But over the course of those last official releases and then influx of new stuff ported from WotR, GW has set an entirely new baseline for troops in SBG. Originally, F3 was a basic troop, F4 would be the more capable warriors. Fight 5 and/or 2 attacks were reserved for the most elite troops (including Elves) or getting into Heroes.

Now, if you play SBG F4 is the new baseline with the older F3 models becoming inferior to the point that they really don't match up. There are models with multiple attacks or higher strength that pushed those original core troops even further down the ladder.

It's not so much that they have introduced new things to spice up the game, but rather when they do they often creep the stats up (or add some special rule) that makes the new stuff just a little better than what is already out there to encourage sales. After all, why buy new models if they aren't significantly better than your existing force? And if you're happy with your existing armies, but now players are fielding these upgraded units you had better go out and spend more money again to keep up with the arms race. Pure and simple it's a business ploy. B must be better than A. C must be better than B.

If you take a look at just the MoM or OR rules and all the profiles in those you will see that there was really no army that was significantly better or worse than any other. Well played you could win a points match against any other army in the book. What we have now though are several years of additions that have resulted in several armies being left behind. Gondor and Rohan are probably the worse victims of the bunch with their basic troops either needing to be level set with the new baselines or else reduced in cost, but others are out there as well. Think about how Rohan was supposed to be the most elite horsemen in Middle Earth, but Harad cav are better for the points due to lances and poisoned weapons (and access to spear support for their infantry). I would have really liked to have seen GW take some time to consolidate and level out all the Profiles in SBG before closing its door (mostly) and moving onto WotR. The rules had reached a fine state of tuning with the OR rules so no major work needed there. Just throw all the profiles down and readjust stats up or down a little with some minor point tweaks to smooth out the major bumps.

We can always hope they do something like this with the Hobbit release. SBG is still one of the best games I've played (and that does cover a lot of games) for its scope. And regardless of anything else, it's gaming in Middle-Earth. I think GW should do its best to stick to the core Tolkien forces and themes in such regard. If all these "extras" they have come up with were so much better than what we already knew about, the leaders of Good and Evil would have tossed out all their useless warriors we read and loved for decades in favor of these mighty forces that have somehow remained unknown until GW's brilliance discovered them.

(sorry for the sarcastic end...not intended to any readers in particular...just GW's Profile gate keepers)

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

You make some very good points, Beowulf. I would really love to see GW do an updated version of the One Rulebook. This would give them a chance to incorporate all of the new profiles and update some of the older ones. They could include the army lists, terrain generators and scenarios from LoME, and really create an all-encompassing SBG essentials book. They have shown with some of the newer WH Core Rulebooks that they can produce some really nice, larger bound books. Of course, that is if they wish to maintain the current business model. Ideally, I’d love to see them go a living/virtual rulebook. With technology as it is today, it would be very easy to maintain an up-to-date manual on a subscription model.

I really don’t mind GW exploring the areas of Middle-earth outside of what we see in the main story, as it helps add character, depth and keeps things interesting, although I do wish that they had kept the new profiles more in-line with the old ones.

On a side note, if I were put in charge of creating this new ORB, I would immediately double the points of all of the profiles, as this would give you a little more room to add a point here and there to help make things a little more fair. When all of your basic warriors are in the 4-10 point range, there’s not much room for diversity, whereas an 8-20 point range would allow for more wiggle room.

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Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies

Hands up if you remember fight 6 high elves

about the rulebook though, IIRC whafrog suggested an iTunes-type system where you can pay to download the rules online. That i think could work well, instead of lugging books around, i.e. the rules + a sourcebook for your army or the WOTR book + battlehosts.

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Backlog reduction Oath Participant

I'd hate it if it all went digital, I prefer everything the old-fashioned way.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

I love physical books, but I'm also very VERY big on electronic media. As long as I don't need some stupid proprietary tool to use it. I'm a system admin and handle some light weight programming on the side and I really like when a publisher releases a physical book that comes with a key to access an electronic version on line with an update subscription for example.

I never bothered doing anything with the MoM rule book because it's already light enough to carry, but I've scanned in my LoME and WotR books and have full PDFs of all of those. I'll get around to doing Battlehosts eventually as well. I have all of these up in a special location I can access via a browser anywhere so I can reference them if needed. I'm also working on a light python/mySQL program on one of my servers to let me do my army building via a web interface and click-to-print (I need to learn CSS...good excuse). So I do embrace and like having the electronic options. But there is a feel I'll never get over to sitting down with a physical book. I would hate to see that go away. But with costs being a factor I'd rather see them produce an e-only version of an updated book rather than drop the SBG line entirely.

I do like the idea of increasing the point values of all models to give more flexibility. I'm not sure you need to double them but a good increase would be nice.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Certainly a wider sub-hero set of points values would be nice.

One of the weaknesses of the current set up is twofold. One they relied on movie ideas before the movies even came out, and the entire hero-heavy nature of the game means that you have lots of armies of warriors who are there to slow down the enemy while the hero does awesome things. However, even in the movies, this isn't always true. The entire opening scene is a thin blue line of Gil-Galad's host facing down a huge orc charge and absolutely massacring them. There's a vast quality disparity between the Elves and Orcs (as there should be). A line of High Elves anchored by Elrond should be one of the most powerful in the game. Its no slouch, certainly, but still and all.

The evil side is all about faceless minions who are fighting out of fear (like the Southrons), fanaticism (like the Orcs) or some form of imperialism (the Easterlings-as-portrayed); the evil side should be all about numerical advantage, coupled with fragile morale, anchored with dark powers. Even the highly disciplined forces like the Uruk Hai (movie versions) should only be so until morale cracks (ala Helm's Deep, movie version).

While to GW constant messing up model stats is a feature, not a bug (they will never, ever, have a basic, working set of stats for anyone, since then you won't rush out and buy other stuff with errata in it), there's certainly room for a bit of cleverness in how the stats and special rules interact, in ways that will still induce people to go buy. Each army should have a clearly define "schtick": Gondor, tough and disciplined, better at defence than offence; Rohan - best horsemen in Middle-earth, fast and dangerous and insanely brave (on the ground, not as good, but still tough, especially with leaders; possibly contrast with a militia stat line who are far more breakable); High Elves - utterly fearless, unbreakable and well used, invincible - though hampered by high points costs. Etcetera, etcetera. Special units, if any, exist to alter that shtick somewhat, but never anything huge. The fun would be in mixing and matching heroes with the right armies, finding interesting combos that fit your playing style as opposed to always trying to chase the power creep.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

While I would LOVE a small force of Gondorians or Rohirrim to be able to hold off two or three times its' number in Orcs, that simply isn't feasible in game terms. How many players would actually spend 2-3 times as much money to get an Evil force? I'm not saying they wouldn't, it would just be comparatively rarer.

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Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

Compare the model count of a Deathwing army with that of a IG or Tyranid army. GW is not afraid to produce horde armies, and some actually enjoy the style of play.

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Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies

Post resurection as now nor Lome is anaivable

Oh wow, and they also just discontinued the last available sourcebook, A Shadow In the East. Now you can only purchase the rulebook, the three journey books, and the War of the Ring books...