War of the Ring Blog

This blog will record my attempt to fight the battles of the Second and Third Age of Middle Earth.  I  collect Games Workshop Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit miniatures and use the both the Strategy Battle Game and War of the Ring systems.  This blog will concentrate mostly on the War of the Ring mass battles system as Games Workshop no longer supports the system and I am attempting to keep the game alive underground.

For those who are just coming upon this blog, The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game or SBG is a skirmish level game initially intended to re-create the journey of the Fellowship of the Ring and the attempt to destroy The One Ring.  SBG was re-branded when Games Workshop renewed the license to produce miniatures for The Hobbit movie trilogy which follows Thorin and Company in their quest to retake Erebor.  The Hobbit SBG is compatible with the profiles from Lord of the Rings (LOTR) SBG and has gained popularity for points match and tournament style play that came about with the army books released in 2012.

War of the Ring was designed to fight the large scale battles of Middle Earth.  Gamers became frustrated using a skirmish game to fight battles with large armies such as The Battle of Dagorlad or Pelennor Fields, so Games Workshop finally released a mass battles system in 2009.  War of the Ring or WoTR modified the profiles from SBG with simple mechanics for the larger amount of models.  Infantry companies were based on special movement trays with eight infantry models to a tray and two cavalry models.

But only three years after its release and the rising cost of metal, Games Workshop decided to take their product in a new direction with the introduction of finecast resin to replace metal blister packs.  The plastic models were repackaged from 24 or 20 model infantry boxes to 12 or 10 model boxes to coincide with the SBG warband rules.  Two years later, Games Workshop decided to drop support for War of the Ring and no longer carries the core rules or infantry movement trays.

For many of us, it took a few years to collect armies large enough to play War of the Ring.  Now that we have the models and are comfortable with the rules system, it is up to us to continue the game through the online community.  I will be documenting my collecting, building, painting, as well as providing battle reports.

For me, the near term for WoTR will be to fight a map campaign with several other gamers of Isengard's invasion of Rohan in the opening campaign of the War of the Ring.  Once the Rohan campaign is over, the next goal will be to continue with Mordor's invasion of Gondor.  There are future goals such as fighting the Second Age Wars of the Elves and Sauron and the early Third Age War of the Dwarves and Orcs.

For now, join me as Saruman is building an army worthy of Mordor and Theodred, son of King Theoden has heard of an evil taking hold at the ancient fortress of Isengard

- Warlord