To the Death ... LOTR Four player doubles fun...

Last night, four of us gathered for a game of Lord of the Rings... with Bryan, Ste and Roly joining me for some Middle-Earth fun...

We played the game as a 2 vs 2, 500pts per player, with Bryan leading his Rivendell Elves, and Ste bringing his Uruk force. I added Mordor for myself alongside Ste, and put on 500pts of Gondor for Roly to command, alongside Bryan's Elves.

Bryan had Glorfindel and Gildor leading his two warbands on foot.
Ste had Lurtz and an uruk captain leading two blocks of Uruk warriors, with a warg mounted orc captain leading some warg riders.

For Mordor, I had a full power Generic Wraith on horse, Grishnahk and a warg mounted Shaman leading the orc soldiery.
Boromir and Beregong led the Warriors of Minas Tirith on foot, with Damrod leading a small group of rangers, for Roly.

We rolled off for mission and got To the Death, so a straight up fight ensued.

Deployment as below.

We didn't have long to play with it being a weeknight evening, so all deployed forward to get into the scrap quickly...

There was enough terrain to make the game interesting, without it over impeding game play, the ruins providing an object for the warg riders to make a flanking move around, as the rest of the battle lines formed up, with the rangers holding a small wood on the opposite flank.

And thus battle was quickly joined...

The evil force won initial priority and charged headlong in to the fight, with the Warg riders commencing their flanking move. Boromir was lashed by a Sap Will from the wraith and lost 2 of his 3 Will points... Whilst Lurtz found himself targeted by an Immobilize from Gildor, but shrugged it off...

The Orc shaman channelled Fury...

Initial bow fire from the Elves and Rangers was ineffective, and melee commenced...

A steady toll started to wrack up the casualties, though with the shamans fury saved some orcs and Grishnakh.

The combats raged back and forth with holes appearing in the lines. Boromir was the typical combat beast in the centre, blasting through the evil lines...

But with the warg riders threatening to envelope the good guys left flank, the elves and men there started to pull back trying to form a battle line between the ruin and woods...

Grishnahk found himself fighting Glorfindel... not the best place to be, especially when both sides roll a 6 and Glorfindel wins on Fight Skill, but the 2 wounds he received were saved by the Shamans Fury!

Elsewhere Lurtz suffered another immobilse from Gildor, and was slain, though this only seemed to enrage the surrounding uruks who then cut down several elves...

The wraith hit Boromir with a Transfix, on a 6 , but with his last will point Boromir rolled a 6 too to resist it! Shaking his ethereal head in disbelief the wraith then charged a lone WoMT to try and get involved in the fights too...

The rangers closed in, looking to pick off supporting uruk pikemen and managed to drop a couple...

Boromir, having broken right through the evil lines, was thus then surrounded and trapped there by orcs and uruks!

Grishnahk was still looking at the glowing elf lord, and nervously looked sideways to the wraith who obliged with a 4 dice Transfix on Glorfindel, getting a 6, but who then resisted with 3 dice and used a point of might to boost a 5 to a 6 and resist the spell!

By now the warg riders were breaking round the flank and back of the retreating WoMT and Elf line starting to threaten their rear...

With time drawing to a close, the final combats were fought with Grishnakh again surviving the Elves attention to the cost of a Fate point, Fury saves keeping him alive...

Despite being surrounded Boromir triumphed again and slew more orcs for the fun of it...

The wraith charged in against the same WoMT as last turn, and killed the brave warrior.

The remaining melees were resolved and the game concluded.

Final positions...

A quick tally up of VPs, found neither side yet broken, neither commander (Boromir or Wraith) wounded or slain, and both sides each having 1 banner... resulting in a 1 - 1 Draw.

With the game being a draw, we had a fun little fight off between Boromir and the Wraith, with Boromir winning, but failing to wound the wraith...

We only had time for 3 turns. Ste, coming to chez-moi for the first time, got a little lost, with me living a bit out in the wop-wops, and upon arrival enjoyed introductions and chat too, so we didn't get started till 8pm, with a 10pm finish scheduled.

But no matter, we all enjoyed the game none the less, and some spicy snacks from wifeypoos were a nice accompaniment.

The game was left in one of those poised positions, as both sides ponder on what might have befallen next... The evil right flank looked to be doing well against the faltering good left. The Uruks on the flank were pretty much even with the elves there, but the rangers were approaching... and Boromir was still loose in the evil backfield, though now with no Will remaining and at risk of Transfix and being surrounded by the orcs and wraith. If I could get the wraith in too, the wraiths high courage would hopefully have nullified Boromirs Horn of Gondor...

But who knows, we can ponder the ifs, buts and maybes forever...

I always enjoy these sort of doubles games as they are always great light hearted fun... looking forward to another adventure in Middle-Earth.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Hold Ground - LOTR/Hobbit Battle report.

Once again Ste journeyed up from Wellington for an arranged game; Rohan vs Isengard. Ste has been steadily building an Isengard force, and was keen to try it out, and I have a slowly expanding Rohan force I was interested to see how it would do against its 'traditional' foe...

I arrived at club first and set up a themed battle field, depicting a Rohan village, to one side with a more open area to the other side.

We played 550pts forces. Rather than pick a mission we rolled off on the chart and got Hold Ground. This is a bit of a bugger of a mission as whatever plan you had for deployment, just went out the window, with the very random deployment of troops in the mission - your typical 'Maelstrom of Battle', with your forces coming on from the sides, where you may or may not want them, depending on the roll of die...

The game then becomes a race to get to and hold the centre ground, shown by an objective marker.... with a victory point for each model within 6" of it at the end of the game.

Ste won initial Priority and started rolling for and putting down his forces... Mine then turned up next... I think to be fair I got the sh*t end of the stick in deployment, but them's the breaks and we played on...

See below for deployments...

Deployment

Ste basically had the jump on me with respect to getting to the objective first... I either had his troops in front of me, or a greater amount of terrain in the way... this was going to be tough...

Below Ste's Uruk enter the village ... my Warriors have to cross the fence, then wade through the cornfield (difficult ground - half pace we decided)...

The game simply devolved into Ste's march towards the objective, and my attempts to harass and shoot him up with bows and spears on his way there.

The orcs and warg riders were the obvious choice as they had the lowest Defence so would make for the easier kills... The game progressed for several turns this way with orcs and wargs steadily dropping from the spears and arrows of Rohan. Theodred dispatched an orc early on whose warg had been shot from under him... and a couple of orc bowmen who stood their ground to shoot were riden down...

With game time running low, I had not suffered a single casualty, and many orcs and wargs lay slain about the field... but the telling issue of the objective eluded me...

Finally the orc captain on warg turned at bay and put up a fight with a small group of orcs. Since time was running out and although the harassing archery was working, it was all happening too slowly for Rohan... so it became a what-the-heck situation, and Theodred charged in... As his stat line suggests, fate is not with him and it certainly wasn't in my dice throwing either! Despite being previously wounded, the orc captain won the fight and struck Theodred from his horse, after two rounds of fighting!

Theodred vs the Orc captain - sorry for blurry pic

By now the Uruks were at the village boundry objective in numbers and were dug in like a tick behind the hedge... My horsemen approached to at least get some numbers near the objective, so Lurtz decided to lead what was left of his orcs out against them, in another what-the- heck, lets try and kill some stuff move...

This move played out well for the orcs who managed to charge the seemingly somewhat stunned riders, and hacked a few from their saddles. The Riders recovered from this shock and charged down most of the orcs but Lurtz stubbornly refused to go down easily...

With time expired we surveyed the scene, and the orcs were still several models from breaking. Rohan was no where near break point, but the issue of the objective marker became all important... the massed uruks behind the hedge clearly held sway, with just over 20 models within 6" of the object and only 3 Riders near it... it was a clear victory to Isengard! Roughly 21-3 to Isengard.

I had just got my Warriors led by Hama coming up behind the uruks, via the cornfield and into spear range but it was too little too late.

Had the game played on indefinitely I could have kept my distance and kept sniping the orcs and uruks until they broke, but time was indeed a factor and I couldn't kill them fast enough...

The end positions below...

It was an enjoyable game none the less and it really showed the contrast in these forces... The brute solidity of Isengard against the harassing forces of Rohan...

I had hoped to trial some mounted Royal Guard in this game but I still only have them half done. Once they, and Eomer are done I wouldnt mind another go at Ste's Isengard forces...

reade more... Résuméabuiyad