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.

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...

To the Death! - LOTR SBG Battle report - Rohan vs Isengard

A lazy Sunday afternoon saw me have the chance to entertain two gaming chums; Paul and Brett, to a game Lord of the Rings SBG.

In this case I was happy to umpire it, taking them both through the ropes of the games rules and subtleties of tactics within the game.

Paul is primarily a Flames of War player, who had not experienced skirmish wargaming before so this was all new to him.

Brett had played a bit of Legends of the High Seas before, which is a derivative of the SBG rules, and is also a SAGA player so has a fair grounding in Skirmish games.

Brett also had some Rohan troops he had acquired and wanted to try them out, so I added some of my own to bulk out his force and then gave Paul an Isengard force to theme the battle - an Isengard probe into the Westfold.

I accordingly set up the terrain depicting a small isolated farm...

 The battle was 750pts each.  

Rohan's force was (roughly)
Theoden (the King) leading warband of Riders of Rohan, including gaming with royal banner
Theodred (King's son) leading a warband of Riders of Rohan
Hama leading a warband of Warriors of Rohan on foot.
Eowyn (King's niece) leading a warband of Warriors of Rohan on foot.  

Isengard's force was
Uruk Hai Captain leading Uruk Hai with 6 pike and 6 shields
Uruk Hai Captain leading Isengard Troll, and 8 Uruk Hai Berserkers
Orc Captain on Warg leading warband of Warg Riders
Uruk Hai Shaman leading Uruk Hai warriors with 6 pike and 6 shields

 We played 'To the Death' just for ease of learning the game and mission.

Paul won dice off for deployment and started first...

Final deployments as below...

Theodred is bottom right facing the Warg-riders, Eowyn leads the foot troops near the ruin, Theoden is in the centre, and Hama is in the farm paddock, facing the Shaman's Warband.

I am going to let the pictures do the talking for the most part...  Paul won the early priority advancing as best as he could though the Shaman's warband had a hell of a time negotiating the farms fences with 5 out 13 Uruks rolling a 1 trying to cross the fences. This caused the Rohan commander much amusement who promptly fell foul of the fences himself, though not quite as badly...

For the most part of the early game, Rohan tried to keep a distance, and shot up the approaching Isengarders This succeeded in dropping several Uruks despite needing a 6 to kill. As Brett says "Need a six? Roll a six!" ;-)

Flank Rohan cavalry withdraw, to shoot bows...

Centre Rohan cavalry, advance...

Slightly exasperated Paul kept plodding forwards... with troll and Berserkers heaing to centre of board, away the disengaged warband of Theodred.

Theodred rode forward, bows again shooting...

Early combat is joined in the centre as Theoden cavalry engage the central and left flank Uruk Hai warbands catching some up against the farm fences...

Eventually as battle became properly joined, the power of the cavalry charge was revealed but also shown to be blunted in the face of pike supported troops.

The fences again quickly came in to the equation as they frequently trapped those who could not back away from combat...

The battle for the farm also heats up...

Theoden leads the central charge against the Uruks, but has he over exposed himself...?

The Uruk captain facing off against Theodred quickly found himself surrounded, yet kept fighting gamely... the troll sees easy pickings in front of him, and focuses on the blonde haired female bravely wielding her sword...

The Uruk captain slays Theodred! Then runs away the next turn when he fails his courage check, as by this point the Isengarders are broken...

The troll was a huge problem, but Eowyn bravely led her forces against it... but even surrounded the troll could not be stopped (it rolled a 6), and turned Eowyn into a red pulpy squish mark on the ground! She might be able to deal with the WitchKing of Angmar, but a great lumbering troll? Nope!

Theoden, who could have made use of the Royal Banner of Rohan to recharge his exhausted supply of Might, never got the chance when Paul won priority and charged Theoden with a pike armed Uruk, who promptly spitted Theoden from his horse! Gamling was left trying to hold the centre together...

The forces of the White Hand eventually broke and started losing troops to failed courage rolls but the Shamans recast Fury held the end of the line.

The troll still could not be stopped! Where's a wizard with an Immobilize when you need one!?

Gamling holds the centre together...  just...

Final positions...
The troll is a serious problem on the Rohan left flank...

The centre has been carnage leaving only three Riders and two Uruks standing... whilst the paddocks and fields in the farm remain contested... though Rohan probably has the upper hand here...

But eventually the Isengarders were dropped to 25% of their starting number bringing the battle to close. All that remained was to add up Victory points:-

Both sides have inflicted huge losses on the other with both sides going past their break point - 3 points to each side.
Both sides had slain the enemy commander, another 3 points each.
Yet Gamling remained holding aloft the Royal banner scoring 2 points.

This tipped the game to a victory to Rohan, 8-6.

Sadly this must be considered a Pyrrhic victory for it was truly a frightful day for the noble house of Rohan, losing the King, his son and niece in one encounter! Saruman will be chuckling and rubbing his hands together in glee in the Tower of Orthanc at this boon, and the way is clear for a full invasion of Rohan!

A thoroughly enjoyable game that both players enjoyed and played in great spirit.

Sadly Brett had to depart half way through the game, leaving me to take over Rohan, but not before using up all the heroes Might points, the bugger! It was shortly after this the Rohan heroes started dying! That's my excuse and I am sticking to it! ;-)

What pleases me more is Brett was even motivated to buy some more Riders of Rohan the day after we played the game, so I count that a victory for the LOTR SBG game!

I have that many LOTR figures that Paul is more than welcome to use whatever force he wishes whenever he fancies a game, though I have a sneaking suspicion he may be contemplating embracing his Dwarven side!

Build me an army worthy of Mordor...

"Build me an army worthy of Mordor!" commanded Sauron, and the traitor Saruman does just this. Working from a stock of goblins and orcs he breeds a larger, fiercer orc warrior, able to tolerate daylight and travel great distances at need, and still fight. Thus Uruk-Hai of Isengard have come to Middle-Earth, to destroy the race of men.

Saruman the White, also known as Curunir to the elves. Once the greatest of the Istari; Maiar sent down by the Valar in the guise of old men, as wizards, to help the fair races of Middle-Earth in their ongoing battle with Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor. Saruman, over many years, centuries indeed, comes to feel the battle against Sauron, cannot be won, and thus over time, and also through using the Palantir of Orthanc, he is seduced into joining forces with Sauron.


Saruman and Grima Wormtongue inspect their troops, with encouragment from an Uruk-Hai shaman.


The Fighting Uruk-Hai, clad in heavy harness of war and wielding long pikes. Although Tolkien never specifically mentions pikes in his descriptions of the Uruk-Hai, Peter Jackson and and his team, came up with the idea, as it seemed logical based on their immediate foes; The Rohirrim, a mainly mounted force of cavalry. History tells us that the horse was countered with the pike, and thus pikes would be the ideal weapons to defeat Rohan in open battle.



However, the forces of Rohan retreat from this threat to the fortress of Helms Deep. Here normal soldiery wielding swords and shields, will contribute ably to the fight. PJ's designers also hypothesized that a long pike might also be useful in such a siege, being able to "hook" the defenders from the walls, and allow a ladder assault to be easier for the Uruks. I know of no historical precedent for this, but it makes for great theatre...



Regular orcs of Isengard also pour forth from the pits below Orthanc, and swell the ranks. Here led by a captain, drummer, taskmaster with whip and banner bearing the White-Hand of Saruman.
To help scale the walls of Helms Deep, an Uruk-Hai siege assault ballista, hurls its huge missiles to erect tall scaling ladders against the Hornburg. Again more ideas from PJ, but it makes for great drama during the siege.


Warg riders, lend speed and mobility to the attack of Isengard, acting as forward scouts, and engaging the flanks of the enemy during the crossing of the Isen, and hastening the demise of the Westfold and retreat from the River Isen.

Wild Isengard berserkers lead the assault up the scaling ladders, to bring death and destruction with their huge and fearsome two-handed swords. Driven to a berserk rage, their helmets are first filled with the blood of their enemies before the helm is placed on their heads, dripping blood down their bodies and filling their nostrils with the scent of their enemies. Truly fearsome warriors.

A great troll of Isengard. This is again not in the explicit canon of Tolkien, nor is it one of PJ's inventions. It appears, from what I can tell, to have been driven by the desires of the gaming fraternity, who wanted a troll to add to Isengards forces. I believe Tolkien always wanted others to develop further his world of Middle-Earth and the creatures therein, and stories there-from. As such, I feel it is within the bounds of possibility, that Saruman could have bent the will of trolls, simple creatures at best, to his command. The voice of Saruman was all powerful...

I still have many more units to add to this force, including Uruk-Hai scouts, crossbowmen, and Dunlendings.

I will hope to update this blog post in due course.

Lord of the Rings - Battle report

For a long time now, I have been working towards a fully painted up display game for a battle report, concerning the scenario of the Assault against the Deeping Wall.

Many moons ago now it seems, my young son had become fixated on the battle for Helms Deep, after enjoying this scenario on the computer game; "Battle for Middle-Earth".

After playing about with his wooden building blocks, I decided to have a go at building the Deeping Wall, and scenic battleboard, as directed in the Two Towers journey book. Although time consuming this project came out very well in the end. Consequently I set to; painting up all the troops I would need for the scenario.

The host of my local gaming club so enjoyed the report, he added it to their website, as a PDF; Kapiti Fusiliers
You can also see the whole battle report in PDF format here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33375474/Helms%20Deep.pdf

Since completing the figures for this scenario, I have continued with this theme assembling a growing horde for an Isengard themed army for the War of the Ring, which will be following in a subsequent blog post.

Lord of the Rings - The Wolves of Isengard

(the above picture was added later to post, as models have been re-varnished from original post, and set on War of the Ring bases)



The wolves of Isengard.

Also known as the Warg Riders; orcs that ride monstrous wolves into battle.
And that roam in packs in the wilds of the north, known then as wild wargs.



Used by Saruman at the battles of the Fords Of Isen, where Theodred, Theoden of Rohans' son, is cut off and killed defending the crossing. A scene only hinted at in the Extended version of the DVD, but wonderfully brought to life in the movie sequence of the pursuit of the peoples of Rohan in their flight from Edoras to Helms Deep.



Sadly despite two layers of brushed on matt varnish, they still have come out somewhat shiny in the photos.



Apparently the movie design team felt that a hyena-like beast with larger front half of the body and smaller rear, would appear more scary than a simple large wolf. Works for me!



These figures were picked up second hand, and had been removed from the sprues and assembled but thankfully not glued, so they could be prepped properly. Some minor damage has been repaired; one had a missing tail which was added using a wire pin and greenstuff sculpted around it to fashion the furry tail.



These figures also required a lot of greenstuff to complete them satisfactorily to the eye. The joint line through the fur on the right side of the neck, and also covering the wargs rear end of its back in fur texture, which was for some reason completely smooth on the models. It took quite a bit of work but worth doing.



I also trimmed away the plastic grass stalks that supported the front raised foot on half the models. It just looked naff, and with three other contact points to the base, was not necessary.

In the game they give the orc forces some hard hitting cavalry, and some much needed maneuverability.