My very slow-moving run -- really more of a crawl -- through War in Rohan continues with Burning of the Westfold.

I'm missing quite a number of troops and scenery from these early WiR scenarios, which is why it's taking so long to get to them.

If you're curious to see how it played, come on over to

http://davetownsend.org/Battles/LotR-20210602/

Wow, those Rohan houses look amazing! Really nice you got a whole village, they mesh together really well! Visually and thematically this scenario looks and sounds really cool.

With the fire rules I like how it's close to life in the sense that it is generally much easier to destroy something, than to create something. I don't see how trying to extinguish a fire can lead to it becoming permanent though. I am not (yet) very familiar with these fire rules, but maybe it would be more realistic as well as better balanced in the following way:

- Extinguish attempts can no longer make a fire permanent.
- Instead, every turn after the turn an object was set on fire roll a D6, on a 6 the fire becomes permanent. You could potentially increase the odds of this happening every turn thereafter, though that would add some more tracking/bookkeeping.
- After a fire has been extinguished, it becomes harder to re-ignite. So then a 5+ is required, rather than a 4+. Or perhaps a 6 is required after it has been extinguished 2 or more times.

That could incentivise the extinguishers more to keep at it rather than wait for the last turn, while also being more realistic and true to life. Maybe the extinguishers could even pre-emptively throw water on the houses to make it harder for them to catch on fire.

The nice thing about MESBG I think is that it can quite easily be house-ruled to better suit balance / realism/ theme / etc. Of course it would be better if these kind of special rules were effective in those departments in the first place, which doesn't seem to be entirely the case here. I also understand not wanting to add too much complexity, but I feel that would be better than iffy scenario balance because of too simplified rules, which I think is pretty moderately common in a lot of scenarios.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Thanks! I'm pretty happy with the look of the thing. The new playing mat helps a lot, too. The MDF buildings jar a little bit, but they faded into the background soon enough as I was actually playing. The different look was certainly helpful in figuring out where each picture was taken.



That's fair. And making the fire permanence a separate roll would eliminate the hilarious-but-also-eyerolling idea of Guthlaf accidentally throwing gasoline on the fire instead of water.



That's a really good idea. Presumably you're dousing the flames with water, and wet wood is harder to light. Makes sense, and wouldn't add much in the way of new rules or record-keeping.

I get that GW doesn't want to set up a complete new fire subsystem into the game. But given that "burning down houses" shows up in elsewhere, too (e.g. Scouring of the Shire), and doesn't seem to really work there either, maybe a few more optional/advanced rules wouldn't hurt.



I agree with both those sentiments. I do realize that this is probably a minority opinion in the community, but: the narrative scenarios are the main reason I buy the supplements. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to hope that they've actually been playtested at least a few times and obvious problems ironed out.

Since we're all human, a few issues will always get through of course -- I'm still finding typos in my old battle reports despite proof-reading them multiple times before I post!

.

There does seem to be more of that than I'd like. And I get that exact 50/50 balance is neither desirable, nor interesting, nor even possible in a game with dice. But when it seems mathematically impossible for one side to win a scenario, that's a design problem.

Another temptation on buying one of the Rohan house kits. I have some that I built myself but I can see how that fit in with others. Agree with you that the Dunlending just look like a variation of the Rohan models, need to go back and read some more on them, I always felt they wouldn't have been so armored.

Nice report, did you see that there will be an anime movie - The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, focusing on Helm Hammerhand?

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Re: War of the Rohirrim: I hadn't seen that. I wonder if GW will have any tie-in material?

More info
https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2021/0 ... dle-earth/

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks for the link. Good to see Philippa Boyens on board(ish) as a sign of keeping in continuity with the films.

I saw no release date though. Is it imminent, or still subject to Development Hell?