentioned, if you and your play group want to use older rules, then go for it. The game was fun before warbands came out too!

I very much agree that the game, as with the novel, is heavily based on individuals overcoming their fear, not succumbing to despair, and triumphing against the odds. It's very hero-centric. It's fairly clear that the game structure is intended to support that fundamental tenet.

However, prior to warbands, there was a clear advantage to horde armies, as increasing the number of models, even low profile models, represented a distinct advantage. This was a fairly significant conflict with that fundamental tenet of being a hero-centric game. Additionally, as others have noted, it adversely impacted the playability of the game, by slowing down both deployments, and the management of large numbers of models, resulting in artificial model limitations which wasn't quite the right fix.

Adding warbands, in my opinion, fixes both issues rather elegantly. It adds a construct by which more heroes are seen on the battlefield, which is consistent with Tolkien's great story, while also cleaning up a number of game playability issues.

So, I'm quite in favor of warbands.

Hordes are still viable. Moria can have over 50 models on the table at 500pts, even if taking a cave troll or a couple warg marauders. Goblin Town is another faction that can put big numbers on the table, even with the Goblin King. Minas Tirith is not far behind, Beregond, Damrod and Denethor are so cheap that you can put a lot more warriors than say, Isengard or High Elves and still be able to win. Overall I am happy with warbands.

Well, it starts to seem that the problem does not touch all factions... F.E:

*Elves: Very pricy units and super-good heroes, therefore they would anyways have a few heroes and less units, with or without warbands.

*Rohan/Gondor: A lot very cheap heroes.

*Moria: Some special rules with warbands allow massing units.

While some others it does:

*Mordor: all heroes are either a bit (40-60) or then super expensive -. Normal orcs look awesome but are hard to use because in name of effectiveness morannons nearly always beat them.

AND THATS WHY I HAVE AN IDEA: there could be a special rule for mordor that he could put a legal amount of morannon orcs into a warband (0-12) and then transfer them to mordor orcs. In that case, 12 morannons would become approximately 16 mordor orcs!

Not sure I understand that rule.

Also it's simple. The mightier the heroe, the more troops they should allow per warband to balance the point costs.

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

I prety much think most heroes with a 12" stand fast should be able to lead a warband twice the size of a standard one.

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http://grungehog.blogspot.co.uk/

Well. I was suggesting a special rule for Mordor that for every 3 morannon orcs inside a warband, there could be used instead 4 orc warriors. A minor thing, but could honestly be helpful! And also logical price-wise!

This suggestion of larger warbands for more important heroes sounds cool. But it could be hard to decide which ones were these heroes. For example the nazgul, the highest of Sauron's servants, would probably be ones? Logically so, but nazgul's low cost would probably make anger someones. What about a troll chieftain, being maybe slightly smarter than most of trolls, but still just a beast? Would it be logical that a troll would have a larger warband? It costs a lot, so point-wise yes, but thematically not so much...

These a few heroes with 200% radius of standfast... Would again benefit only rare factions. Moria would become a swarm faction again... Isengard might really benefit of this change though.

I'd make it simple. Witch King gets more troops. But they have to use him at 3/20/3.

None others get it. Troll Chief gets 12. Nothing too crazy just a few good suggestions. Gothmog gets like 16. Etc.

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

Well, morannon orc with item and orc warrior with item are 4/3 in price. That's why I thought such "transfer rule" would help and be relatively simple. Basically one could always use 16 orc warriors in warband instead other units.

Dragons, nazguls, gothmog, shagrat war leader could be ones having a bit added capacities. But this gets quite complicated. Every faction should be gone through and chocen just right heroes for this...

Ps. Spider queen should be able to control giant spiders! With nice encouraging standfast ability, of course, touching no other units...

Shelob might be too beastly and hungry to do that, but on the other hand, Shelob has seriously a lot of children so she cant be that bad...