Tame the Beast

On Sunday, my youngest son and I decided to get our old Lord of the Rings figures out and play a Battle Companies scenario of Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. From the older Battle Companies supplement, we randomly rolled Tame the Beast, which we have played before, but this time the outcome was totally different.

The small Gondorian warband, under the control of Damril, approached a small village from the east. They had heard rumors of a great beast that was attacking farmers and stealing their livestock, and wanted to be rid of the monster before it could do any more harm.

Ushnar, the orc brute approaching from the west, had also heard the same thing, but he was of a different mind. He was hoping to gain from the chaos caused by the beast, but also wanted the glory of slaying it.

Damril and his faithful band of Gondorian warriors...

Ushnar's warband...

The orcs were spotted by the troll and it charged them with a roar of wild glee. The orcs were in line of sight and nearest to the troll, so they were charged as per the rules.

Whilst the orcs were busy trying to fight their way out of the troll's attack, Damril ordered his men forward.

After several rounds of combat (no less than 20 dice were rolled by the orcs without a single 6!), the orcs were forced to give way and slowly retreated as their losses began to mount.

Damril kept his men at a distance whilst hoping that the orcs would whittle down the troll's strength so that they could then move in for the kill.

In the meantime, the Gondorian archers made mincemeat of their bow wielding counterparts...

Until only one orc skirmisher was left and the rest of the orc rabble turned tail and fled...

This didn't work out too well for the Gondorians as they now felt the full brunt of an angry troll that had been attacked (but not injured) and was looking for another chance of vengeance.

The Gondorians fought bravely but slowly lost ground, and soldiers, to the enraged troll.

The orcs' courage had failed them, and all turned tail and fled the village except for one lone archer.

He too fled the scene moments later, leaving just a handful of Gondor's finest to face down the troll.

They too thought that running away was the better part of valour, so the field was left to the triumphant troll.

The game ended a draw as neither side was able to down the troll.

We both enjoyed the game although we made a couple of minor mistakes with the rules as we hadn't played for a while.

Repainted Orcs

It took me a while, but these have now all been completed to the standard that I wanted to get them to. Hopefully my son will be happy with them and that he will then let me know what he wants done next.

So, without further ado, here are the last four orcs to be painted. These were the ones that needed to be mended with weapons that were non-LotR. I think that they have turned out OK and the weapons seem to match in nicely. I especially like the way that the bow looks...

For completeness sake, here is a picture of the entire warband, including their adopted troll...

I also took a few pictures of each "section" of the warband. Starting off with the spear-armed orcs...

The more elite orcs with two-handed weaponry and those with shields...

And finally, the support section that always seems to do well when my son is rolling his never ending stream of sixes...

Last night I began to re-read the Dragon Rampant rules in preparation for gaming with these figures. It looks like I will need units of six or twelve for the orcs and maybe reduced sized units for some leaders or special critters like the trolls? I will continue to familiarise myself with the rules and chat to his nibs when he is over next weekend to see what else he wants in his evil force. I will also ask him how he wants his Gondor and Rohan army to pan out too, so I can grab the paints in a couple of weeks and get those ones sorted for him too.

Troll Hunt

Well, the chocolate eggs have all been scoffed, so another treasure hunt of sorts had to be arranged. Littlun wanted to play a tabletop game after several runs through of the boardgame Game of Life. I wasn't prepped to run a game, so suggested he just grabbed his to-be-painted Gondor warband and I would arrange a foe for him to attack. I decided upon a troll hunt as that would provide a different kind of challenge for him. I dug out one of my very old trolls (I don't have any official LotR miniatures painted to play that role yet) - and battle was joined.

This was to be an eight turn game, with the Gondor player winning by killing the troll and the troll player winning merely by surviving the eight turns. We both played as the troll; me first so he could see how to kind of play it in readiness for when he took his turn as the troll.

In the first game, I played the hill-troll that was to be hunted down as it was stealing too much livestock and killing too many farmers and their families. A small warband of Gondor troops (leader, 3 archers, 2 swordsmen and 4 spearmen) was despatched to carry out the task.

The troll was positioned approximately in the centre of the board and the Gondor troops would arrive from three different directions to trap him in the village (as shown in the first image above - the small band approaching from the "top" of the board have been cut for some unknown reason).

As soon as the troll saw the advancing men, he stooped down and picked up a convenient rock and launched it straight at the leader of the patrol, hitting him square between the eyes (he failed his Fate roll too).

Seeing the hated man-thing drop to the floor, the troll pushed his advantage and charged the Gondorians, felling another swordsman in short order. The remaining two spearmen circled round to join their comrades in making for a larger attacking force.

After a couple of lost combats, the troll began to give ground to the Gondorian troops (who all seemed to keep passing their Courage tests to charge the brute). The archers were able to sneak in the occasional shot, which usually missed, but after the first hit from an arrow, the wounds began to mount up on the outnumbered troll.

 

 

The battle lasted five turns with victory going to the men of Gondor. I did play the troll in a simplistic/reactive way, and I think things would have gone differently if I had put some thought into his tactics - maybe next time?

Anyway, this buoyed my son into wanting to switch sides and play the troll.

This time, he played the troll a bit safer than I did by trying to avoid my archers. However, my first turn saw a very flukey shot that caused a wound on the troll (two in the way rolls, the shot and then the wound roll were all successful). The troll responded by throwing a rock and killing a Gondorian swordsman. He moved the troll away from line of sight of the archers, so I had to redeploy them and simultaneously use my sword and shield bearing troops to herd the troll towards the farmhouse where I would hopefully be able to block him in. Unfortunately, the tables turned and the troll trapped another of my archers who had crossed the fence in order to get the drop on the troll coming round the corner. Six out of six attack rolls were successful in turning my archer into strawberry jam. Luckily, this slowed the troll enough so that my patrol could hem him in and cause him a second wound - from another archer who had just managed to get line of sight when there was a pause in the combat.

The troll then won the subsequent combat and was able to leg it round the corner of the farmhouse with the Gondorian patrol in hot pursuit, only to hop over the fence and be shot right away by the archer who was well-placed to do so!

These were a couple of fast-paced, fun games that both of us enjoyed. They both only lasted 5 out of the allotted 8 turns, and we both lost 2 warriors of Gondor in achieving our objectives. So, a draw all round.

I think the sides were evenly matched, and if the troll were played with a bit more nous then it might prove a little more tricky for the Men of the West to defeat him. The men need the troll to come to them so that they do not ned to roll for Courage, and the troll needs to pick the men off in small groups. They were both interesting games though, and I think we both learned a few tactical limitations and advantages for both style of play.

LotR Moria Army

Lord of the Rings Moria Army (Prepped and/or Undercoated)

This is the first in a series of follow up posts to the one I made way back in January 2015. The previous post "My Lord of the Rings Armies (The Boxes)" contains details of what I had back then when hardly any had been prepped in readiness for painting. This series of posts will feature each of those armies of the Lord of the Rings minis in turn that I have recently prepped and/or undercoated. There are a few minis that are still at the prep stage (need some putty work to fill a few gaps), but the vast majority of figures are ready to take a lick of colour.

I will follow a similar format with each of these posts, in that I will feature each army arrayed on the tabletop battle map and give a brief overview of what is in that faction.

First up is the army of Moria that I have collected over the almost twenty years since they were initially released. Here is the original pre-prep photo from a couple of years ago...

And here is a photo of the army post prep...

As can be seen there are two main components to this army; the goblins themselves and their troll support. The trolls still require some prep work with green stuff and then a subsequent undercoat with the spray can. A brief listing of the army is as follows...

Plastic:
36 Goblin warriors

Metal:
Durburz (Goblin King)
2 Goblin captains
1 Goblin Drum
4 Goblin warriors
4 Goblin warriors with bows
4 Goblin prowlers
1 Buhrdur (Hill Troll leader)
3 Cave Trolls

This gives a total of 53 Goblins (plus one drum) and 4 Trolls.

This is one of my smaller armies but it is certainly big enough to give the Fellowship some grief, or a dwarf expeditionary force a run for their money. Once all of the armies have been featured I will begin to stat them up for a variety of games systems and then get onto painting them all, which may be several years in the undertaking!

They have a Cave Troll (or 4)!

Although the Moria goblin hordes have been completed (see post from a couple of weeks back), their hard-hitting cave troll brethren needed to be constructed. These are large multi-piece figures that require some modelling skill to put together. Like Shelob, these took a little while to get right but, again, I got away without having to pin them - they will need a fair amount of putty work to smoothe out some joins though.

First up is the leader of this little battle of miscreants; Buhrdhur, Hill troll Chieftain. I absolutely adore this mini. It just oozes power and menace. He will make a good leader for any force of bad guys, be they goblins, orcs, evil men or even other trolls.

I have been thinking on how to use the four troll miniatures I have in my collection; obviously they can be used for a standard Moria army but as Burdhur is a hill troll I can also use them as a small band of his brethren. Not sure on a paint job yet, but I'd like to paint them so that they can have multiple uses. Here are the three variants of Cave Troll I have (not sure if there are any others)...

It seems, when looking closely at the sculpts, that there are two body variants of troll based on pretty much the same set of legs (Buhrdhur's legs are amended slightly due to what he is wearing and the base tab has moved to the other foot). Unfortunately, the three Cave troll bodies cannot be inter-mixed with the way the legs are done for Buhrdhur to give more variants, but I think four is enough for any army.

I am wondering what type of putty to buy to sort these gaps out and to give the joins extra strength. I normally use greenstuff but I am not really that great at pushing it around. I have heard there is a grey putty called Procreate (?) Perhaps that would be good to use - especially if it is more pliable than greenstuff.


Whilst gluing up all of these miniatures, my other piles of fantasy figures have been looking at me imploringly. I will get around to those too after I have made inroads with painting the LotR lads and lasses. However, this did not stop me from procrastinating whilst I should have been prepping - a New Life Resolution (as opposed to a New Year's resolution), starting this January after three years of life crappiness, was to procrastinate less - I am getting there, albeit slowly. At least I am now catching myself doing it and positively changing my attitude when I find myself doing it.

Anyway, from the figures I recall peeking at me from the lead pile I thought about creating fantasy armies that use the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings miniatures as a base, but with the added bonus of also using other manufacturers' figures in a parallel universe to Middle Earth. Using only the slotta based figures from my pile, this is kind of what I came up with (more will be explained in later posts if unclear what these miniatures are)...

Kingdoms of Men (lawful/good)...

• A technologically advanced race of men - Gondor with war machines and modern (i.e. for this world) tactics of warfare
• Horse Lords - Rohan with Confrontation Wolfen as their allies

Kingdoms of Men (baddies)...

• Easterlings play the heavy infantry/cavalry role
• Haradrim play the light infantry/cavalry role
• I will look at buying some toy elephants to convert for use as heavy support
• GW Ushabti can be summoned by their war priests as a kind of conjured battlefield support

Other armies...

• Trolls, Orcs and Goblins as allies to the bad guys
• Other manufacturers' Giants and other big critters as allies to either side
• Dwarfs and Hobbits as people allied to the good guys
• I also have some Fomorian type figures from Brigade Games (I think) to use, but not sure in what capacity yet

Once I have got under way with painting my LotR miniatures, I will look at prepping the above figures to fill gaps in my schedule and for when I get bored doing the same thing all the time (I can sometimes get caught in a rut when painting, especially when trying to complete armies that are very samey like Gondor or Rohan).