War of the Ring Second Edition -- "Lords of Middle-earth" Expansion Announced! Hot

Aw fuck, I should have sold my fucking 1st edition and fucking well upgraded. Fuck.

Matt, my plans are if I dig this expansion, and I very likely will, my 1st edition will shift to being a boxed set for the Battles games. I don't think those are being reprinted at all.

EDIT: Also, if I understand it right, all you need is the upgrade kit, and you will be ok to play all future expansions. So there's a much cheaper option for you.

How does this pan out if you have CE?

Um...not well, I guess. CE was a one-time thing and new material will be compatible with either 2nd Edition or 1st edition with Upgrade Kit.

It sucks, but to do a CE-specific expansion, they would take a bath on costs since they'd have to do a relatively small print run. It would end up being so expensive, relatively speaking (who would pay a couple of hundred bucks for an expansion?) and they'd likely get stuck with them (they're no good to the regular folk.)

I'm a newcomer on the War of the Ring boardgame bandwagon and I was wondering if somebody could give me a couple of quick and dirty answers. What are the purpose of the 'Upgrade Kit' and 'Card Box and Sleeves'? Also, what is the relationship of Fantasy Flight Games to this title? I thought they had published the game in the US, but I keep seeing the Ares Game tag associated with the 2nd Edition.

I'm hoping to get a copy of this when I get my annual bonus check next Friday. Hopefully there will still be reasonably priced copies available when the time comes to make the purchase. There looks to be a good amount of copies available presently through Amazon.com for ~$66 with free shipping. Is that a decent deal?

Surely the map is the same and the cards are the same size as CE....the upgrade pack contains the new cards for 2nd edition...so it should be good to go with CE as long as you have 2nd ed upgrade pack..

Or am I thinking wrong??

Y'know Andy, you're probably right. Are the minis in CE the same scale as the base game, only pre-painted? That's the part that I'm not sure about. Even then you're talking aesthetics, which can be tolerated or worked around.

EDIT: @aero--FFG used to have the rights to distribute the game, they never actually manufactured it. The rights reverted to the original owners, who now run Ares. They are handling their own distribution.

If you buy a copy new, you won't need the Upgrade Kit at all (it's to get 1st edition owners compliant with 2nd edition changes.) The tin with sleeves is just a cool way to protect your cards, as they're quite large and when you sleeve them, they need a place to be stored.

If you don't sleeve, you don't need this either.

58-70 bucks is the acceptable price range online it appears, so 66 is right in line with that. And trust me, it is sooooo worth that price, both from a gameplay and components perspective.

The former is to make the 1st edition compatible with the 2nd; the latter is to protect the 2nd edition cards and to offer a place to store them afterward because, IIRC, the sleeved cards won't fit back in the insert. I think, too, that the upgrade kit also uses the tin but includes components 2nd edition owners wouldn't need.

FFG and Nexus, the game's previous publisher, had a working relationship for publishing Nexus games in the US, but Ares does not.

Well, Coolstuffinc is selling the game for around $59, so, yes, the Amazon deal would be in line.

Thanks for the answers Ken and jpat. I'm generally not a 'card sleever' (don't play my games frequently enough to wear the components, and mostly play with my family who are careful enough to take care of things) so I'll probably skip the Card Box, but it does look pretty cool.

I've been wanting to get my hands on this game for years, so I'm excited that a revised edition is available right at the time I'm ready to buy.

Frankly I don't understand why they didn't re-release twilight of the third age. The general vibe on that one was positive.

That's right. If you have the CE and want to use 2nd ed. rules, you just get the upgrade pack and don't use the expansion bits (though the new 2nd ed. expansion may use a lot of the same minis, allowing you to use them again).

Twilight of the Third Age was designed to balance out some issues from 1st Edition, so in any case it was necessary to re-design it (sometime extensively,e.g. Galadriel) for the 2nd Edition.

Plus, we've ideas for adding more stuff to Twilight, and adding more stuff AND redesigning it at the same time would take ages.

So we took a different approach - to take parts of Twilight, expand them, and release them as smaller expansions. We are beginning with Characters, but the other components from Twilight will also be back in the future, further expanded by new stuff. So, there will be for sure another expansion, maybe two.

Also, adding in the expansion to the 2nd edition would have pushed the retail well over $100. At one point early on the speculation was that the new edition would be $60-$70, but it ended up at $90. Granted, the fact that it sold out so quickly would indicate that there is less price sensitivity for this game, but over $100 is still a buzzkill on sales.

I also saw on TOS that the new expansion will not have everything in it from the Third Age - its character based, not factions. So no Dunlendings or Corsairs I am guessing. They are already talking about plans for an expansion beyond this one. While it feels like a bit of an FFG like expansion train for the money, it does promise new stuff not seen yet.

The Expansion WILL include elements of Third Age (Balrog, Galadriel, Smeagol...) together with the new ones. And future Expansions will add the other elements as well. In any case, we don't see WOTR as an open system - we plan to have a finite and limited number of expansions (2-3).

2-3 expansions?!

*drooool*

Demiurgo, thank you for replying in this thread and giving us more information on your plans for his most excellent and epic of games. With what you are saying above regarding the total 2 to 3 upcoming expansions, it sounds like Ares Games' plan is to eventually release everything (and more obviously from the sound of it) that was included in the original Twilight expansion in a piecemeal basis. From what Ken B said at the top of the thread was it is sounding like the only thing that would not be eventually reprinted would be the twilight battles themselves (ie the board, rules, etc.). Are you able to comment on this issue (or if you are able to discuss other things that may not be inluded)? Basically, I just want to see if its worth keeping my old copy of the Twilight expansion or if it makes sense to possibly sell it in order to finance the purchase of the new expansions. Which makes sense because I blew all my money to go to Rome (which I am at right now). Amazing city! On a side note, I think I actually think convinced my wife to play Tribune and Conquest of the Empire after having seen the Forum/Colloseum ; )

In Rome now! You've been "lucky" enough to get the worst weather in Italy since 30 years, but I guess that Rome under the snow may be a fascinating sight, too!

Regarding the Battles game: what I would love, is to see them published as self-standing games, and possibly to "grow" to cover additional battles, from the Battles in the North, to the Battle of 5 Armies... But such a project is still at a very preliminary stage, and it's not 100% it will happen, so I would not let go of BotTA so soon!

I wondered if can ask a dickeramus question.

I have CE. How do I find out which bits are for BoTA/expansion with the Ents and remove them so I can play 2nd Ed WoTR?

Is there a list of the exact components and setup for 2nd Edition? Of course, being drunk right now may mean these are actually in the CE rulebook, which I don't have to hand at the moment, so the whole question may be moot.

Anyone care to enlighten me while I drink a very expensive scotch in the land of the hypocrites?

Indeed, in the CE the components to be used in the basic game are listed separately from those of the Expansion. So you should have no problem sorting them out when you've everything available to look at. Enjoy your scotch!

Andy, a quick run-down on expansion stuff from 1st edition:

The following factions/minis: Treebeard and the Ents, Corsairs, The Hillmen of Dunland, Galadriel, Smeagol (and associated tiles), Balrog, Hunty Witch King. Also, Siege Engines and Fortifications.

I think that covers it. I am doing this from memory. Double-check me but I think that's right.