If you’ve been reading the blog for any amount of time, you’ll have noticed I’ve been working on a Rivendell army for the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game for about 3 years. I was a bit of a late comer to The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game as it was called back then. Though I’ve been a life-long Tolkien fan ever since I first saw The Hobbit cartoon by Rankin Bass. My mind was further blown open when I discovered the sequel The Return of the King. Eventually I read the books and loved the films when they came out. That time period was the Dark Age of Gaming for me, when I wasn’t playing anything. Shortly after The Return of the King came out I got back into board games and I remember seeing the Games Workshop minis in game stores. I kind of rolled my eyes at the time, a licensed version of Warhammer Fantasy, seriously?

Many years and several moves later, my wife and I moved our young family to Pittsburgh, where my wife is from. Having left my WSTZ buddies behind in Austin, I was looking for new people to push minis around with. I wasn’t interested in trying more mainstream games like Warhammer 40,000 or Age of Sigmar at the time, so when I saw a guy offering to run demos of the LotR game, I got in contact. I have long been fascinated by the old Games Workshop Historical game Legends of the Old West, and when I learned it was based on the LotR rules, I got even more interested.