Battle Game Rules – What would you recommend?

Having extremely limited experience in these matters, I would tend to agree with Estel on this choice. The ‘bad company’ is not wholly bad. For the small scale skirmish scenarios, this system seems ideal, especially for a novice like myself. I get easily lost in rule heavy systems. I haven’t seen many other gaming systems out there either. By the way, Estel, have you maintained a 25mm base? What about your mounted figures? To me it seems square bases are the way to go with Mithril figures and if one quibbles over a millimeter of two, then the point of the excercise is lost! For larger battles I intend to use another product from said company, WAB, which looks like it will work with minor adaptation and once one substitutes Celts for orcs and so forth. Good topic!

I know nothing about ‘gaming, rules’ etc. Protozeus, but I am not sure why you have avoided the movies.

Yes, they do have some very annoying changes and omissions (for film adaption purposes I understand in most cases) and not all of the characters may be everyone’s ideal, but overall they have helped bring the books to life for a lot of people.

I personally feel that Mithril’s Balrog and Shelob characters are far nearer to my visualised expectations than the film, but the scenes where the beacons are lit and the Rohirrim charge are fantastic pieces of filming and get the hairs standing on the back of my neck everytime.

I guess a reason for no Knights of Dol Amroth was so that they didn’t overshadow this charge of the Rohirrim.

Still, everyone to their own as they say, but PJ has at least kept to the main spirit of the books for me – he just made some needless changes as far as I’m concerned, judge it as a film adaption rather than the books themselves.

Hello Protozeus, One need never apolgize for one’s feelings. I thought the movies would alter my own personal vision of LOTR (which by the way is fairly close to our own dear Mithrils), but it did not. I think I’ve read the books twice since the last film and my own vision has not been displaced. Something about the original narrative I think, which seems to illicit one’s own imaginative interpretations. Heck, I even integrate some of the better GW minis into the rank and file! The movies stand on their own as fine interpretations, but as often is the case, the book is always better!

If one was to wish to put Mithril on a round base, I would not use plastic. To me, this makes the figure top-heavy. I have agonized over the basing of this figures and settled on square bases made by Litko. These are wooden, but round shapes are available. Ironically enough, I’m kind of opposite of Gavin in that I put my GW figures on washers and then on wooden bases to match the Mithril ones. This serves the dual purposes of lending uniformity and it brings the GW figures, which are closer to 30mm up to height for integrating them with Mithril. It is a pain in the you-know-where;)and that with the limited number of cool figures by them, accounts for their relatively small presence. Mithril figures, as you have no doubt observed, do not come on a standard sized base thus making the size of the base used important whether round or square. After much consideration, I chose to use rectangular bases, 25mm x 30mm for foot, 25mmx50mm for wargs (not the GW ones, yuck!) and 30x60mm for mounted figures. This keeps close to dimensions used in many gaming systems but also accomodates the larger scale of the Mithril figures themselves. I hope this helps; it is a question I still ponder…!

Coming to this discussion somewhat belatedly, I should just mention that there are well-founded rumours that a proper set of large-army “wargaming” – rather than skirmish – rules will be coming from GW next year. I’ve encountered this being mentioned in so many places (usually as a result of shop staff dropping thinly disguised hints) that I think we can take it as being true. It will be interesting to see if they manage to do this sensibly!

Ahem … did you say “Mithril stuff”, Master Estel?

Sorry to “resurrect” this ancient thread (well, not TOO sorry)..

This thread, along with Ken’s desire to start a thread on wargaming with Mithril miniatures, got me interested. I have played a fair amount of LOTR SBG by Games Workshop. And I really enjoy the game very much. The rules aren’t overly complicated, but that is the best part. Instead of getting distracted by 250 different rules to remember, you can focus on strategy, tactics, and aesthetics.

I respectfully disagree on heroes being too powerful in this game. In my opinion, heroes are quite mortal in SBG. They have a limited store of special abilities and can often struggle to kill 1-2 “foot soldiers” per turn. In most games of SBG, the beauty is that many low-level heroes (captains) and even foot troops can turn the tide of battle.

For example, if you’re playing a 500-point game you may only have 30-40 troops total. So a key stand by a couple of determined dwarves or a single lucky archer picking off an elite enemy troop can literally turn the tide of battle. So the “little guys” really do matter. To me, this adds character to the game. I have even considered giving each of my foot soldiers a name and painting it on their bases.

In fact, in most games of LOTR you can’t afford to take Aragorn, Boromir, Elrond, Dragons, Balrogs, Gandalf, etc – because that won’t leave you enough troops to be competitive.

Also, I have found magic isn’t overly-powerful in this game, which I enjoy. It has its place, but is not too destructive.

My current 500-point Gondor force is roughly as follows:
-Faramir
-Damrod
-6 grizzled veterans of the Osgiliath battles
-26 Warriors of Minas Tirith (spears, swords, etc)
-15 Rangers of Gondor (bows, spears)

Right now, they’re all GW figures. But I would love to make a new force of combined Mithril and GW figures – which will take time.

I would highly recommend this game. I’m hoping Ken will game with me from time to time since we live nearby!

Now you guys understand why I’m torn between using my new Mithril mins for dioramas or wargaming!

George