Games Workshop

The Lord Of the Rings
The Return of the King - Strategy Battlegame

If you are anything like me, and my kids, you were waiting with barely suppressed emotion for the full cinema release of the final part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. And there is no doubt at all, that what will prove to be the stupendous battle scenes will create an uncontrollable desire to recreate the action on the wargames table. Well those friendly folk at Games Workshop have decided to help us out and have released a horde of goodies for us to add to our must have lists. 

First up is the Boxed battlegame which includes a selection of individually unique warriors of Gondor, 12 to a sprue, and two sprues per box, including spearsmen, archers and swordsmen. All are plastic and, as has become the norm with this excellent range, are very finely detailed, and presented in a range of realistic poses. The spearsmen are cast with separate arms which allows for further variety in the model poses.

The face these forces of good in the start of a horde of Orcs of Mordor. Again 24 models cast in plastic with spearsmen having separate arms and pole weapons. These are a really villainous and evil looking crew, less finely detailed and more like mutated lumps than some of the previous releases, just right as the spawn of the Dark Lord, though you need to obtain a lot more of these models to obtain the correct effect for the battles. If I am to have a moan about anything though the mould lines on these models are likely to cause problems as cleaning them may mean hacking into the detail. Samples of these models have been passed on to Steve Crofts who, given time off for Christmas (the poor hardworking soul), will produce one of his painting reports asap!

Accompanying these warrior is a set of rules, which pull together the previous sets and introduce new characters and amendments based on the New film. But it does not stop there, and widens its scope to include the whole War of the Ring as mentioned in Tolkien's works, and includes a number of playable scenarios for the gamer to tackle. The book goes on to present valuable painting and modelling information that will benefit the new gamer and the old, and have certainly inspired me to have a go at some new terrain pieces. The rules themselves a quick and easy to pick up with a whole variety of optional rules that can be introduced by more experienced players as their skills develop. Of course the volume is packed with excellent colour pics of a host of superbly painted models, so good they make you want to spit!

The boxed set also includes dice, and some useful plastic terrain features to add to your battlefield, as well as a twee little ring of power. The cost for this beautifully presented box set is £40, a reasonable price when you compare it with the cost of any board game in a toy shop.

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