This Hearts of Iron 4 mod initially started off as a small, 'play-with-friends', meme-project. After all, why would one explicitly choose Hearts of Iron, a world-war 2 strategy game, as the underlying fundament instead of a more fitting, medieval-based game such as Europa Universalis?
I believe that it was precisely this unusual clash of settings that lead to this mods unusually high popularity. At first glance, the grim, bloody and industrial reality of world war 2 seems completely unsuitable to the lovely, fantasy-setting of LotR, where near-unkillable paragons regularly fend of hordes of distinctly evil enemies.
However, upon further inspection it seems to me that LotR has at least some general themes that don't completely miss-align with common world-war narratives. While Tolkien seemingly denied having drawn inspiration from his experiences of both world wars, the same cannot be said for Peter Jackson and his ever-popular movie adaptations.
Within the context of this mod, merely depicting the orcs in Moria as communists or Mordor as a fascist state seems absurd, yet since it isn't completely devoid of logic or analogy, a joke is born.
Here are some of my favorite events from the mod which we wrote up in a (hopefully) humorous fashion:
Reception
Upon release the mod very quickly exploded in popularity, despite Old World Blues, one of HoI4's most popular mods of all time being released about a week earlier.
It has been showcased and played by large number of popular HoI4 content creators and streamers. Here is popular youtuber Alex The Rambler giving his best to survive while playing as Isengard:
Other popular youtubers include Pravus, ISP and Rimmy, although the latter two regarded the mod more critically, particularly the seemingly absurd alternate-history paths.
Unfortunately, I've struggled to keep the mod up-to-date with the current version of the game, nevermind introducing new content updates. Thankfully some community members have stepped up and provided much needed support on github or elsewhere.
Despite the lackluster updates, the mod has amassed (at the time of writing) a total of over 250.000 unique visitors, a steady amount of over 60.000 subscribers and over 1.700 positive ratings. Here are it's lifetime stats on the steam workshop:
The mod is available on the steam workshop as well as on github.
To finish off, here's two infantry divisions of the army of Gondor stationed at Osgiliath, presumably worried about what is to come.
