The kids were over this weekend, so my youngest lad got to see his newly daubed elf figures. He liked them a lot and couldn't wait to get to use them in anger. He swiftly set up the table and two battle companies, one orc and one elf, so we could go head to head.
Looking at the two units on the table he was a little over-awed; the orcs numbered nine, whilst the elves numbered only five. He thought that he would be in for a thrashing considering the numbers. I placated him by telling him that his elves were far superior warriors, and that his propensity to throw a multitude of sixes per game would help his cause.
The elf force...
The sun had just risen above the small hills surrounding the abandoned farm of Sunnydale. The shadows were long but cast deeper by the presence of an encroaching orc warband. Graznuk sniffed the air. "Elves." he spat. "Forward. Let's show those pretty boys a thing or two about knife work."
The orc commander split his forces with the archers peeling off to the right flank with a supporting shield armed warrior and the rest of the heavy hitters heading off to the left. The elves did the same, envisioning that the lone elf archer would be able to keep the heads down of the three approaching orcs. As soon as the orcs came into view, the elf let loose a shaft and an orc armed with a sword and shield dropped to the dirt with an arrow embedded in his throat (1 orc, 0 elves).
Graznuk noticed the loss of one of his warriors out of the corner of his eye and urged his troops to surge forward to engage the hated enemy. No sooner had combat been joined than another orc fell to the swiftly moving glaives of the elves. Undeterred by his losses so far, Graznuk pushed on and personally felled one of the elves in front of him. This seemed to be going easy for him, so he dispatched two of his axe warriors to help bring down the pesky elf archer, with orders to return to this fray once that easy task was accomplished (2 orcs, 1 elf).
The leader of the elves saw the danger that orc warband chief would cause if left to run riot, so felled him with one swift blow of his glaive (Graznuk failed his Fate roll). Unfortunately, this left him exposed to the remaining orcs and he almost suffered the same demise (made his Fate roll) (3 orcs, 1 elf).
The orcs remaining in the melee rallied around their second and all attacked a solitary elf who had been forced away from the fight. In what seemed a foregone conclusion, the elf ducked and dived his way out of being hacked to pieces by the heavy axes and spears of the orcs (they needed 3+ to hit but all rolled a 2!). Unfortunately, just after the elf warrior has retreated, the elf leader could not avoid being surrounded and was hacked down where he stood (3 orcs, 2 elves).
Meanwhile, on the other flank, the solitary elf archer managed to keep two axe wielding orcs and two archers at bay, but failed to cause any wounds. The attacking orcs, like their brethren on the other flank, could only keep pushing the elf back, despite winning combat after combat (kept rolling snake eyes or just ones and twos). Just as the orcs closed in on the elf archer, in what they thought would be a successful pincer movement, he managed to find a little space for himself and felled an orc archer that was pursuing him with a true shot shaft (4 orcs, 2 elves).
An orc war horn sounded off in the distance and the fight was warily abandoned. The orcs ran directly to answer their master's call, but the elves, saddened by their losses, gathered the bodies of their brethren for burial whilst they burnt the corpses of the orc dead.
This battle was a tightly run show. Although littlun didn't roll his normal unusually high number of sixes, I was unable to roll much more than a two on several critical occasions (two sets of snake-eyes, a 1 & a 2, a double-two, and three dice less than 3) to compensate for that. Any of these rolls being successful would have turned the tide of the battle firmly in favour of the orcs, and they would have forced a morale check on the elves. As a result, this battle was declared a draw.
We were going to try to begin playing a proper Battle Companies campaign this week, but we got involved in the game too quickly to think about it until afterwards. I am thinking of running the lad's elves as a battle company as they journey from Forlindon to Rivendell to deliver an important message to Elrond from Cirdan. He said he saw his elves as Lindon elves, hence the non-canon paint jobs on these figures. Hopefully we can start this campaign in a couple of weeks' time when he is next over, and we have a little more time to prepare and play due to the half-term school holidays.
We are hoping to get to our local GW in the half-term to pick him up his own paint brush so he can paint the elf command he bought, and thus help to reduce his own backlog. However, he said that he wants me to paint his Gondor troops after I complete his elves, so my painting list grows ever longer.
As an aside, I received those Otherworld skeletons through the post yesterday, but only saw the soggy package on the door step this morning (it has been raining heavily here for a day or two now). I will get them prepped tomorrow if I can, and then see about getting the paints out for them during the week.
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