The War of the Ring Online Campaign

The War of the Ring was the 2005 Annual Online Summer Campaign for Games Workshop, based in the United Kingdom but open to all countries. It was launched on June 1 2005, and was the first such campaign to feature the Lord of the Rings miniature wargaming system. The Campaign was promoted in Games Workshop hobby centres worldwide, in their monthly supplement "White Dwarf", and in their fortnightly magazine "Battle Games in Middle Earth". Games Workshop also released the limited edition "Gimli on Dead Uruk-hai" miniature to promote the event.

Campaign System
The Campaign site worked whereby registered participants submitted the results of games played using special "regional rules", each representing a game played in one of thirteen regions of Middle Earth: Eriador, Angmar, Iron Hills, Mirkwood, Misty Mountains, Dunland & Isengard, Lorien & Fangorn, Rohan, Rhun, Gondor, Mordor, Harad and the Fellowship Path. The website's "War Room" was updated each weekday at 10:00 GMT, and showed where "Good" and "Evil" were leading. There were also two Forums on the site (one for Good and one for Evil), where each side could plan out tactics for swinging the regions in their favour. At the end of each week, the wins would be tallied and "Victory Points" would be awarded to each side to determine who was winning over all.

In total, there were 3007 registered participants, and the website catered for strategy-planning among them with two forums - one for the Good side and the other for the Evil side. These were moderated by Steve Hammatt (who is currently forum moderator for the Games Workshop forum). However, there was nothing limiting a registered user viewing proposed tactics on the other forum, so when the Campaign started, both two sides had formed independent forum websites, referred to as "councils", to direct the progress of the battles. The dark side had little trouble with getting organised: The main leaders were quickly chosen and a main site was established: the Dark Council. There were still a few lesser site, but these were paid little attention to. The good side, however, had a lot more difficulty. As an untold amount of small groups vied for dominance over the others, little attention was given to the actual plans for the campaign. As such, the morale of evil was high, as they produced numerous plans while the good side was squabbling amongst each other. This mood ended, however, in the first week of the campaign, as good completely overwhelmed the evil side with an enormous amount of victories. At the end of the week, only Harad was in the hands of the forces of darkness. This caused chaos in the once organised ranks of evil, and many lost their trust in the Dark council, blaming them for evil's defeat. There were also countless wild theories as to why good out posted evil so much. Many claimed that it was because good players cheat more. Others claimed that GW themselves were influencing the campaign. Others blamed hackers for taking over, and making evil lose. In the end, leaders of good and evil came together to decide upon the reason, and the discussion was closed. (See below)

Seeing how evil was being decimated, the dark council decided it was time for a new strategy. Taking the few victories they had, they posted in one region, taking it and claiming the victories, before leaving for others. The good side, still disorganised and believing that they didn't need a leading council, posted their victories randomly. With this strategic advantage, evil managed to take back their lost areas, and even take enemy areas, one by one. Though the good side has built up an enormous lead over evil in week one, evil gradually managed to push good back. This restored evil's faith in their dark council, and they were now the indisputable leaders of evil. In an event that went into history as the dark councils greatest victory, the combined forces of evil managed to take the great bastion of good, Lorien, in mere days. This frightened the good side to no end, and there was much talk on the good forums about the "Ruthless efficiency of the dark council". This talk caused the good side to once again look towards a council to lead them. Finally, the good side managed to unite their councils into one, the The Alliance of Light. The alliance of light had far less support than the dark council, having less than half the members, but their presence still worried the dark council. The dark council had believed that it would be unlikely that good would ever unite under one banner. Still, the alliance of light didn't appear to have much impact, as the dark council beat the forces of light time and time again, now using groups of evil players divided in strike forces, each tasked with their own objectives. This tactic proved pretty effective, and the Alliance of Light decided to copy it's success and start their own strike forces. Needless to say, this caused a lot of anger amongst evil, but in the end nothing was done about it.

This didn't seem to help the good side a lot, however, as week after week evil bashed good back. Finally, in the last two weeks of the campaign, good's enormous lead had been overcome at last, giving the evil side the balance of power for the first time in the campaign. Having won nearly all of the previous week, evil expected this to be the the point where they crushed the remaining forces of good, leaderless and disorganised as they were. That was when The Alliance of Light truly came into action. Their plan was to assail the very headquarters of evil, Mordor. Though it wasn't such a usefull area to take, it was the drama that mattered. In the last weeks of the campaign, the Alliance of light marshalled the forces of good to attack with all their might in one final chance to win and capture the very stronghold of the enemy. The appealed greatly to the many roleplayers amongst the good side, and the Alliance of Light managed to group together a huge force of players. As good assailed the stronghold of evil in a massive attack, it was here that evil made it's fatal mistake. Instead of evading the forces of Light and striking where they were weak, the dark council defended their homeland and faced the good side head-on, confident that the good side could not execute a coordinated attack. Too late did they realise the true extend of the forces of good, and evil was utterly overwhelmed by good, and the fall of Mordor and the destruction of the Ring brought an end to the campaign. In the final results, good had bested evil with a single victory point.

Wrath of umbar
Games Workshop also introduced the "Wrath of Umbar" Roadshow, with custom-built corsair models and gaming boards being brought to various cities in the United Kingdom. Evil won most of the early Roadshow events because there were so few Good participants.

Results
Gondor was the most popular region for input, with 10327 games recorded. However, the highest peak of any single region was an attempt to take Rohan from Evil in Week 9, with over 650 games. In the final week, there was an unprecedented rush to retake the seemingly impregnable Morannon in Mordor, in which Evil was overwhelmed.

When the Campaign formally ended on September 8, there were 27239 games recorded in total. The Iron Hills had remained an undefeated stronghold for Good, with 67% of games there being Good victories. Evil's strongest bastion was in Angmar, with 59% of games being Evil victories. Good had emerged the victor with 145 Victory Points (Evil had 142). The Forum closed shortly after the Campaign, giving way to a smaller Campaign based in Canada. However, the Campaign was nowhere near the scale of its UK counterpart, with only 100 games recorded in Gondor, and was ignored by many who viewed it as a "watered-down" version of the original.

Later, members of the dark council and alliance of light, together with members from other lotr forums, would group together to create a new campaign for the Lord of the Rings.  This campaign was designed to be even more strategic and complex than the GW campaign, and is by many seen as much better than the Games-workshop ones. This campaign is currently drawing to it's end, with a mere three weeks before it's finished.

About cheating
As mentioned before, the massive ammount of victories entered by good each day, caused mnay players to wonder about the reason for this. Various theories and accusations were posted on the forums, and players were known to come to the enemy forums and accuse them of cheaters. Many players also accused GW of falsifying the results. This feeling was further increased, as a writer in White dwarf wrote about the campign in past tense, talking about the defeat of evil even though the campaign had hardly started.

To end the constant squabling, members of both the dark council and alliance of light came together and discussed the reason, and it was decided that it was either due to a bug in the campaign (Which GW campaigns are often known to have) or the fact that good had more cheaters: Ie, people who enter non-existing victories. Grobtak (One of the leaders of the dark council) declared that since good had always had more players than evil in the GW campaigns, and a set percent of the players cheated, it was only logical that good would have more cheaters as a results, and as such more victories to enter each week. This was agreed to by the others, and the discussion was closed.