Thundercloud reviews the War of the Rohirrim supplement for the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, which he purchased with his own cash money. He says what he likes anyway, whether it’s provided by a publisher or not.
The Story So Far
The new edition of Middle Earth has not been smooth sailing. The new boxed set was great, with incredibly nice models, and the rules updates are good to fine, but the launch schedule and product design has been problematic. The non-film models were put in their own book, Armies of Middle Earth, which was coming soon for more than six months. There have been additional plastic releases like Bolg and Prince Imrahil who didn’t tie into a specific release (and were likely tied to Pelennor and Battle of Five armies supplements for the previous edition which is now lost to the GW scrap pile, and the Catapult Troll and Umbar Ballista resin releases would also have fit in to this).
Essentially GW changed the direction of Middle Earth, I think during early 2023, very likely due to the changes with the rights holder (Embracer Group purchased Middle Earth Enterprises in 2002) and a desire to do more with the IP. This led to the War of the Rohirrim film, which was being worked on prior to the purchase, and The Hunt for Gollum movie (based on the hit computer game), which is currently scheduled to be released December 2027.
It’s very easy to blame Games Workshop for everything (and I do, for things like taking laser rifles away from Space Marines and picking bolters of all things to be their standard weapon) but I think the Embracer acquisition and their desire to fill in more of the IP with movies/series/lunch boxes/flamethrowers to sell the public is the root cause here, and led to things like The Rise of Angmar being delayed for months to the point it was released shortly before the new edition.
Games Workshop had previously been allowed to do quite a lot with Middle Earth, creating new characters and miniatures, giving the Ringwraiths names and back stories, creating whole factions like Khand and Far Harad not seen in the movies and the new IP owners have put a stop to that, leading to some miniatures being withdrawn from sale. Embracer may have plans to fill in these things, and who knows what they are. Embracer likely don’t, and are currently looking for ways of developing the IP that are more financially successful than War of the Rohirrim and more critically successful than the Amazon Rings of Power series.
In development terms this happened in a fairly short timescale, with War of the Rohirrim announced in Jan 2022 and the boxed set in stores Christmas 2024. Plastics lead time is not insignificant, and the Middle Earth team is not large at GW, and they produced a new edition, four new kits and two fairly thick army tomes by the deadline, with Armies of Middle Earth following hot on their heels then sitting in a warehouse, and another three plastic kits (Helm, Hera and the combined character kit) following on.
The main complaint people have had about the new edition (apart from how good monsters are now) is that Riders of Rohan and Rohan Royal Guard haven’t gotten new miniatures. However putting my product design hat on a very small team have delivered about 800 pages of rules and art, seven new plastic kits and three new resin kits in a pretty short space of time, and likely with a very interested IP holder looking over their shoulder. This is a similar timescale to the creation of the Fellowship of the Ring set, with less plastics and a lot more metals, but a bigger team.
The Scope
This product includes no new army lists and no new miniatures.
I know that people were hoping for one or more of the following: Riders of Rohan, Rohan Royal Guard (foot or mounted or both), Dunlending Cavalry, Dunlending Command, Dunlendings with weird bone masks and more Dunlending characters. They haven’t got that, and I hope they get it at some future point, but I’m not going to rake GW over the coals about it. It may be down to the short lead time or the IP holder, rather than anything else, as GW has been quick enough to provide miniatures for the War of the Rohirrim film.
Back in 2005 GW, having finished the production cycle that went with the Lord of the Ring movies, produced a collated and updated rulebook (you can argue whether this was a 2nd or 4th edition in the comments given the yearly movie sets updated and changed the rulebook each time), the Mines of Moria Starter set, and then started producing Journey books (Fellowship in 2005, Two Towers in 2006, Return of the King in 2007) which took the events of the movies and made narrative scenarios and hobby sections for each movie. I’ll make a note and see if I can come back and review these journey books another time.
The War of the Rohirrim supplement very much falls into the same pattern. It’s a 48 page book with the first 27 pages being a narrative campaign made up of scenarios drawn from the film, and the rest of the book comprising hobby articles. There are several pages of art/photos which ensure it hits the 48 page count, and while they’re nice, if there’d been more content to go in the book they wouldn’t be there. 48 pages is as small a supplement GW can probably do now, given that the 32 page codex supplements that many of us can remember were almost two decades ago now.
Scenarios
There are eleven narrative scenarios in the book, and these join to form a campaign where the results of a battle effect the battle after it by giving a beneficial rule/extra equipment/extra point of Will/Might/Fate, subtract something from an opposing character, etc. There’s nothing game breaking there, but if you won a game you get a nice little bonus in the next one.
There’s a lot of variety in the narrative scenarios, and they range from requiring two models to over 150.
To Claim a Throne is a fist fight between two middle aged men, a sight familiar to people who frequent the city centre on a Friday night, while Plains of Edoras requires over 150 models including 3 Mumaks.
Unless you have a very large collection some of these scenarios will be getting adapted or given a miss. While the Mumak kit was a huge seller for GW, I’m not really convinced there’s lots of people out there with three of them and (quickly checks the price) I don’t see people running out to buy three of them. I also think the Plains of Edoras scenario, with it’s 150+ models and 3 Mumaks, is going to be pretty cramped on the 4 foot by 4 foot table it says to play it on.
In the scenario design it is interesting that GW have used multiple board sizes, with boards ranging from 1 foot by 1 foot to 4 feet by 4 feet. The idea of a 2 model game on a 1 by 1 board, or a 15 model game on a 2 by 2 board, with models skulking through Edoras’s streets hunting each other is a good one and makes for interesting scenario writing.
Weather and darkness are used in more than one scenario, and they in particular stop the Rohan forces, which are character only in several of the scenarios, getting turned into pin cushions immediately.
There is a pretty solid requirement for scenery in the scenarios, and this is supported by the hobbying section.
I would criticise the lack of alternative forces for, in particular, the larger scenarios. If points had been given as well and players were able to select forces (possibly with specified characters) you would have easier to arrange alternatives to multiple Mumaks or needing 72 Hill Tribesmen. It would make it easier to play what if scenarios and change up the forces involved. What if Gandalf stopped by? What if it were Easterlings not Haradrim turning up?
The writing is solid and there is interesting variety, but I feel adding some more flexibility in the larger scenarios would have improved it.
Hobbying
A solid section with three projects:
- Rabid Mumak
- Hill Tribe Encampment
- Ruined Rohan House
These projects all support different scenarios, though I would choke a bit about spending £74 quid (the current cost of a Mumak) on a model to convert and resculpt it for use in a single narrative scenario.
The easiest project is the ruined Rohan House, where some minor cutting and a bit of balsa wood gives you a ruined house you can use on any battlefield, and which fits in great in a Lord of the Rings era table.
The Hill Tribe Encampment is balsa, wet wipes and string, and a cheap way to come up with half a dozen pieces of scenery while being a project you could do with older children. There’s not much sawing involved, and it’d be a challenge for children to injure themselves with string. An afternoon of messing around with glue would give a reasonable sized camp to chase tribesmen around.
The Rabid Mumak involves reposing and resculpting a large and expensive kit, and while the instructions are fairly detailed, it involves a bunch of modelling putty and sculpting a new back for the Mumak. It’s best for an experienced modeller, and is the project I’d be most likely to give a miss given the expense and challenge.
There are two painting guides, one for Rohan and one for Hill Tribesmen.
The Rohan section gives you a solid tutorial on painting Rohan warriors over two pages, and a whistle stop tour version of painting horses. There is then a two page spread on different Rohan schemes, with the Thorne of the Wold scheme, with a deep blue green armour and red cloaks that I think looks particularly good, while the Westfold scheme looks much more generic Rohan. The idea of different schemes for different parts of Rohan is so obvious I’m surprised it’s take GW this long to do it.
The Hill Tribesmen tutorial focuses a lot more on using the textures on the tribesmen models to create interesting effects, with three different fur recipes (though one is how to do the quiver) and a basing tutorial. Overall I think this is the better of the two painting sections, and encourages painters to experiment with textures and dry/wet brushing to get the effect they want.
Conclusion
I liked this, even though I have criticisms, and I think it’ll be interesting if GW do more scenario/hobby books like the old Journey books. The scenario and hobby heavy books in the previous edition were normally carried to some extent by the inclusion of a couple of legendary legions, the release of a new model or two, and a meta shake up (Black Riders, White Council, etc) to help drive sales. We don’t get to see GW internal sales data at Goonhammer, and while peak period GW LOTR bubble sales supported the Journey books for the film trilogy I don’t know if there’s a lot of War of the Rohirrim fans out there getting into the tabletop game because of it.
If the book sells well then I think we’ll see more Journey style books. There is also a distinct possibility that a tie in book for new films/series may be in the contract GW have with Embracer, and a 48 page book priced for under £20 is a fairly safe bet in terms of expenditure of resource and writing time, easy to put together and easy to get to a minimum viable product. In which case see you all again when I review the Hunt for Gollum book in 2028.
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