Sadly, I don't think the SBG has any real future beyond the end of the Hobbit trilogy.

GW has long since proven that they are totally incapable of generating and maintaining enough interest in the SBG range from existing and potential customers to sustain the range in the long term. They are now 100% reliant on the short-term hype generated by Peter Jackson's two trilogies. When that ends, the SBG range will crash once again.

I expect the SBG and WOTR will be, at best, specialist games in 5 years time - if they havn't already been discontinued. After the Hobbit trilogy is old news, the range will pretty quickly return to the state it was in during the long 10 years or so between the two trilogies - i.e. with very few players, low sales, zero coverage in White Dwarf, barely a single wave of releases a year at best, and being treated with utter contempt once again by Warhammer and 40K players calling for the SBG to be abandoned so GW can devote yet more time to making, remaking, repainting and tinkering with their Space Marines.

The difference is, this time there won't be the life support effect of the possibility of another wave of Middle Earth movie hype for GW to cash in on. The Tolkien Estate is unlikely to authorise further movies in the near future, due to Christopher Tolkien's hostility and contempt for Peter Jackson's movies. We're unlikely to see new movies within the next 10 years, and by the time Christopher dies or gives up control of the Estate GW will probably have dropped the range as it will no longer be profitable for them.

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Which is a sad thing, it's BY FAR the best game of theirs. Gotta build my collection while I still can

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I know I agree by fa their best range. It's even quite realistic fantasy, compared to one of the warhammers (can't remember which one) has orcs (or orks) with laser guns. !!??

Warhammer 40k, but it is played 40.000 years in the future.
And orks don't have laser guns, normal old fashioned guns most of the time.
But I get your point.

Do you think this is due to lack of effective promotion? I always wondered why SBG wasn't that popular.

probably. Most kids in my GW play 40k, but there are no fantasy/ 40k guys at my school. They're all with the SBG. What a lucky co-incidence!

Yes and no. A decline in popularity was always inevitable after the end of the first movie trilogy. The game is a movie tie in after all, and without the hype of the movies fresh in the general publics' minds, fewer people sought GW out.

But GW could have prolonged the process, with

-good support for the game in White Dwarf (why not do a big lavish full scale battle report every 6 months - year, A Helms Deep Redux, a new Battle Companies campaign, the Fall of Arnor).

-a few releases every few months, using unexplored material in the books and maybe even expanding further on such material themselves with original creations (more releases for Arnor perhaps - Royal Guards, mounted scouts/rangers, a plastic set of Arnor warriors with choice of sword spear shield).

-an actually sane pricing structure. Prices have doubled and sometimes even tripled since I began playing.

Instead it seems to me that GW saw falling sales, and decided to give up and do the bare minimum required to fulfill the licence.

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Why is everyone so pessimistic? After the RotK movie there were at least 7 sourcebooks expanding and providing new material for SBG. The fact they stuck with it for so long kinda indicates that even once the hobbit hype fades, they'll hang onto it for as long as they can (at least 2020 is what ive heard)

Best way to keep SBG alive is to buy from GW and considering my love for the game, I dont mind doing that. When you buy 3rd party minis, you are sentencing SBG to death imo.

Sure, more hobbit/ LotR stuff will become direct only but they will still keep a selection of stuff in store, at least then they have the chance to sell some stuff.

Word on the street is that GW want every current lotr mini in metal converted to finecast by 2015.

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Then I have some time to get the rest hahaha There isn't much missing from the blisters that I haven't got in metal! I will explore the eastern realms aswell as the Kingdoms of Men a little bit-after that I think it's mostly painting for me

What I don't understand is why GW isn't advertising on a more broader spectrum, such as other companies! Doesn't have to be the giant advertising tables at Picadilly Circus, but in shopping malls, cinemas, city centers etc...with their funds, that shouldn't be too much of a problem and you could reach thousands more of potential painters/gamers!

Every LOTR book and DVD set should come with an insert advertising GW's LOTR range.

If I hadn't been introduced to the SBG by a friend 10 years ago, I would never have heard of it or Gamesworkshop, nor been introduced to the miniature painting and wargaming hobby. Not once have I ever seen an advert for GW outside its own media.

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This works for me also. Interest in the films made me then get the books in audio format (too lazy to read ) and then get into this game. They would probably be doing each other a favour in the long run by advertising each others products.

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"They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard-gard-gard-g-gard"

@Theodred, I think you have very poor timing in starting up your collection again. You're getting less minis for double the price, and you have Finecast that has replaced metal.

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My Lotr backlog: 305/952[][][][][][][][][][]32% completed
Painting Lineup: Mumakil x2, Rohan Heroes x8, Haradrim, SKoDA

Because the Hobbit movies were already a glimmer in everyone's eye. Note what happened though when the fate of the Hobbit movies became in doubt and were delayed, they let everything slide and did only extremely minor adjustments.

If they really wanted to promote this game, every issue of WD would have, at a minimum, a new scenario show-casing a specific army, hero, time period, geography, or whatever. I don't expect any life for this product after H3...which is fine with me: it's a timeless game, I'll have all the figures I currently want, and GW will get no more money from me for their other games. If they supported the game I'd definitely buy a WD to get scenarios, and that might spur me to get figures I otherwise don't have (fiefdoms, Arnor). Their loss.

I think they need to introduce new things into games. They need to bring back Battle Companies (with a Sourcebook of some kind containing all the options companies have and rules for the possible models), and keep returning interest to other parts of the films/books. They also need to bring out new sculpts for some of the original models (the very first goblins and high elves for example) so people can plausibly create these armies without either having 20 guys in the same pose or converting the majority of the models. They should try to give players more optional/additional parts for plastic models, so players can build up a bitz box for all their additional parts and do as many conversions as they want. I've been collecting/playing SBG since it first came out with FOTR, and I still haven't set aside a bitz box for it. Compared to my 40K bitz boxes that are overflowing with parts, I'd like some customisation for my models beyond a small sprue from BGiME.

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Having been a player of SBG for about eight years now I came into the hobby well after the RotK movie so after much of the ‘hype’ but still in what I consider the prime of the hobby. New models were still being released regularly, the One Ring rules had made it a very tight and well-designed game, the three movie Journeybooks were already out but most of the Sourcebooks were still to come. When that high really started to die down GW tried the WotR system. Although I have some thematic reservations still for the most part it was a fun game and actually encouraged me to get even larger armies and I now have well over 600 models, with only about 1/3 actually painted. The WotR system encouraged most of our local players to grow at least one or two of their main armies to the point we could field them at about 1000points in WotR, sometimes 2000. That’s a lot of models. But then the prices went up and it pretty much killed interest in anything more than making due with finishing backlogs (which we are all sitting on like dragon’s gold).

I think GW will ride out the Hobbit films and the trailing energy well. With the third film being pushed out to Dec’14 and the DVD/BR for that coming the following spring they are probably good riding that wave through Christmas of 2015. After that it will start to taper off again and if they don’t come up with some new Sourcebook material *** that is well themed ***. Every now and then GW’s creativity makes me shudder so the more often they are left to their own devices the greater the chance of it going bad. Middle Earth is not WH/40K and is a far more subtle world than some of their creative staff is used to.

I think GW did a decent job evolving the SBG rules from the OR to the Hobbit edition and so far haven’t seen anything about the core rules that feel ‘broke’, but then we haven’t really used the new magic or special weapon strike rules much yet (only 2 games so far). I would be very concerned that if they tried a third revision in any way to rekindle life they’d probably screw something up. There’s not much room left for tuning things without adding unnecessary complexity.

I don’t want to see the system die early, especially if there are still Tolkien-cannon or at least WELL THEMED Tolkien-inspired models and Sourcebooks that GW can deliver and make some money on. But if they can’t get new source material from the Tolkien estate and they keep coming up with things on their own it’s going to spoil eventually or just die out from lack of ideas. I’d rather see the license well exercised by GW to the point JUST BEFORE they bork it and then let it die. If they can make that happen for four or five more years that’s awesome. But I will start getting nervous around the summer of 2016 if the last Hobbit film is in theaters December 2014 since that is probably when they will have exhausted the new material from the films. After all, the second film is still nine months away and they are already releasing models for it. That’s like borrowing credit.

There are players that will only collect and play while it’s a ‘live’ game and when things stop they’ll look for another system and sell off their collections. That’s too bad for them but will keep the second-hand market well-supplied for a long time to come and at prices far more reasonable. I have a few games from my own childhood, many of them no longer published, that I held onto and am now introducing to my kids as they are growing up. I will hold onto my LotR collection and continue to play it with my friends and children (and hopefully my grandchildren in a couple decades) long after GW has abandoned things. Tolkien gave us a wonderful world. Peter Jackson gave us an amazing view into that world. Games Workshop gave us a solid, fun system with beautiful models so we can experience that world. But Tolkien only wrote so much, and Jackson can only give us six films (and hopefully thousands more hours of background material!). Likewise GW can only give us so much while remaining true to the source material and that is inevitable.

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That is what I was really hoping for with the release of the Hobbit, but in my area it never really happened. I still think SBG is one of the best systems for just picking up and having fun. I won't give up on trying to convert people into playing.

As for continued GW support I am not optimistic. I think there will be planned releases with new movies, but little more. It is a real shame because it is the ultimate GW gateway game. I would love to see another boxset, or even a boardgame (in the spirit of SpaceHulk) to help drive some more players