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Need advice on picking a LOTR army.; Yeah, you read right.
Topic Started: 21st February 2012 - 01:25 PM (2,601 Views)
Stalarious
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Clanrat
OK so here is the deal I am looking to start a LOTR army while I wait for my stuff to come back to me from moving over to europe. Well the thing is I know nothing about LOTR other then their is two styles WOTR and SBG from other forums it sounds like SBG may be better.

For my play still I dont mind playing horde armies, however fluff is a big part of why I will play a army so the cooler the fluff the more i want to play them.(thats how i got into skaven.) For play style I like a army that can do ok in shooting and close combat, they dont have to be great at both suck in one decent in the other is fine with me.

On a side note I do get a evil little happiness from putting down a huge monster and watching my opponent start to worry alittle bit.
All tips and advice are welcome thanks for your guys/gals help.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Olorin the Ancient
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The new rules for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game boil it down to five armies. The Free Peoples have Elves, who are superb in shooting, along with Dwarves, who are terrific in hand-to-hand combat. Their only monsters are ents and giant eagles, which are certainly good, but not the best monsters in the game.

Mordor has many of the things you asked for, but for me, it sounds like the army you really want is the Fallen Realms. They have the Mumak, the most terrifying monster in the game, along with the ability to take some ringwraiths (which become terrifying indeed when they're on Fell Beasts), great basic infantry including Easterlings and Uruk-hai, specialty units like Khandish chariots, and a huge array of heroes. Of course, they don't all make sense together within the story of The Lord of the Rings, and some good power choices, like Isengard trolls, are non-canonical, and therefore unacceptable to a Tolkien purist such as myself. But I think The Fallen Realms is the book you want: you can make a great army from that.
- Olorin the Ancient
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Stalarious
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Clanrat
Thats for the post I wonder if the Isengard troll may be from the forgotten tales books as a side note. Although I know from the books they never said anything about trolls but if Saron had the trolls avaliable he would have used them.

That of course is MHO.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Remember, Isengard is under the command of Saruman, not Sauron. Isengard trolls are basically Mordor trolls with a crested helmet, and in Tolkien, Mordor trolls able to withstand daylight are a new invention of Sauron's, just as fell beasts are. Normal trolls turn to stone if they're caught outside once the sun rises--as in The Hobbit. Daylight-safe trolls are described, I think by Aragorn, as something brand-new, which had not been deployed prior to the War of the Ring. Sauron did not share his latest tools with Saruman, who had to innovate on his own. Therefore, Saruman would not have had access to trolls.
- Olorin the Ancient
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Stalarious
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Clanrat
:blink: EASY.... I wasnt arguing I am just saying IF he could get his hands on them he would have used them. I for one if I did get the fallen kingdoms book would be making Uruk-hai because I like the beserkers that the armies had for the Orcs.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Rakchew
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Ewww!! Don't support LOTR so it will wither and die then they can go back to focusing all of their energy on Warhammer fantasy!!

Haha, just playin. Hope you find an army you like! The elf + dwarf combination sounds devastating but RingWraiths are just pure awesome and would be difficult to pass up!
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Stalarious
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Clanrat
See I can see it both ways playing with elves and dwarfs and Ents would be awesome. Then orks goblins dragons and Balrogs along with ringwraiths make being evil almost a auto pick you see my problem.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Stalarious
21st February 2012 - 02:25 PM
:blink: EASY.... I wasnt arguing I am just saying IF he could get his hands on them he would have used them. I for one if I did get the fallen kingdoms book would be making Uruk-hai because I like the beserkers that the armies had for the Orcs.
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was jumping on you. The metal Isengard Troll model that GW released around five or six years ago was the first LOTR model that, I felt, clearly put profits above Tolkien. Since then, they've done far worse, with their new Finecast Watcher in the Water figure ($71 US) epitomizing everything that's wrong with their new direction. (The Watcher lives in a black lake outside the West Gate of Moria: having it climb out onto land to fight throughout Middle-earth makes about as much sense to me as if the shark from Jaws decided to leave the Atlantic Ocean and terrorize people in Oklahoma.)

Anyway, it's GW that I'm upset with. What you're doing sounds totally background-appropriate.

Actually, I'm not even really fluff-obsessed when it comes to people playing games. Players can do what they want: I'd just like GW to try to be faithful to Tolkien's world, since that's one of the big selling points of the game and the models. Playing is different. If you were being totally true to Tolkien, you'd have to say that no member of the Fellowship can die other than Boromir, since the rest of them all survive in the book. It would make for an unfair game, to say the least!
- Olorin the Ancient
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Stalarious
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Clanrat
See I agree with that too if I ran the what I call "freak squid" I would ask my opponent if I could house game some rules because like you it doesnt make since to have him be able to walk on the ground like any other creature.

it would be something to the effect of :

When deploying "freak squid" hold him in reserve and make a note on a pieace of paper about which pieace of water terrain it will deploy from.

when a enemy unit starts or stops its movement within 6" of the choosen water terrain marked the "freak squid" is then revealed and moves a d6" towards the enemy.

For every round the model is out of water it will suffer a wound on a roll of 4+.

Thats what I came up with. Because it did chase them into the dwarven tombs after all.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Olorin the Ancient
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The problem is, the Watcher in the Water model depicts him having climbed out of the water and onto dry land. His body is never shown in the movie or described in the book, but GW has depicted it as being like a mutant crab with a squid head. I can't imagine wanting it at any price, let alone $72.
- Olorin the Ancient
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hannanibal
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The bread that satisfies all hunger... the peanut that reverses time...
I just checked out the new Watcher In The Water and WTF? I can't say i'm surprised though they've been doing this sort of thing for years now.
Legolas will get a boltgun soon and Frodo and Sam will get a hot-pot catapult.
How far are GW allowed to stretch the limits of the Tolkien universe before someones says no? Do they have to go through an Tolkien vetting process with each new non-canon idea?

BTW, stick some rogre heads on the end of each Watcher tentacle and it could make a nice abomb.
Edited by hannanibal, 22nd February 2012 - 04:01 PM.
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SlashSlash
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hannanibal
22nd February 2012 - 03:59 PM
BTW, stick some rogre heads on the end of each Watcher tentacle and it could make a nice abomb.
Ouch thats an expensive HPA.

Personally I had a small WoTR force and I took Haradrim, not for the Mumak (again small games) but for Easterling foot soldiers backed by haradrim cavalry and corsair crossbowmen. Unfortunately I'm not clued up on the Strategy game, all I know is those Easterlings really hurt people.
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Ratty Gnawtail
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Totally not a magpie

Aye I didn't think much of the Watcher in the Water model, the one that someone made in a WD a few years ago was a lot better (no silly crab legs and seperate models for its tentacles.) Though the Watcher in that case was for a special scenario involving it trying to eat the fellowship before they escaped. Practically all the hobbits and Boromir didn't. :P

But anyway back to topic. I was fortunate to have collected the Battle games in Middle-earth fortnightly magazine which had the GW models at a fairly lower price. From them I ended up concentrating on the Uruk-hai and Dwarves. To me the Isengard force can easily be the jack of all trades, you can have extremely elite soldiers, fairly powerful cavalry, hordes of cheap troops, scary troops with big weapons, brilliant missile weapons, the option to have the (albeit not very fluffy) odd big monster, and a Wizard.

As Olorin pointed out with the new rule book things that GW have brought out, I agree with his recommendation of the Fallen Realms. :)
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Stalarious
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Clanrat
Awesome thanks for the advice guys I think I will go with the Fallen kingdoms then.

Thought I am a little said that I wont be fielding a balrog anytime soon.(those things are Beautiful!)


MUTATE: to finish the post, I hit the wrong button.
Edited by Stalarious, 23rd February 2012 - 08:13 AM.
The beastmen charge from the woods the skaven from the ground. Men scream with nowhere to go it s a good day.
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Ratty Gnawtail
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Totally not a magpie

Well it doesn't look like you can field an army of the Last Alliance either. :blink:
Men of Numenor being now in a seperate book to the Eregion and Rivendell Elves... <_<
But still have fun! :)
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