SBG Variant?

 

One of the things I've never liked about SBG was the way they handled wizards like Gandalf they were reduced to a couple of special rules. I hated that. Llama of Llama's War of the Ring has been talking about his house rule changes to that long defunct GW product War of the Ring this got me into reading those rules. I only really skimmed them when the first came out. I've fallen in love with the magic system in WOR. Wait everyone says they are too powerful, yes they certainly are in WOR because of how WOR plays. Like all mass combat systems WOR armies boil down to 4 or 5 large units grouped into companies so one spell can affect 60 models or even more that's just too much. But with SBG and its warband groupings of 12 or 1 figure this issue can be avoided that's my theory anyway. Consider a classic evil army with warbands of orcs, warg riders and trolls every evil SBG army will have more than one warband of orcs so only some not all of the orcs can be targeted with any one spell at a given turn and each troll/eagle/ent is its own warband so only one can be targeted at a time. I think using the WOR magic system in SBG will really invigorate spell cast characters.

You may notice that there are two links to Llama's War of the Ring that's because he has a Wordpress and Blogger blog. He has moved back to blogger for blogging and this will be the blog he updates now but he has a lot of great sculpted miniature stuff on his Wordpress blog so check that out too.

Frostgrave

Joe5mc of The Renaissance Troll is the author of Osprey's new fantasy skirmish game Frostgrave. The wargaming community has been looking for a good fantasy skirmish game (at least I have) for some time now this could be it. The frozen city setting takes this away from a run of the mill D&D clone. Northstar is producing a line of figures for Frostgrave the first figure sculpted by Mark Copplestone is pictured above.

Celtic Medieval Designs

 

All of these images came from the Dover clip art book Medieval Ornament. The first two are Mediveval Celtic designs and the one below is the only banner to be found in this particular clip art book. Most of these books like this one includes a cd of all the designs. These can be used to make banners you can find Dover Clip Art at the link.

The Beornings

By Greg & Tim Hildebrant

The Beorning's take their name from their patriarch Beorn who along with his son Grimbeorn are the only know leaders of this race of men. The origins of Beornings are not known, Gandalf believed that the Beorn was either a descendant of the bears who had lived in the Misty Mountains before the arrival of the giants, or was a descendant of the men who had lived in the region before the arrival of the dragons or Orcs from the north. They dwelt in the Vales of Anduin during the Third Age were they guarded the Carrock pass keeping it free of orcs, whom they hated, and levied tolls on travelers. In The Lord of The Rings, Gloin complained that their tolls were high. Beorn carved the stone stairway that leads to the top of Carrock himself.

 By Alan Lee

The Beornings are very large men while not giants they are taller than Gandalf who was a tall man. Beorn in particular was described as being 12 feet or so in height. Beorn could turn into a huge bear when he was angered but it seems that this was a particular trait of his rather than of all Beornings.

The Beornings had an affinity for bears and animals in general they were vegetarians neither eating nor hunting bird nor beast. Beorn's household is served by a staff of talking animals. They are considered excellent bakers, Gimli considered the Beornings the best bakers he knew. The Beornings were well known for their honey-cakes, which they likely made in their bee farms and sold openly to others, at least until the return of Sauron, for then the Beornings no longer trusted strangers and their trade stopped.

Dollar Store Monster

I was in a dollar store the other day and I spied this bag of plastic animals so naturally I had to give it a once over. Yes you guessed it I bought a bag why you ask? There was a nice bear in the bag and I need a giant were bear, one of Beorn's cousins, for my elf army. He's not to bad looking.

Here he is next to my werewolf monster he is bigger than the werewolf but I like it and I got 2 for $1.29. Not bad for a dollar store find.

Here he is next to the RISK black rider.

The bag came with 2 elephants too but I think they are too small to use what do you think?

RISK Lord of the Rings

Way back in 2002 Parker Bros. put out a Lord of the Rings edition of the classic boardgame RISK. I bought the game it was an interesting version of RISK but the best part is the game components.

RISK black Rider

RISK black rider Eureka warg rider

The game has 4 armies 2 good green & blue and 2 evil red & black I'm only going to talk about the evil armies today. Each evil army has 40 moria goblins, 12 black riders (pictured above) and 6 cave trolls. It was the cave trolls that got me thinking about using the these components in my games.

Here are the RISK cave trolls mounted on a warmaster base next to my Eureka man orcs infantry test base. They are of a good size, look great and best of all they are made of hard plastic! That means they are easy to glue and easy to paint. There are a total of 12 cave trolls in one Risk box enough to make 2 cave troll units. I already had the game in my closet so this is a super cheap troll option for me. I have seen the individual army bags selling on ebay for $7 that's one troll unit for $7 still much cheaper than any metal troll options.

The goblins are a good size for my game too but there is only one pose and I want my orc stands to look like undisciplined mobs not regimented units so I'm not sure if I'll use them.

Litko Bases

As you know I'm using the Warmaster system to play my 2nd Age LOTR game. Warmaster was discontinued by GW in 2013. That's ok as I'm not using GW figures or even using 10mm figures. I'm using 15-20mm figures from all sorts of sources. But I am basing all my units on the standard warmaster 40mm x 20mm base so I needed a source for those. I chose Litko where I can get bags of 50 laser cut plywood 40mm x 20mm bases and 30mm round bases to base my generals & heroes on.

And We're Back

After a hard winter I'm returning to this blog and my Lord of the Rings 2nd Age project. After careful scrutiny of the now impossible to get BOFA (Battle of the Five Armies) rulebook I realize that this will have to be gamed with the Warmaster rules by Rick Priestly. What! that's out of print too! Well actually yes and no the Living (as in further updated) Warmaster rulebook is free to download here. I suggest you also check out Rick's Warmaster page for more goodies. So ladies and Gents you can follow my little project complete with rules and at some point LOTR style army lists. I'll have to make those up in good time I'm afraid.

I will be updating this blog every Sunday from now on thanks for reading.

SBG still alive in the USA!

Hi guys my hobby time has been very limited of late and what time I have had has been devoted to my primary blog fiends in waistcoats. However I will make an effort to to keep this blog alive with bi-weekly postings. LOTR gaming and SBG in particular has been hit hard by corporate lack of interest but I am aware of a few hardy souls who are keeping SBG alive most notably Scott of Scotts wargaming blog and Ste who game SBG in New Zealand. Well guys I'm happy to say you're not alone anymore deep in the Rocky Mountains of America where the wolves (yup real wolves) roam a fellowship of gamers have pleaded their hearts to SBG. They even put out YouTube bat-rep videos here is there channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOekNA2hfYDGohEPHZ9eP4w
But the really big new is that these hardy souls have put together an old school GW style tournament exclusively for SBG call Madness in the Mountains! Here is their awards video: