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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

In the nick of time - Part 2...

Here follows part two of our Lord of the Rings/Hobbit battle report, from Fall of the Necromancer. Part one here.

Where we left off the Wood Elves led by Thranduil and Legolas were under serious pressure, trying to hold off the evil forces, until Elrond can march his High Elves across the woodland to engage their foes...

Turn 4 - Priority Good

The Wood Elves are in serious danger of being utterly surrounded and overwhelmed, and despite there being prone foes nearby, who could be easy kills trapped on the ground, the elves decide to withdraw into the cover of the woodland. This would reduce the number of evil models able to engage them this turn. In addition Thranduil used his Circlet of the Kings to cast Aura of Dismay... making all the elves cause terror. Again hoping to further reduce the number of charging foes against them...


Wood Elves withdraw into woods
Elrond forms his High Elves into a battle line, whilst his archers target the remaining orc skirmishers...


High elves form battle line as they advance
The evil forces now decide to split their force, with enough beasts and orcs remaining to crush the last of Thranduils wood elves, Khamul leads the the main body of orcs back to engage the high elves...

An Orc and spider fail their courage tests to charge the now terrifying wood elves, but two orc swordsmen pass their tests and charge the exposed elves on the edge of the woods, allowing spear support to move to back them up. The Wild Warg Chieftain also passes his test and joins the fight  against an elf...

Wood elf pickets at wood edge pressured
Khamul, leads the main orc warband back towards the high elves forming a battle-line as they do so, he strides forth attempting to compel a lone elf swordsman forward to his doom up on the crude orc blades but his efforts fall short, the elf is clearly made of sterner stuff...

Khamul fails Compel
Back to the wood elf fight and the Wild Warg Chieftain calls a heroic fight, slaying the elf swordsman and advancing into a rather perturbed Legolas!...

Wild warg chieftain heroic charges on into Legolas
But the Warg manages to roll a 1 + 2, Legolas laughs at this pitiful melee attack and promptly rolls snake-eyes! However, with his last point of might, he improves his dice to a 2, winning the fight on fight skill and wounding the warg once more!

A stunning display of melee dice!
At the other end of the woodland the elf spearman falls to the orcs...

Turn 5 - Priority Evil - Elrond calls Heroic Move

Seeing a chance, Elrond charges his High Elf battle-line forward into the orcs and unleashes the fury of Natures Wrath upon his foes, knocking them all prone.

Elronds Natures Wrath flattens the evil force.
Once again though the forces of evil manage to fight back, the orc captain getting back to his feet and charging the elf swordsman at the end of the line. An orc spearman also gets up and backs him up, as does the orc banner bearer...


Orc captain gets up and charges

...meanwhile, Khamul gets back to his feet also and sees a chance to take Thranduil out of the game, and again tries a compel against Thranduil who has no Will remaining, to try and move him out of the woods to surround him. But again fails his roll... Khamul is now down to 3 Will remaining and little to show for it...

The evil forces again pressure and surround the wood elves in their wood... the wild warg chieftain and a spider attacking Legolas, a bat swarm swirls round a sentinel and more orcs defile the woodland with their presence charging in against an elf archer. Thranduil responds by attacking the nearest orc, taking pressure off the elf archer.

Beasts and orcs charge the elves... spiders await their chance

The keen eyed High Elf archers at first are distracted by the melee in front of them but then see two possible targets. One archer shoots and hits Khamul in the back, but the arrow fails to wound the ethereal wraith. However 3 other elven shafts fly past the wraith hitting and spitting a spider that was exposed out by the side of the woodland...
The brown spider is slain by elf arrows
The orc captain calls heroic combat, and slays his foe following up into the next elf and slaying him also! Chris rolled 1's for the elves, followed by 1's an 2's for his banner re-roll... The orc captain chuckling evilly as he slew the elves...
The rest of the high elves have their chance now against the trapped orcs at their feet, but more terrible rolls from Chris means two orcs get back to their feet and one that was beaten, avoided a killing blow from the elf. Not good for the elves here!

The orc captain victorious - not the elves finest moment!
However, when all looked lost, the wood elves now turn up the heat. The lone elf bowman on the right ducks the clumsy two handed swing of his orc foe and kills the orc with a single thrust. Thranduil fights off the pair of orcs he faces, killing the orc swordsman. The sentinel holds off the bat swarm 'wounding' it in the process, and finally Legolas, outnumbered two one, beats off the Wild Warg Chieftain and spider, and slays both!

The wood elves hold out slaying many evil creatures!
Wow... and with that, part two of this report ends... who will emerge the final victor in part 3?

I can't bear the suspense! ;-)

24 comments:

  1. Finely poised, my money is on the wily Elves! Great report Scott.

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  2. Excellent stuff. Because I mainly played with my son when he was much younger we never did all the might, will and fate stuff so heroes were just like other figures.

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    1. I think its the Might, Will, Fate and Herioc Actions that really bring the dynamism and drama out of the game. Although only 10, Chris has been playing the game on and off with me for a few years now so has a fair idea of whats what, if he can keep focus on the game in hand! ;-)

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  3. Great report. Action packed!

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  4. NooOOOooo. Not again! Doesn't your son realize the world is waiting in suspense on the results of this game?

    Hehe. Fun stuff. I'm glad you are working so hard to instill such important qualities as "LOTR nerdiness" into the next generation.

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    1. LOL, indeed!? ;-) Oh most definitely - he's an LOTR nut like his ol' man already...

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  5. I can't bare the suspense either!

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  6. Stop posting these reports! I am done with this game and can't take being reminded of it!

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    1. LOL, sorry Robert! I guess as long as there's current and future movies in the loop, its very hard to resist the temptation to go back to it... and at the end of the day, its just a damn good fun game, with suspense and drama all along...

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  7. Excellent, its like watching one of the old Black & white Flash Gordon films.....left with a cliffhanger at the end of each episode!!!

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    1. LOL, yes I thought that too... perhaps that may be a feature of my future reports, leave you on a cliff hanger each time and keep you coming back for more... healthy for my blog stats too! ;-)

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  8. Looks to be a real close run thing so far!

    Christopher

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    1. Indeed, it's really tipped back and forth... The wood elves and beasts have shot their bolt now, it will come down to numbers and little little luck there... Khamul is just about exhausted... the orc captain is all done too... but Elrond is still fairly fresh... he really needs to get into it now and do that hero stuff! He's got one Will point remaining for a last go with Natures Wrath...

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  9. I'm seriously split here. On the one hand I want Chris to win :-b - on the other hand I don't like the elves and like to see them skewered at every opportunity (I'm a bit of a dwarf-lover, really). I'll be tuning in to see how it all turns out.

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    1. Yeah, I want him to win too! I play for the love of the game and mythos, and time with him... and I certainly don't mind losing to him... I always play the bad guys but secretly want the good guys to win! ;-)

      I hope the end will be exciting!

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  10. Fun looking game, Scott. Nice way to start the year. Best, Dean

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  11. Great report Scott! Bring on part 3!

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  12. Super stuff! I like the way you keep the tension ramped up by deliberately rolling 1s!

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    1. If rolling 1's was an olympic sport we'd be a gold medal winners! ;-)

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  13. Well all this LOTR action seems to have motivated Chris to pick up the paintbrush again... whilst at home waiting for me to come home from work to continue our game, he's been reading through the various army list and sourcebooks and has decided to build his own force, from the Tower of Ecthelion list. Good choice - lots of warriors of Minas Tirith - good defence , solid core troops, useful extra troops choices to ally in, and they're cheap to buy as they regularly come up on trademe and ebay, and easy to paint - blast them with some 'silver' through the airbrush and shade wash and he can do the tunics and equipment black and a spot flesh tone for the face and voila!

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  14. Enjoying this Scott, keep up the good work. Come on the Elves!

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