Alessio Cavatore

Alessio: Well, it's done! Shadow & Flame, the first supplement for our The Lord of The Rings strategy battle game, is a reality and is now out for release. In the following notes I will try to explain why this book has been the most difficult of my career, but also why it is the one I am most proud of.

THE QUEST FOR THE SUPPLEMENTS BEGINS

You see, until now I've been writing army books for Warhammer and that certainly isn't an easy task, but at least it is a task where the objective is clear. We all have an idea of what an army book is: it gives you first and foremost an army list to field the models of a specific Warhammer race, the special rules for such a race and all its unique troops, background information, alternative lists and painting and modelling tips. It's therefore clear what you want to achieve, and the challenging part is to make sure that all these elements are presented in an exciting and balanced manner.

This wasn't the case with the completely new The Lord of The Rings game – no supplements had been published before, so there was no template to work from.

The new literary licence that Games Workshop has managed to acquire from Tolkien Enterprises gives us far more scope in what we can do. We can now produce material based not only on what is shown on the film, but on the novel's contents too. That sounds exciting, but as you can imagine it can also be a daunting prospect, within the huge breadth of Tolkien's masterpiece, to have to decide exactly what these new supplements will be like and what would they be about. As my boss Gordon Davidson immediately pointed out – "with great power comes great responsibility" (he's a bit of a Spiderman fan, you see...), and the scary task of putting together a set of proposals for these supplements was given to me, in my role as newly-appointed Ringbearer. Before I continue, I'd like to ask you to stop reading for a second and try to put yourselves in my shoes – what would you have done? What would you have liked these supplements to be like?

There were several different ways open in front of me, and I have to admit that at the beginning I was tempted to 'play it safe' and go for the 'army book' format. If, for example, I decided to have a book on the Elves, one on the Orcs, one on Men and so on, I would have tread on well-known ground and my job would have been easier. I considered this prospect first, and finally decided to shy away from it. My problem with 'army book' style supplements is that our The Lord of The Rings game is different in nature from our other core games. It is of course a skirmish system, but first and foremost it is a scenario-based game. As a result of this, players often collect models from more than one race, because they need both Good and Evil models to play the scenarios. In fact, individual races and armies are not as clearly defined as in our other games (an Orc, for example, could be part of either Sauron or Saruman's forces, and that difference can be easily marked out with a different paint job).

I like this uniquely distinctive style and I absolutely wanted to maintain it.

Keeping in mind all these considerations, I decided that my favourite solution for our The Lord of The Rings supplements, the one I would put forward to the 'Powers That Be' (PTB) for approval, was going to be the 'gazetteer' approach.

WHAT'S A GAZETTEER?

Well, the word gazetteer reminds me (and probably other veteran gamers too) of those sourcebooks that collected a great deal of information about a particular setting for role-playing game adventures. I thought that a similar format would be perfectly suitable for our new The Lord of The Rings supplements. I figured that each supplement should be based on either a geographic area (Mirkwood, Gondor, Mordor...) or an historical event of a certain importance in Tolkien's works (the Last Alliance, the War of the Ring, the taking of Dol Guldur by the forces of the White Council...). I imagined that these books should provide the reader with the following contents:

• Background: information on the place/event the book is focusing on.
• Scenarios: possibly linked together, capturing the atmosphere of the place/event.
• Rules: for the new troop types included in the scenarios, for both Good and Evil.
• Modelling and painting: suggestions and examples for the new models.

Sounds good for a start, doesn't it? And of course I'd make sure that each supplement would include at least one map. I adore maps. Why is it that maps of fantasy realms have the power of keeping me enthralled for hours, daydreaming about travelling through mysterious lands? How evocative are the names found on those charts? Or is it just me?

Next: New Stuff?