On October 9th of 2004 I had the pleasure of playing in a large War of the Ring game. The game was run by Paul Potter and was easily the best LotR themed games I have ever participated in. The board was about 8' x 6' with terrain showing most of Middle Earth. Some significant terrain was left out such as the Misty Mountains and large forested areas but basically the terrain was similar to the familiar map many of us know.
The game was run using a combination of Hordes of The Things (HoTT) and DBA 2.x with all of the updates. Each player was given an army and a capital. For example I had The Men of the North and a capital based on a lake. An icon represented each capital. Minas Tirith was a homemade model of the great city no bigger than 4"x4". The rules for the battles were standard DBA battles. Armies moved on the map as just the General stand until they came within 12" of an enemy stand. When within 12 inches the army deployed and used normal movement rules for DBA.
Once a battle was won, the winner got all of their loses back while the loser returned to their capital and got half of their losses back. Also as battles were won the ring would advance either towards Sauron's hand or towards Mount Doom. Eventually the game was called on time with the ring on its way to Sauron, thus it was called as a win for the forces of Mordor. I made a suggestion that there should be a duel track that each victory progresses the ring towards the end with the ring jumping towards Sauron's hand on one track and Mount Doom on another. In the last space, a win would either push the ring forward into one of the win conditions or switch tracks only without moving it into the win condition space. Thus if you are disadvantaged towards the end you will need 2 wins in order to finish the game in your favor. I am sure Paul will come up with something clever.
As for my forces, I won two battles and may have won a third before an army I had previously defeated took my capital. It regenerated as per the rules with half of its losses and made and end run around me to get to my city. The Dwarves had been defeated and moved in to protect my city. Unfortunately they were defeated again and the siege on my city began in earnest. Once it was taken my force was removed from battle (much to the relief of the Northern Goblins!)
I loved how the game had both tactical and strategic elements. It was a well managed game and required an expert knowledge of DBA (thankfully I had such an expert at my elbow.) I hope Paul takes this game to conventions and writes it up. His miniatures were fantastic and covered the whole range of troop types seen in the series. It was definitely a labor of love and I commend him on running such a great game!