he First Edition of The Lord of The Rings Strategy Battle Game came out more than 3 years ago and was the beginning of something new and very special for Games Workshop. This edition was called The Fellowship of The Ring. Since then, there have been further editions of The Lord of The Rings game, including The Two Towers and The Return of The King. Each version has improved on the rules and added new characters and models to the game, allowing players to fight ever more exciting battles set in Middle-earth.

A chance to revisit The Fellowship of The Ring emerged with the release of the new edition of The Lord of The Rings Strategy Battle Game rulebook. The end result is the most in-depth The Lord of The Rings supplement yet.

SETTING THE SCENE
Dominic Murray & Mark Jones

ominic Murray is the newest member of the Design Studio Hobby Team and had a key role in the writing of The Fellowship of The Ring. "It's important to know that this is the first in a new series of books," Dom says. "The Fellowship of The Ring will, of course, be followed in time by The Two Towers and The Return of The King." Dom continues to explain that the supplements will allow the Design Team to revisit old favourites from the films and tell all the stories in more detail. Each of the supplements will build on the last and introduce more skills and more complex modelling projects.

Dom continues, "The Fellowship of The Ring supplement teaches you to paint the models, create awesome scenery, and re-enact all the major battle scenes from the books and films. You'll start by drybrushing Ringwraiths and flocking a board, but soon you'll have painted the whole Fellowship, built Balin's Tomb, reproduced the watchtower of Amon Sûl, and put together loads of other great scenery too."

Like most people who have had input on the project, Dom is especially keen on the scenery for the Fellowship's perilous flight from Dwarrowdelf. "It's the way it all came together that is so good. It's really, really simple, and it looks stunning." The walkways and steps that create the Dwarrowdelf scenery were actually Mat Ward's idea, Dom tells us. "He had this crazy idea for the board, that he'd tried to explain several times. Nobody had really figured out what he meant until he showed us his idea in a design meeting. He made a mock-up to show us how it would work, and it really does. The scenery you make for your Balin's Tomb board becomes the walkways of Dwarrowdelf and then the Bridge of Khazad-dûm."

A variety of terrain projects from The Fellowship of The Ring.

The reusable nature of the scenery is something that continues throughout the supplement. Very few items in the book are one-use-only. "When I spend time and money making something, I want to know I am going to get good use out of it," Dom says. "The terrain in this book is reusable. Even Amon Sûl can be broken up so that you can use it as Númenórean ruins. If gamers build their scenery collections up as they go, there are going to be some really great looking games of The Lord of The Rings being played out there."

All of the scenery that appears in The Fellowship of The Ring book has been worked on, at some point, by scenery guru Mark Jones – a real veteran of the Hobby Team. His role in the project was to come up with simple and effective ways of making all the scenery such that it could be reproduced effectively in stages by the rest of the Hobby Team.

"Coming up with the different terrain pieces was easy, since all the terrain for the scenarios was already described." Mark says, "The idea behind it all is beautifully simple. Even total beginners can tackle the stuff at the beginning of the book – painting a board and carving a hill out of polystyrene. Hopefully, soon they will have developed the skills and confidence to tackle the more challenging things like Amon Sûl."

The ruined watchtower of Amon Sûl atop Weathertop. Click to enlarge.

Amon Sûl, set on the hill of Weathertop, is the scene of the epic confrontation between Gandalf and the Nazgûl, and the attack of the Ringwraiths on Strider and the Hobbits. "To make Amon Sûl, we studied the scenery piece made by Forge World and used that to get an idea for how we would make our own," Mark tells us. "I started by making a basic mock-up and broke that down into obvious sections. Once I was confident that I had it right, I sat down with Steve, Dominic, and Adi (the rest of the Hobby Team) and got their input on it too. We tried hard not to make it too complex and used tricks like adding the plastic king statue that comes in the Ruins of Middle-earth scenery set. It looks good, and it's a lot easier than carving your own!"

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