On the way home from work yesterday, I dropped by the FLGS and picked up Games Workshop's latest - a scenario/guide book supplement for their LoTR Strategy Battle Game - The Fellowship of the Ring.  Unfortunately, he didn't have my Uruk Hai warriors, but that's ok, I have plenty of painting to keep me busy.

As I may have mentioned in another post, GW is "re-launching" their LoTR game, and instead of just releasing boxed game sets, they're starting to do a more typical release that includes rule books, supplements, and miniatures as separate parts.  As a new (ish) LoTR player, this makes my life easier.

The FoTR book is a supplement in the way that D&D "Class" books and modules are supplements to their game systems.  The book contains a series of terrain building projects, painting and color guides, and 18 battle scenarios to play with that terrain and some suitable figures.  The scenarios are all scenes from the movie and/or novel FoTR, and you can re-fight, for example, the fight at Balin's Tomb, the flight from Bree, the Barrow Wights, Gandalf Vs. The Balrog, and even Bormir's swan song at Amon Hen.

What's fun about some of the scenarios is that they are generally put into a larger picture.  A good example is the Gandalf vs. the Balrog thing.  The Balrog fight isn't the objective of the scenario.  If the Good player is lucky enough, Gandalf will never actually have to fight the Balrog, so he might live on.  But odds are, there's gonna be a showdown.  All of the scenarios are like that, and all of them seem like they'll require some luck and good tactics by The Fellowship to get through them intact.

The book has rules to string the scenarios together into a campaign in which you keep damage and stuff from one encounter to the next.  So if Samwise gets cacked by a Nazgul on the way to Rivendell, then you won't have him for the rest of the campaign.  And if Frodo bites it, you lose.  Or win, if you're playing the Forces of Darkness.  In a campaign, you can heal some damage between scenarios, and in some cases you reach a "haven" (like Rivendell) where you'll be completely recharged.  Although it will take a lot of building, buying and painting, FoTR looks like it has a lot of fun gaming potential in it.

I can't wait to see what they do for the other two novels. 

As I've mentioned earlier, I'm totally geeking out on this for some reason.  I mean sure, I was a fan of the books and movies, but not a super geekboy fan.  But hey, it's fun, so it can't be all bad, right?