Imagine Faramir leading a daring band of Rangers of Gondor on a raid deep into Mordor, seeking to cause mayhem and disrupt the deployment of the Haradrim. Picture Lurtz leading his rampaging Uruk-hai in pursuit of the Fellowship, crashing across Rohan and clashing with enemy scouts. These small battles are what inspire us to play The Lord of The Rings. In addition, clubs always have chaps who want to play a quick game but find it difficult to set-up for a fixed scenario without quite a bit of preparation. Being of a lazier disposition I wanted to address these challenges.

Wanting to fight short battles with The Lord of The Rings, use cool heroes and still get a game in under an hour meant that we had to devise some fast-play scenario rules. These are our suggestions for playing War Party games that simulate small clashes between the various armies on Middle-earth.

The greatest strengths of War Party battles are that you can fight with any force, even Good versus Good or the like, and that the games take only a short time to play. This makes War Party battles great for office lunch breaks, school club meetings and a quick 'knock about' after work.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The Lord of The Rings War Party battles are played with forces drawn using the following guidelines:

• Players have not more than 250 points to spend on their force.
• Each force must consist of at least 5 models and can include a maximum of 30 models.
• Each force must include a hero to lead it into battle.
  1. If your hero is a named character you may only have this single hero to lead your force. You may not take any other hero in your force.
  2. If you do not take any named hero you may take up to TWO heroes, although neither of these heroes may be named.
• No more than a third (33%) of each force's models can be armed with bows or crossbows.
• Evil forces cannot include Gollum or Gríma Wormtongue.
• Good forces cannot include Tom Bombadil or Goldberry.
• Heroes, such as Galadriel, that have special rules related to a specific location always count as "beyond the borders of their realm" if used.
• Whenever any rule is repeated in several publications, use the 'The Return of The King' edition rules.

Special Note: Rohan Cavalry

• Only the Riders of Rohan models that are actually firing a bow count as being armed with bows. All the Riders that are carrying a bow on their back do not count as being armed with a bow. Note that their points cost remains the same.

SCENARIOS

Battles need a scenario suitable for the forces involved. We have devised some general notes to bear in mind for any War Party battle. We have also devised a sample scenario for you to try.

• When you set up a War Party battle, for the purposes of the rules, designate one player as the Good force and the other as the Evil force. Of course, the forces might both be Good in the rulebook, but this is a convention to make life easier.
• If two players bring the same named hero to the battle then they must dice-off to see what happens. Each player rolls a dice, with the highest winning.
• The winner may use the hero as usual.
• The loser will count the hero model as a Captain of the same (or nearest) race as the named character. For example, Aragorn becomes a Captain of Gondor.
• The loser may (if they have the models) take the difference in points value between the original hero and the Captain as extra replacement models. The Captain and the new models cannot cost more than the points value of the original named hero being replaced. The restrictions for War Parties apply as usual.
• In War Party battles, the first turn's priority does not automatically go to the Good side. It is instead determined randomly by rolling a dice: the player who scores the highest gets priority for the first turn (re-roll any ties).

Next: Putting it all Together.