Shagrat and the Wild Warg Chieftain - revisited

We enjoyed a relatively short notice game of LOTR at the weekend; a doubles game, Father and Son vs Father and Son, taking place on Sunday...

Brett and his son Rhys, coming down for some LOTR fun against me and Chris...

Brett has a collection of mostly good LOTR troops, and wanted a refresher in the rules of the game, especially now with the new rules from the Hobbit book in action... He brought with him some Gondorians lead by Faramir and allied in some Galadhrim with Haldir and Legolas.

We played a 600 points basic 'To The Death' game just to go through the ropes of the game.

I normally like to play only with troops I have painted, but this game I fancied trying a few different things out, that were unpainted or just black undercoated, so I didn't take any pictures of the game.

And I wanted to try out Shagrat as my Evil force leader, who I had but still in blister pack, and decided he would be quick to paint up as he is mostly just dark armour... so out came the brushes...

He led a force of Morannon Orcs assisted by Kardush, and also the Mouth of Sauron leading some Morgul knights...

Shagrat the War leader of Cirith Ungol

Equipped with Shield of Cirith Ungol

The game went well for all of us, with mayhem and brutality on both sides, but with an early finish needed, the game was called a One-All draw, as we both scored points for a having banner.

Main thing was Brett and Rhys enjoyed it and got more acquainted with the rules and subtleties of the new army list creation using warbands.

Shagrat didn't do too bad either killing a couple of Gondorians himself thanks to his shield bash knock down rule, and then holding off a late charge by Faramir and Haldir! For once I didn't have a model die, succumbing to the newly painted model syndrome! ;-)

I'll definitely be using Shagrat again - I now need to paint up some Mordor Uruks for him to lead!

The Morannon Orcs were certainly an improvement, with their tough armour, over the Mordor Orcs, which seem to die like flies to the elven archery... Kardush also had some fun too; Channelling Fury early on, but then all 7 orcs that died near him , all failed their 5+ save, curses! He then made use of his abilities to recharge his Will, at the expense of the life of a nearby orc, life is cruel in the evil ranks! He then targeted the Gondorian Banner bearer with a Fireball but then fluffed the casting the roll on a 2! Still I guess it did demonstrate his potential... The Mouth of Sauron did OK, at one point transfixing Legolas just to keep him from shooting for a turn, and the Morgul knights did OK, though I got too close with my first move and then suffered an elven charge to start, though thankfully their armour saved them and they then started cutting down the Galadhrim infantry...

Brett had anchored the other end of his line well in a ruin and this demonstrated the bonus of holding a defended position. Shagrat did managed to break through the centre of the good battle line, but then was confronted by Faramir and Haldir, though withstood their attentions. And this pretty much ended our game as Brett had to get away...

Very enjoyable fun!

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Also over the weekend I revisited my Wild Warg Chieftain, I gave him another coat of matt varnish then had some fun with UHU glue; adding saliva to his gaping jaws!

A neat trick I learned from The Dead Marsh Spectre - thanks for that! :-)

Now I just need to get him into action in our continuing Fellowship of the Ring campaign... The Hounds of Sauron, is next up, as our Fellowship sets out on the Quest for Mount Doom!

More work on the Watcher also went well over the weekend, which I'll update you with in another blog post soon....