Fathers Day Haul

A little late, due to being away this last weekend, but here is a small summary of my Fathers Day haul. My kids are wonderful and always get me a small hoard of wonderful gifts. This year I had the usual scrummy Green and Blacks quality chocolate selection, as well as the beginnings of a Hobbit warband for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game...

My youngest took it upon himself to go to his local GW and order up the Hobbit warband - a dozen Hobbit Militia (8 of) and Archers (4 of). He then split the cost with the rest of my kids. Add these to my big 4 (Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin - a few variants of each), Farmer Maggot and his dogs, and I have the beginnings of a great little battle company. Just a few more packs to go to complete the army.

These will be next on my list of warbands to paint after I complete the skeletons and my son's Gondor troops. I may be some time on these however, as my temporary role has been converted to a fixed term contract of three months - happy days - and this will leave me with a lot less time to spend on our hobby.

Damril of Gondor's Battle Company

I had a few hours' spare time yesterday and this morning that allowed me to get to work on my son's first proper named Battle Company for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Once again, these are just touch-ups on some second-hand miniatures we got from ebay. Some of them had very thick paint jobs already on them, so they were difficult to do anything with, but here they are in all their (re) painted glory.

Damril (front rank, first left with sword held aloft) and his Battle Company (after gaining a new spearman as a recruit for his success in slaying the troublesome troll in our last game)...

Damril and his trusty right-hand man (although he is on his left)...

The Archers from Damril's Battle Company...

And finally, Damril's spearmen including his new recruit on the right...

I will have to get my son to name the rest of his troops (as I will with the orc Battle Company I am currently running alongside this one) and then we can try to find a roster sheet to make note of who they are and what they have achieved so far.

I enjoyed painting these and they didn't take as long as I thought that they would. Some of the previous paint jobs were a little crude but I was able to fix them up somewhat. I also left most of the armour as was, to give a beaten look to the crew. My son decided he wanted purple tunics on his men rather than the standard black from the films. His collection is really becoming his own now, what with him deciding to go non-canon on most of the figures.

I got a couple of weeks extension to my temporary work assignment, so I will still be busy on that rather than painting miniatures during the day, but hopefully I can get a little done on the rest of the Gondor figures during the longer, lighter evenings over the coming weeks. I will also be reading the new Rangers of Shadow Deep rulebook so that we can at least get a Ranger and a few companions statted out this weekend when the kids are over. Now, I just need to look online to see if someone has any PDF versions of the Ranger character sheets so I can print a couple out as well as the Gondorian Battle Company roster sheets.

Rangers of Shadow Deep

Well, I finally saved up the pennies and ordered the Rangers of Shadow Deep rulebook from Modiphius. At the same time I also purchased a few packs of the official range of, erm, rangers from North Star. I will try to grab a few more miniatures from other manufacturers over the coming months to add to them to provide a bit of variety.

Anyway, here is my little haul that arrived during the week...

I will be reading through the rule book over the next week or so, so when my son is over again we can both stat up a ranger and their companions. I am hoping to give my son that sense of wonder that I had when I first started tabletop gaming back in the early days of Basic D&D. Unfortunately we do not have the time at the moment to play as often as I did back then, so I need a set of rules that will take me at least part of the way there.

This new version of the rulebook is nicely presented with plenty of beautifully drawn incidental pictures that add atmosphere to the book, as well as lots of tables and diagrams to make things easier to understand. There are plenty of scenarios to start a ranger off on their adventures, so I am hoping that this book will give my son and I several sessions of gaming in which to get used to the rules and mechanisms.

There are many supplemental PDF adventure packs available to download too, so I can add these to the missions my son can adventure on. I have read a few other blogs of people who have played through the available scenarios and all their takes are different, with some gamers adding in their own linking aventures too. From what I have seen and heard so far, this is quite a flexible game, and should provide hours of enjoyment for us. I will write another blog entry once I have read and digested the rules.

Battle Companies : Gondor vs Orcs

This bank holiday weekend saw son number two wanting to play another battle in Middle Earth. We read up on the rules for Might and Will to go along with Fate that we already knew about. We chose our miniatures and then we rolled out the scenery (I managed to find a few more items in some boxes in the garage), set up the table and then randomly rolled to see which scenario that we would play.

10. Tame the Beast

The table was set up and the troll placed as if he was coming out of the barn which was as near to the table centre as made sense. As the troll moved first, we measured up and found that the Gondor troops were closest, so it headed off in their direction with the intent of mayhem (the troll is controlled by a limited set of AI instructions - I rolled the dice against Gondor, my son against the orcs)...

The forces of Gondor led by Damril...

The orcs led by Ushnar...

The troll...

The early evening dusk added to the gloom of the weighty rain clouds skudding overhead. Damril, wanting to find shelter for the night for his patrol, remembered a small watch tower just over the next few hills. He ordered his men forward on the promise of a warm fire and shelter from the imminent downpour. Unfortunately, upon entering the environs of the tower he spotted an orc warband skulking their way through a set of ruins on the other side of the hamlet.

Suddenly, the door of the central barn was flung open and a small hill troll (statted as a cave troll) stepped outside finishing what looked like the last part of a stringy joint of meat. Something must have caught its attention as it stopped and sniffed the air. Unfortunately for Damril, he and his men were upwind from the beast and it had caught their scent. With a roar of rage, the troll charged towards them.

On the other side of the settlement, Ushnar was also getting ready to camp for the night. He had heard rumours of a troll in the area, so was a little more cautious approaching the village. He spotted the troll at the same time as he spotted the men of Gondor. Seeing that the troll had charged towards the men he barked out his command to follow the troll, pepper it with arrows from a distance and then close with it once the little band of men had weakened it with their efforts so that it would be easier to take down.

As the troll began its charge towards the Gondorians, their two archers who were slightly apart from the main force, launched a few arrows at the beast. At the same time, the orcs also let off a volley of arrows, one of which managed to find a weak spot in its tough hide. The troll charged on regardless, seemingly not feeling the arrow that had pierced its hide, or possibly thinking that it had been one of the Gondorian arrows that had caused it harm.

Damril called for his men to be steady and to await the charge of the beast. They met it with shields, spears and swords, but the troll was more than a match for the brave warriors. It focused on Damril as its main source of hatred but was unable to strike a telling blow in its frenzied state (the first of many sets of very low rolls). Perhaps the arrow sticking from its hide was causing it to be a little more clumsy and slower than normal?

Damril and his steadfast warband attacked the troll supported by a couple of doughty archers...

Ushnar and his rabble tracked the troll from a little distance, supported by a constant barrage of shafts from his own archers...

The very poor rolling by me as the troll attacking Damril kept failing to wound (it needed just a 4+ to wound)...

The orcs drew ever closer to the fight as the Gondor warriors fought on trying to bring down the troll...

The troll still could not harm the warriors of Minas Tirith - even though it tried its luck against the other swordsman this time (we changed up the wounds remaining dice for the troll from white to red at this point to make it stand out a little more)...

And again...

Finally, the Gondorian archers got a shot in through its thick hide as Damril and his men were forced ever backwards, but the troll's persistence against the swordsman paid off and he was beaten down by the troll's heavy club...

Meanwhile, the orcs were very sneaky and proceeded to take down the two Gondorian archers and, again, the troll failed to harm Damril in any way...

With half of the Gondor patrol down, the two remaining spearmen deserted their leader and skipped off the board to a safer locale, taking their downed brethren with them. The orcs decided to gang up on the troll, but were unable to approach the fearsome beast (all failed their Courage rolls). That was OK though as the troll took the fight to them and again showed its prowess by rolling yet another bunch of ones and twos..

Damril, seeing his opportunity, passed his Courage test and hit the troll from the rear, killing it outright and winning the scenario for Gondor...

Damril roared defiance in the face of the orc rabble and, after seeing him single handedly drop the troll, they ran pell-mell away from the victorious lieutenant of Gondor. The men of Minas Tirith held the field at the end of the battle and were able to tend their wounds in the safety of the watch tower. Ushnar and his warband had to settle for shelter beneath a copse of trees several miles away.

 

The final move of the game was a very clever piece of gaming by my son. We had not needed to use Fate or Will during the game so far but we both had a point of Might to use. I did not find any opportunity to use it, but as a final thought before Damril left the field to the orcs, he decided to attack the troll. He passed his Courage test, won the fight and rolled a 5 to wound the troll (he was tempted to use his Might to help with Courage and Fight if necessary, but didn't need it). This would ordinarily have been a miss, but remembering how Might worked, he added the point and slew the beast. Well played him!

These two warbands are going to be what we will use going forwards when playing LotR Strategy Battle Game. We still did not use the full rules and only statted up the lieutenant. We will get two sergeants statted up by the time of the next game. Anyway, we made a note of the Experience...

• Orcs - Archer wounded troll, 2H-axe killed Gondor archer, Ushnar killed Gondor archer
• Gondor - Archer wounded troll, Damril killed troll
  

and Influence...

• Orcs - Taking part (2)
• Gondor - Taking part (2), Winning the Scenario (2)
  

gained by each warband and will print out a roster sheet for each warband to include these. For three of his four Influence points, littlun rolled an additional warrior with Spear and Shield.

In this battle, I used the orcs that I painted up for him recently. My son used his second hand Gondor warriors that still need to be repainted. He has given me instructions for how he wants them painted - we managed to get to Games Workshop over the weekend to purchase some more undercoat spray paint, a couple of paint brushes and the colour he wants his troops' tunics painted.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I will not be able to paint much over the next few weeks as I was (fortunately) able to secure a few weeks' of temporary work. Hopefully I can do a little, at least on his battle company.