Welcome Ste!

Well its been a wee while coming, but I got the chance to meet and greet Ste Haran , of Off t'club blog fame.

I have followed Ste's blog for many moons now and some time ago it was announced Ste would be migrating to New Zealand from the UK, as I had done several years ago.

Ste finally arrived here a couple of weeks ago, and as you can imagine it takes a little while to get over the jet lag, and sort your self and your family out, when you first move to a new place, especially when its the other side of the world and you're living out of a suitcase till your shipping container arrives... been there, done that, got the T-shirt! ;-)

So it was great to finally meet Ste today, over a game of Lord of the Rings/Hobbit SBG...

I had had a game lined up tonight with Andrew, but a last minute logistical hiccup forced Andrew to cancel. Luckily for me, Ste was coming up to the club simply for a meet and greet, so a quick change of plan, I'd bring two armies along and we'd get to have a leisurely game, and have a chat to get to know each other...

We played Mordor vs Rohan & Gondor Alliance; ~580 points.

Faramir and a Minas Tirith Captain led the Gondorian foot, whilst Theodred commanded the Riders of Rohan.

Shagrat and an orc captain led the Mordor foot, whilst a Mordor orc shaman led the warg riders.

A fling of the dice and we were playing the High Ground, which became a battle for control of a large rocky outcrop in the centre of the board.

We played at a leisurely place and chatted away, a very pleasant game, not taken too seriously at all...

Here's a few pics to peruse...

Battle is joined as the infantry engage... the debut of the Mordor Uruk-Hai and they make their presence felt!

The Gondorian infantry is pushed back in the early part of the battle...

The warg riders try and circle the flank of the battlefield, wary of getting shot by the Riders of Rohan and perhaps trying to draw them away from the main scrap near the rock....

The Riders of Rohan arrayed initially for shooting... the first volley wasn't bad but the second one wiffed and then they too were in melee...

The man himself, all the way from Yorkshire!

Ste Haran

It was rather cool to get to meet a fellow blogger from elsewhere in the world... the way the blogging community is, it felt like meeting up with an old friend...

Meanwhile the scrap continued, Rohirrim and warg riders clashed on the flank with Theodred benefitting from a well timed and positioned Heroic Fight, killing an orc in the centre of the board and then galloping off to aid the flank...

The remaining central riders had just managed to break through the centre and come round behind the orc infantry line as we called the game with time running out...

It was still a close game and probably could have gone either way...

We totted up VP's and were both amused to discover it was a 0-0 draw, as neither of us had troops in base contact with the rock! Doh!

Main thing is we got to meet and enjoy a great game of LOTR!

Looking forward to more games with Ste, and getting a growing bunch of gamers together interested in LOTR :) Ste's shipping container is about a month away and then he'll get to unpack his armies... among other more important things of course! ;-)