Introduction

The Rank-and-File Tabletop Game of Lord of the Rings!

What is WotR?

War of the Ring was released by Games Workshop in 2009. The game was born with the objective to offer to the public a spectacular, as well as fun, tabletop game, with the possibility to easily deploy and manoeuvre big masses of miniatures from the Middle-Earth universe. The rulebook was inspired by the one from The Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game, released in 2001, especially in regard to unit characteristics and magic, but diverging a lot when it came to the action mechanism. In reality, it was an original game system, designed with an emphasis on deployment, manoeuvring, and combat between block formations rather than single figures. However, WotR found little success. Only one expansion was ever released, War of the Ring: Battlehosts, in 2010. Never followed any further edition of the original rulebook but in the form of FAQs to clarify and fix minor things, the Official Update Version 1.0 in 2010 and 1.2 in 2011. Yet in 2014 WotR was withdrawn from the market and the project was abandoned by GW. From that onward, the production of the sector remained focused on the SBG.

History of the Game

The WotR game system had no major flaws by itself, in fact it was nicely contrived: easy, quick, fun and effective; the qualitative level of the game was probably even better of that of the SBG at the time. However two major problems affected its popularity among players and, eventually, this lead to a financial disappointment by GW. The first one was structural. GW was aiming to increment sales generating a new mass-market comparable to the one driven by the Warhammer range. But times changed. When Warhammer was introduced to the market in 1983, it encountered a community already well-prepared for the challenge because the hobby was already widespread; people were not afraid to the idea of purchasing, assembling and painting huge quantities of miniatures, because that was already a common practice with other games like Napoleonic, Ancient, Medieval or World War II games. Nevertheless, with the new millennia, things changed drastically. If Warhammer could already count on a well-established pull of supporters, in general, the public had moved elsewhere his interests for their free time and now many newcomers were frightened to the idea of staying systematically bent to the desk, for hours and hours with glue and brush in hand. Regrettably, there is no remedy for this lack of interest even today, nor was there one at the time. The passion and patience for the hobby dwindled down to a very small portion of the public, which is why GW quickly lost interest in this game. WotR remained confined to a niche community of dedicated enthusiasts.

The second one regarded the way GW handled the whole process. The hurry to sell huge quantities led the company from the beginning to press for the creation of army lists which included not only the whole currently available production from the SBG range, but also the numerous new additions made specifically for the new game. This wide range of units would have required an equally long playtesting phase to present a balanced finished product. We can assume that at the beginning of the process it was planned to resolve the issue of the refinement of the game system with the release of subsequent editions, taking advantage of player’s feedbacks. However, the game developers were almost immediately liquidated, therefore the second phase was never realized. The consequences were that WotR was born unbalanced and has remained as such without remedy for years, discouraging not only the potential new players, but also a broad part of whom had initially welcomed with enthusiasm the new game system.

Nonetheless, there had been feedbacks from the community, but it remained mostly unheeded by the publisher. It was only a matter of time before someone attempted to remedy by his own. During the years many expert players proposed game improvements: from the more circumscribed but very popular Home Rules by Xelee, fixing only the most obvious issues, to some unofficial “2nd Editions” like the ones from Bairchoro, Abersk93, Jay White and Daersalon. All these efforts, commendable and very important for the growth of awareness on the issues to be resolved, had one major flaws: the amateur level, given by the fact that they have been made by single individuals. This made it impossible for the players to decide together which one to adopt.

Creating the Second Edition

This Second Edition of the game has been developed with a professional approach and is driven by the ambition and hope to be adopted, if not "officially", at least by the community of WotR players. Two working groups with different roles were organized to achieve the best possible product. The first is the Development Group. It consisted of three members, Abersk93, Hurin63 and Malu, and was responsible for outlining a comprehensive draft regulation. The changes have been discussed, tried on the table, submitted to third parties for consultation, discussed again in the group and finally approved. The second was the Review Group. It intervened on the first draft of the regulation, analyzing it in depth, and then submitting to the DG a series of specific critical observations. This group was composed by Dreadaxe, Aragorn10 and Picchiofanatico. This was a critical phase, because the expert eye that saw the new regulation for the first time could spot things from a completely different perspective than the one who developed it. Therefore, it was able to identify problems that went unnoticed and suggested solutions not previously considered. Once the individual reports of the members of the RG were obtained, these have been analysed and discussed by the DG, which reviewed the draft carefully taking the reports into account. In this way, the regulation reached the final form and has been made available to the public in its final version, the 2.0. It also provides for a subsequent development over the years with additional versions, building on the feedback that players will want to provide in evidence of new facts and playtesting.

What’s in the Second Edition?

This work aimed to make a few modifications to the game system, focusing primarily on the core issues of imbalance. This imbalance primarily results from army list point cost and certain special rule combinations that can create unbeatable armies on the table. With regard to this most important aspect, the work of the DG has followed different guidelines: the costs of the units, the effects of the special rules, the effects of the actions of the heroes, and the effects of the spells. A calculation algorithm based on the average price of the original units has been developed to establish more correct and balanced unit costs. It is an empirical system, very effective and reliable in 80% of cases. But not in an uncontrolled way: the remaining 20% are manly due to units that are at the extremes of power level (too weak or too strong), most particularly companies consisting only of heroes. In these cases, the cost audit was based on common sense and experience.

The special rules, both those of the companies and those of the heroes extended to all their peculiar actions, represent at the same time one of the greatest strengths of WotR and its delicate point against balance. Here the work was both to correct the most obvious imbalances, and to prevent the possibility of too powerful combinations. For example: the Extremely Hard to Kill rule has been slightly weakened, and conversely Hard and Very Hard to Kill have been slightly enhanced. The actions of the heroes have been touched very little, because they represent the most peculiar part of the game, except only to correct the most obvious errors; for example, two “Counsellors” can no longer increase each other’s Might.

However, three completely new actions have been introduced dedicated to legendary heroes in order to make Legendary formations more attractive, because the latter have proven to be unpopular so far. Also, some spells have been made less powerful and some characters have also been modified, specializing more in the use of magic. In addition, the heroes' ability to resist spells has been slightly enhanced.

As far as the regulation itself is concerned, corrective action has been taken and only a few important amendments have been introduced. In general, the adjustments are aimed at improving the mechanics of the game especially from the point of view of the player’s expectation.

The game was aimed at making the rules as simple as possible not to discourage the neophyte, and this led to some rather rigid solutions. In the new edition, instead, a more realistic approach was preferred. For example, artillery still cannot move, but now at least it can rotate to change the firing sector. In the same vein also the four most important changes made to the system. The Movement, first of all. It was very simple, a formation moved back and forth, right and left at the same speed; now it is no longer so, soldiers move at full speed only in the visual arc. Then the maneuver. Previously, the formations had great difficulty turning to the side (but not to the back!), they were even unable to do so with an enemy nearby; so once taken on the flank (but not behind!) they were doomed. The Fall Back Movement, instead, was a rule of very little use. Therefore this rule was transformed, without prejudice to its original function, also and above all to allow formations to change facing and shape. Another highlight, the flying monsters in the base game behaved like chickens, taking a short flight to move from one point to another and then remaining on the ground for the rest of the turn; now they really fly. Finally, the dice rolls. In WotR spending Might points it is always possible to "buy" a roll of nut, changing its result; who arranges armies with heroes loaded with Might practically never risks the failure of a roll of nut. Then, to re-establish a minimum of fatality in this field, it was established that a result of "1" cannot be changed, but instead always leads to failure.

A final aspect of the job done is the expansion of the army list. Since 2009 there have been many new modelling productions on Middle-Earth, both from GW and independent third parties. And most importantly, the Hobbit trilogy came out. A census of the new models which have become available on the market in recent years has been carried out and transformed into new WotR units. The most preeminent share of course is made by the armies and the heroes of The Hobbit; but there are also many other new profiles in the army list that are headed to The Lord of the Rings range.

In conclusion, the goal of this new edition of the rule book is to improve WotR in all its aspects and make it interesting again for the players. The ambitious hope is that it will meet the general consensus and be widely adopted, including worldwide.

Playing the Second Edition

The aim of the Second Edition was to change as little as possible from the original rulebook. For those who are already familiar with the game, as published by GW, we have marked the text from the original book in black, while the modified text of the version 2.0 is highlighted in Blue, thus allowing for a quick comparison of the changes between the two versions. The text added from the last available collection of official FAQs and Errata (V1.2 2011) is highlighted in Green.

If you have never played a tabletop battle game before, there is no need to be overwhelmed by the amount of rules or the level of modelling needed. The basics of the game are relatively easy to learn and the more detailed special rules can be added once you’re comfortable with the core mechanics of moving, shooting, charging and fighting. Similarly, don’t be daunted by having to paint all your models straight away; our first games were played with unpainted miniatures. Likewise, acquiring or making a gaming board is not a prerequisite — playing across a kitchen table with piled books representing hills will still allow for exciting battles and is how most of us started. 

In WotR models are organized into units called "formations", each of these is composed by "companies" – two cavalry or eight infantry models per company. These companies are placed on trays or bases which can either be bought or be custom made out of thin card, wood or plastic. Trays not only allows quick movement of models but are also useful to keep track of casualties. Models are not required to be glued onto the movement trays, so they can be used to play different games like the MESBG.

Lastly, keep in mind that the economic cost of assembling an army to play War of the Ring can be reduced drastically by acquiring the models from flea markets, third party companies or using 3d prints. To play War of the Ring, you do not necessarily have to assemble a mighty force counting thousands of models; it is possible to deploy an army composed by just three formations and one Epic Hero (50-60 models in total) when it comes to smaller games!