Games Workshop on the past, present, and future of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game

Battle of Osgiliath is made specifically for you. Yes, you - the person who used to play the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game but might have fallen off along the way, or the fan who's been here since the very beginning. So far as Middle-earth product manager Rob Alderman is concerned, it's not unlike a homecoming. 

"We think of something called the hobby gene," he said when we caught up about The Lord of the Rings Battle of Osgiliath earlier this November. "Not everyone has it. But the people who do have it, we try and take along the journey with us for as long as possible. And I think anyone who had the hobby gene back in 2001 [when the game first launched], or even a little bit later, when Battle Games in Middle-Earth, the magazine series we did with De Agostini, came out, they're really the people we're starting to see come back. There's an awful lot of Warhammer hobbyists in general who say that that was the thing that started them off."

With this in mind, it's not surprising the set feels so precision-engineered to stoke nostalgia - it's a celebration of the past. 

However, it's also a statement of intent for all that's still to come.

Fan feedback

Alderman has been involved with the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game in one form or another since it joined some of the best board games on shelves 21 years ago - first as a fan in the early 2000s, and then as part of the team working on it in 2018. He sees this role as a chance to give back to a community he's been part of since the start, and it directs everything he does in the position.

"It's been a great opportunity to help fill where I feel like there are gaps in the range," he noted. "Because I've been a member of the community for a long time as well, [I want to feel] like we're doing them a service by doing the things that I know the community are interested in. Obviously, we can't always do everything. We have limited resources. But we try and apply those in a way that we hopefully make as many people happy as possible at any time."

This led to Battle of Osgiliath, Games Workshop's latest boxed set for the franchise. To be precise, its contents were an almost direct response to fan feedback on the last one (2018's Battle of Pelennor Fields) - players requested more new plastic characters and the addition of some terrain they could fight over. That resulted in a perfect storm. A location from Tolkien's legendarium which lends itself to flatpack scenery of this kind was the ruined city of Osgiliath, and because the heroes associated with that location - namely Faramir, Damrod, Madril, and Gothmog - had never been available as anything other than metal miniatures which can't be sold in certain territories, it all came together very neatly indeed.

It also presented an opportunity to do something we hadn't seen until now. 

"The important thing for us as a design studio was to offer something that we've not really been able to do with Middle-earth terrain before, which is a truly modular set of terrain," Alderman said. "We did a little bit of that with the Rohan house where you could build a big or small one. But this is the most modular terrain we've ever made. You can build it as big or as small as you want. Everything works with everything else." 

Still, this is easier said than done. Creating scenery that can be put together in dozens of unique ways is a head-scratching process, especially when you're trying to match real-life movie sets that now only exist on film. To make sure they look just right, Alderman and his team had to dig through copious amounts of reference footage from Two Towers and Return of the King.

The road goes ever on

This is one of the more unexpectedly fun parts of the job; in pulling on threads like this, the team is able to chat with resources such as Weta Workshop (the powerhouse effects company that defined the look of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies). This offers "a wealth of references that just aren't available in the public sphere", exemplified by the game's take on Snaga - he of "what about their legs? They don't need those…" fame.

"That's the only film-accurate snugger model or collectible that's ever been made," Alderman says. "Because in the movie, you only see him from, like, the shoulders and above. We actually asked Dan Falconer [Collectibles Art Director from Weta Workshop] if he had any references for Snaga, because we wanted to make the best miniature we can. And he found a photo of Jed Brophy, the guy who played Snaga, in costume in a T-pose on a photo he had taken on set that was in his personal collection. It was just awesome to be able to say, like, head to toe, that is a film-accurate Snaga you will not get anywhere else."

Attention to detail won't get you everywhere, though. This is why the team opted to make the modular terrain glue-fit rather than the somewhat easier push-fit system seen on miniatures in everything from Warhammer Underworlds: Gnarlwood to Cursed City. This was because "we actively wanted this to be part of a range so that people can have everything integrate with everything else".

This last part demonstrates that the team isn't just looking backward when it comes to the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game. Even though nothing has been announced and attention is firmly on Battle of Osgiliath for now, it became clear during our conversation that Alderman hoped the team might one day be able to expand on this modular terrain. The same is true of the franchise's miniatures, too. Although remakes have been limited to heroes or villains in the past (known as the Forgeworld Character Series), he hopes they can go one step further someday.

"We would love to go and do plastic warriors, whether that's existing ones that are already plastic sets and we decide to do new versions for, or models that are currently metal or Citadel resin and move those into plastics. That could be something we do in the future."

Again, this isn't a sneak announcement  - rather, it's a personal wish that shows how committed the team are to this game. It's been kicking for over two decades, but it has life in it yet.

Indeed, Alderman is content seeing what the community manages with Battle of Osgiliath for the time being.

"The thing I'm most excited to engage with myself and to see other people engage with is the terrain sets," he said. "I really want to see what crazy madness people come up with… I'm really excited to see what people do with that because we have some amazing hobbyists in the community."

That's true the other way around, too. Despite the movie saga being long since finished, this return to Middle-earth for Games Workshop gives the impression that the future ahead is bright - it's not just a rehash of old glories that isn't going anywhere. For those of us returning to the game after a long absence, that's nothing if not comforting.

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