LotR - What's going on?

[Skarfang]

Having been 'out of the loop' for a fair while I thought I'd pick the brains of the gathered masses of Astro to tell me what exactly has happened to LotR over the past year or two.

I've seen pictures in fairly recent WDs of entire units of infantry grouped together in blocks like fantasy, have GW completely changed the game mechanics to bring it more in line with WHFB?

And seeing the new releases coming out now for a plastic fell beast and other assorted heroes, what's the current policy regarding new LotR releases? Are they still being brought out in expansions like they used to do with Shadow and Flame (oh yeah thats retro :p), Scouring of the Shire etc?

Not really a particular fan of it all, I'm just curious as to why everything seems to be so drastically different with it now, and why on earth new miniatures are still coming out!!

[Marticus]

the blocvks are for the new game system war of the ring, which is actually pretty damm good to be honest, and not brought out with expansions so much any more, more just releases in general just to update things for war of the ring, and they releasing the skirmish rules for new figures in WD

[arceus1018]

War of the Ring games are massive battles with blocks and blocks of infantry (and they use some additional/special rules). The normal skirmish games are....well, the usual small-scaled skirmished battles.

[Jihad Jack]

Yeah,
Just saw this post. I was thinking of getting into it myself. I prefer the smaller games without super broken equipments and such. Might take a gander at the LOTR demo at the local GW. I just dont want to get into a game where there is not a large player base. I saw this unit,

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat150110a&prodId=prod140004a - Golden King of Herad.

Knew I had to make an army. However Im not sure stay with WHFB or go start up to LOTR. Not sure, what are your folks views.