Warhammer bites the dust..

GWs new LotR unit bases for War of the Ring. Battle of the Last Alliance. Yes!

Despite what some people think the number of armies I am working on does stress me out from time to time so I am very happy to be able to stop work on army forever. This very rarely happens as I sometimes get into something (usually due to reading a book) and start buying figures. I then don't ever want to get rid of something unless I suddenly get keen again (which is why I still have all those Foundry Trojans).

I had been collecting some (well, quite a lot, actually) Warhammer (Fantasy Battles) figures on the basis that my son and I might play in the future. This is because he likes big armies and not skirmishes all the time.

Even I've been known to play this and I hate computer games.

Now, however, Games Workshop have at last announced a mass battles variant for the Lord of the Rings, War of the Ring, due in April. It all sounds rather like Guy's favourite computer game Lord of the Rings: The battle for Middle Earth.

Up until now we have only played the Battle Companies rules which need six or seven figures a side but Guy would rather have some of the famous characters involved, which they aren't. However, in War of the Ring having your heroes in the middle of your units will be important as it effects their fighting abilities. Interestingly, any mention of Battle Companies has disappeared off the GW site (you can't shift much product when you onkly need seven figures a side) so I'm glad I downloaded the pdfs some time ago. No, War of the Ring makes much more commercial sense for GW, as you really can make it like Warhammer and 40,000, where you need bucketloads of really expensive figures.

The real bonus for me is that many of the LotR figures are really quick to paint given the film costume designers' limited and muted palate. Lots and lots of black, basically. The result of which is that I can paint 12 Uruk Hai in a day, as I did yesterday.

The upshot of all of this is is that I am going to sell all my boxes of Warhammer figures. I only liked the Dwarves really and you can have these in LotR. Hooray, more space and less stress!