The High Ground - LOTR SBG Battle Report - Moria vs Gondor

After last weeks game at the club, Sol and I arranged another game for tonight. Sol was going to tweak his army after his last game, and I was happy to let him try out against any of the evil armies I have.
Sol chose Moria, so that's what I went with. We also chose to theme the battle in Moria - Gandalf the White leading the forces of Gondor to root out the evil there...

We set up the terrain and rolled off a mission getting Hold the High Ground. After looking at the terrain, the wooden scaffold structure was selected as the High Ground and repositioned centrally, with a little more terrain adjustment to balance it out.

750 points per side.

I had taken :
Durburz Goblin King with 12 goblins; 6 shields, 6 spears
Moria Shaman with 12 goblins; 4 shields, 8 spears
Druzhag Shaman leading 2 Giant Bats, 6 Giant Spiders and one goblin with spear
Wild Warg Champion leading 6 Wild Wargs
Spider Queen (Independent)

Sol had taken
Gandalf the White, leading a warband of Knights of Minas Tirith with banner
A Gondor Captain leading a warband of Rangers and a Ballista
Pippin, Guard of the Citadel, leading a warband of Warriors of Minas Tirith with banner

I won roll off for starting deployment, and immediately placed Durburz and his warband on the scaffold. We then alternated off warbands with my forces arrayed around and either side of scaffold, whilst Sols forces were grouped off towards one corner of board with Ballista up high on a rocky outcrop.

Moria - deployment

Evil forces

Good forces - Sol hasn't got all his forces fully assembled or painted as yet -  the grey horses are actually mounted knights

I won start initiative, and consolidated my position, advancing my infantry to make shield/spear wall in face of the Gondor infantry and knights, and advanced spiders round scaffold towards the rangers, whilst bats overflew to head towards the ballista. I forgot to move the wargs! Oh well they spent a turn out of it but showed up later to distract Gandalf and some of his knights attention away from main scrap (that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!)

Mid battle - red counters are wound markers

These new missions really have you right into it from turn one pretty much, there's little messing about! It makes for a quick and brutal game - with little noncing about at range!

I wanted to deal with the rangers and ballista which were the missile threat and got the rangers busy early on with the spiders and got my bats into the ballista but since Sol had upped the crew to 4 I couldn't get at more than 2 crew with the bats, leaving 2 crew firing still... curses... but their firing proved relatively ineffectual until one turn near end when they nailed Druzhag with two hits! Thankfully he passed both fate rolls...

So Gandalf and the knights dealt with the wargs, the spiders mostly dealt with the rangers and the goblins and WoMT battered away at each other in the centre. Sol probably had the best of the early game, but it started to turn mid game on a brutal turn for Moria when I killed both his banner bearers...

I lost the Spider Queen annoyingly... I set her up to slaughter the Gondor captain leading the rangers, and enraged her with Druzhag, having burst forth all her three broodlings (using up all her will). But then Gandalf cantered over and Immobilized her with a spell! Dang it! So she lost the fight taking a wound and took a wound from the spell!

The following turn she got back into it, but lost the fight roll and was dispatched!

So Spider Queen down and Wild Warg Chieftan down, but I had been steadily killing my way through the forces of Gondor, thanks to my spiders and goblins, and Gondor's force had broken....

The game continued another turn, but numbers were now starting to tell against Gondor, especially with their lack of banners... I really just had to consolidate now, so made sure I had some goblins back on the scaffold to gain VPs...

Eventually Sol called it, his force was broken and though they had not fled the field, it was going to be very difficult at this point for him to capture the scaffold, and as he has a long drive home, it made sense to call it quits.

So I came out with a win, 5-0, though Sol had inflicted a heavy toll on the forces of Moria...

Another good game, which drew some interest from other club members...

End of battle

Gondor casualties

Moria casualties