Return to Middle-Earth?

The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game doesn't seem to get talked about much these days. Even Games Workshop seems to relegate it to the odd White Dwarf article now and again as Fantasy and especially 40K take the limelight. Until February's edition, that is. It seems like all this radio silence from GW on the subject of LotR is simply the calm before the storm that is the release of a "new edition" of LotR.

It's not really a new edition of course. If anything, it's a re-release of the old stuff in a new format, namely five new sourcebooks (all of which were previously found in one volume, the Legions of Middle Earth book...), a couple of new models and then mostly old stuff recast in Finecast and bumped up in price.

But I won't go off on a rant about GW pricing; it's their right as a business to make as much money as they can, there are obviously people who are happy to pay the price, and if I don't want to then I simply don't buy the models. I'd be interested to see exactly how much has changed in the sourcebooks though; as I mentioned above, all five of these sourcebooks were previously available in the Legions of Middle-Earth book (which I own) so unless these new sourcebooks offer drastic changes I'll stick to Legions and get access to all of the information from all five books (and save myself £75...)

Anyway, back to the game itself. Well, it's a game I've enjoyed for a long time - I got the Fellowship of the Ring boxed game when it came out (waaaaay back in December 2001) and remember getting the actual Fellowship that Christmas as well. I got the Two Towers box the year after, and that built the foundation for the LotR armies I have now. I didn't get the Return of the King box for some reason, but that was fine by me because I had the figures I wanted - Rohan, Moria and Isengard were all more interesting to me than Gondor and Mordor.

I've probably played more games of LotR than anything else over the years. It's a great game, very different to either Fantasy or 40K in terms of mechanics and until The War of the Ring 'expansion' was introduced, it was focussed on a much smaller scale than either of it's sibling Core systems, which made both gaming and collecting much easier than either Fantasy or 40K as well. Of course, that still doesn't mean I managed to paint all my LotR figures - I still have figures from those original boxed games still to paint. That hasn't stopped my enjoyment of the game over the years though.

And now, with the apparent resurgence of the LotR, my interest has been piqued again and I'm itching to get painting and playing LotR again. I've brought the old figures out of their boxes and drawers, and begun working on a few here and there. It's occurred to me that I've never actually posted pictures of any of my previous painted figures on here; I've only ever shown WiPs and stuff that I've been painting while the blog has been active. Well, now I have an excuse to show some of my old LotR stuff. In the meantime, I got a bunch of Moria Goblins out and began to paint them.

This is post-undercoat and Chainmail drybrush. Goblins are so easy to paint, I don't know why I couldn't finish them years ago. Still, these will make a nice break from Clanrats and will fill the time until I can get outside to undercoat the next batch of rats. In the meantime, expect a few more LotR posts. I might even try and convince Gary and Paul to finally play a game...