The Hobbit

Well the worst kept secret since the last worst kept Games Workshop secret is out... yes, they're doing a game based on the Hobbit. I can hear the gasped shocks at the back of the room, and yes, I know, I didn't see that one coming either. OK, so I'll turn the sarcasm down a notch or three, because actually I'm not feeling all negative Nelly about it. True I'm not over the moon, frothing at the mouth and salivating like a starving man staring at a juicy T-bone stake cooked medium-rare, with peppercorn sauce... mmm. I'll let you all into a secret though, despite my floppy Finecast Gandalf I'm actually quite a fan of the Lord of the Rings range of miniatures. Arguably the painter in me feels it was the best range of miniatures Games Workshop have done so far. There were certainly some startlingly good miniatures amongst them... as well as some duffers... yeah I'm talking about the wonky faced Legolas from the Mines of Moria boxed set. However, I did pick up a few pieces and paint them from time to time simply for fun. So the prospect of new miniatures being added to the range is at least appealing to me on some level.

LotR's wasn't as rubbish as many people made out.

The bigger shock though, I'm sure for many of you, will be that I actually quite liked the Lord of the Rings game when it first came out. No, I wasn't duped by 50% off staff discount (although it helped) and being force fed White Dwarf. Nope I actually felt the game was quite good fun when it was played as it was clearly intended, as a small narrative based skirmish game. Honestly when playing things like the Attack at Weathertop missions et al, the game was actually really entertaining. I actually enjoyed it so much I was insane enough to volunteer being the intro games guy on launch day... and you know what? I enjoyed it despite not getting a lunch break due to the never ending queue. Where I personally think the game went wrong for me was the over saturation of LotR product that they brought out, and the fact they started trying to treat the game like one of their normal wargames, with factions and army lists and... blah. Didn't work for me, and I'm not sure the universe, or indeed the 'factions' lend themselves that well to a typical wargame product. Hence I think the reason they went for a narrative game the first time round.
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