Game - Gondor/Fiefdoms vs. Isengard - Middle-Earth

 The other day Chris and I played a game of Middle-Earth. We played 750 pts. and had agreed on a Gandalf vs. Saruman fight. Chris took on the role of Gandalf while I was Saruman.

Gandalf's army:

Warband 1:

Gandalf on Shadowfaxe

13 warriors of Minas Tirith, 7 w. sword, 6 w. spears

2 Knights of Minas Tirith

Warband 2:

Prince Imrahil on horse

3 Knights of Dol Amroth

Warband 3:

Forlong on horse

3 Knights of Dol Amroth

Saruman's Army:

Warband 1:

Saruman

13 Uruk-hai, 7 with shields, 6 with pikes

Isengard Troll

Warband 2:

Lurtz

13 Uruk-hai scouts, 6 with shield, 7 w. bow

Warband 3:

Orc on warg

6 warg riders, 3 with throwing spears, 3 with bow

We selected the scenario randomly and ended up with Hold Ground which meant that we had to fight over an objective in the center of the board. The good side won the initiative and thus had to deploy their warbands first. Unfortunately for Gandalf the dice rolls meant that Saruman could decide where Gandalf's and Forlong's warbands should enter the field. Saruman chose that they should enter in opposite corners in hope of being able to deal with them separately. Prince Imrahil was more on point and thus entered close to Forlong to support him.

Almost as planned Saruman was able to enter where he wanted to and chose to deploy between Prince Imrahil's and Forlong's warbands, ready to take them out quickly before Gandalf was able to aid the knights. Lurtz entered next to Saruman in a good position to support his master. The warg riders were forced to enter on the opposite end.

Saruman immediately used a sorcerous blast to kill a Dol Amroth knight and unhorse Prince Imrahil.

The good side won the initiative again in turn 2, but Saruman called a heroic move. Forlong tried the same, but the dice gods favoured Saruman. The troll and uruk-hais quickly attacked the knights and killed a couple of them, while Forlong was unhorsed.

Prince Imrahil was surrounded by uruk-hais but the evil warriors were unable to kill the great warrior. At the same time Lurtz led his scouts towards the obejctive.

Meanwhile Gandalf and Shadowfaxe have reached the objective and gets ready to defend it at all cost.

We had a time limit on the game and it was approaching fast. The Gondor army was attacked by Lurtz' scout from one side and the warg riders from another. So although Gandalf stood right on the objective he had not enough troops with him to hold it, and Saruman won the battle.

Despite being completely surrounded by Uruk-hais all through the battle Prince Imrahil managed to survive and lives to fight another day.

Forlong, too, survived his fight with the troll and ended up escaping over the ruins.

And so ended another great battle in Middle-Earth. I was really lucky with the deployment which meant I could unhorse the good heroes and kill most of the Dol Amroth knights almost from the start. Unfortunately I couldn't quite those heroes but I ended up swarming the objective, and the good army was only one soldier away from breaking. I really need to get the army painted as I am rather pleased with how it plays.

Game - WW2 US vs. Germans - Big Chain of Command

Sunday Steffen and I had a full day to play and we decided to play a truly Big Chain of Command game with 4 platoons on each side. Steffen played the Americans and I played the Germans. Steffen had made a scenario based on the Normandy campaign. With the help of Google Maps he found a place which we recreated on the table.

Steffen's scenario:

Northern France, west of Saint Lo on the road towards Periers. The strategic focus point is a few scattered buildings around a crossroad. The scenario will be a mix between the Going with a Bang Scenario from the 1940 Blitzkrieg book and the Attack on an Objective scenario from the main rulebook.

Steffen had forces from the 30th infantry division and armoured support from 3rd armoured division. I had forces from the 352 infantry division and armoured support from the Panzer Lehr division.

Each player have 3 infantry platoons and one armoured platoon. 2 of the infantry platoons can enter play from the start, and one of the senior leaders from these platoons is a ranking leader, who can use all his command points to call for reinforcements. If he does so the remaining infantry platoon and armoured platoon can enter play from the next turn.

The table and jump-off points. The 2 starting infantry platoons have 2 jump-off points each. The Germans had to demolish 2 buildings and the crossroad. (The US used Russian jump-off markers)

One of the American platoons had to enter the battlefield from the jump-off points at the edge. One squad came under heavy fire as soon as it entered the field. The US forces responded fire with Bofors gun.

The other American platoon had jump-off points further up the field and began an attack in the tree-line, while the Germans tried to setup defensive positions.

A German squad had taken position in the house at the crossroads and fired on the Americans across the field. At the bottom of the picture a demolishing team is preparing to set charges on the other building.

The Americans take heavy fire and their advance is completely halted.

The Americans call in mortar fire on the crossroads.

The American ranking senior leader has managed to call in reinforcements and a Sherman 105 is the first tank unit to heed the call.

The Germans respond quickly with a Pak 38. Although hitting the US tanks repeatedly it was unable to knock out any tanks during the battle.

Heavy fighting in the tree-line. The German platoon tasked with holding the tree-line has taken heavy casualties and the Americans keep on coming.

The Germans setup another defensive line on their left flank but come under sustained fire from the Americans, who now has another Sherman 105 on the field (seen at the top of the table).

After some delay the German ranking senior leader finally gets some reinforcements to help their defense. A SdKfz 222 recons forward and realizes that more help is needed.

The American advance through the tree-line has been halted after heavy casualtis but more troops are advancing forward.

German panzer come forward in a desperate counterattack. The SdKfz 222 at the crossroads was destroyed by an 76mm AT gun.

Random event! Suddenly unknown mortar fire hits the area around the tree-line, preventing the Americans from pushing on their attack.

The German counterattack is stopped. One pzIV is destroyed at the crossroads and the remaining two panzers take heavy fire.

More US tanks and troops have arrived on the field and the Germans losses are mounting. Soon after morale breaks in the two of the infantry platoons and the armoured platoon, and the Germans flee. The Americans have won a great victory.

This was a truly big and epic game of Chain of Command. Although the end result never really seemed in doubt it was still a great game. The Germans just couldn't kill any of the tanks, despite several hits. I also made a great tactical error when I placed one of the jump-off points to far forward in the tree-line on the right flank. Steffen played a good game and just kept on pressing forward, despite some initial losses to his infantry. 

Steffen and I don't get to play as often as we would both like to, so it's great to play Big Chain of Command when we do. That way we get to put a lot more troops on the table. We actually had time to play a regular game as well, and once again the Germans were severely beaten. Thankfully there are no photographic evidence of this battle.

 

Game - Undead vs. Dwarfs - Blood Bowl

Last night my brother had our final game in season 2 of our Blood Bowl league. It was my Undeads versus my brother's Dwarfs. The Undeads just needed 1 point to win the league this season. Unfortunately one of my ghouls was out of the game due to injury, which was a bit of handicap as my 2 ghouls were the starts of the team.

Apart from the actual result the game would, however, have little consequence as we would play with the new BB edition next season and so restart all teams. So naturally we weren't as thoughtful with our players and plays as normal.

The Undeads started with the ball and and started a slow but unstoppable drive towards the endzone, ending with a touchdown in turn 5.

 The Dwarfs had enough time to score in the first half if they made a good drive. Unfortunately for them the kickoff resulted in a pitch invasion. An as the Undeads had +2 to their fame most of the Dwarf team was knocked to the ground.

Since it became almost impossible for the Dwarfs to score, they looked to beat up some opponents instead. They were particularly interested in my remaining ghoul so I decided to give him some protection. (he actually had strength 4, so perhaps a little overkill, but I really liked him). The ghoul survived and first half ended 1-0.

In the second half the Dwarfs brought on a rather unpleasant surprise. (I actually knew it was coming, but it was still unpleasant)

The Deathroller started off very impressively and knocked out a mummy. After that, however, it mostly pushed around a poor zombie. The rest of the Dwarfs managed to knock out or injure several other undead players, so they had no problem in securing a turn 16 goal.

So with one point in the bag the Undeads secured the league win for the second time. But only with a better goal difference than my chaos team. It was a fun and interesting league season, where we were still getting to learn our teams.

Stilling
Hold	Kampe	Vundet	Uafgjort	Tabt	Målscore	Point	Casualties
Deadly Devils	6	3	3	0	11-4	12	10
Sorø Destroyers	6	4	0	2	10-6	12	18
Hardrock Raiders	6	3	2	1	10-7	11	10
Wood Elves	6	2	2	2	10-9	8	7
Dwarfs	6	2	2	2	7-7	8	11
Dodgetown Rats	6	1	1	4	11-17	4	4
Sorø United	6	1	0	5	4-13	3	7

As mentioned we will start playing the new edition in the next season, and will therefore restart all teams. 3 teams will be added to the league: The 2 new teams from the start box, Imperial Nobles and Black Orcs, and my new Necromantic team which I have just assembled. We will, however, split the league in two parts, where the two best teams from each group will advance to semi-finals matches and ending with a final match.

I'm looking forward to trying out the new edition. Since Easter is coming up, I'm unsure when we'll be starting, but at least that gives me some time to read the new rules.

Hobby Update

I am unfortunately still suffering from severe pains in my shoulder, so my hobby work is very limited at the moment. So this post is a summary of what I have been doing the last few months.

While doing the 15 minutes-a-day painting challenge in January I also worked on some 6mm terrain. I had bought some 6mm latex fields and and rough ground pieces from TimeCast during the Black Friday week, that I decided to work on also. As always I kept it simple and spraypainted them brown, flocked the edges of the fields and gave them some various wash and drybrush. I'm quite pleased with the result given the work put into them. The plan was to show them when I had finished them all, but the injured shoulder put a stop to that. In the photos there are also some 6mm buildings from Irregular Miniatures that I have had for years. They were painted with contrast paints. At some point I will also do a base for them.

About a month ago I played a game of Middle-Earth against my regular LotR opponent Chris. This time he brought the Fellowship from the book 'The Quest of the Ringbearer'. I think it's the legendary formation called 'The breaking of the Fellowship', so it's without Gandalf.

I took a Mordor army led by the Shadow Lord on a Fellbeast with a Mordor troll chieftain, an orc captain and bunch of orcs. We played the scenario where we had to search 6 objectives for an item. This definitely favoured my larger army, but I was uncertain as to how I should deal with the hero army. It was, however, still a fun game, although we did make a few, possible game-changing errors.

6 markers on the table. Mordor on the left, and the Fellowship on the right.

The troll chieftain tries to flank the Fellowship, but the heroes kills the orcs easily.

The Shadow Lord leads from behind.

The Fellowships struggles against their many foes.

Eventually the Fellowship is overwhelmed. Ironically the only survivor is Boromir.

I have assembled a few things, just to try and do some hobby work. Here are some Norman archers, a Russian KV-85 and a 15mm ruin.

And when I cannot do hobby work I have resorted to purchasing stuff to fill my hobby needs. A local Danish hobby shop have had a FoW sellout with 50% off everything, so I have stocked up on such items. I also won a Facebook auction for some painted LotR elves.

My gaming room in the garage has suffered from a leaking roof for some time, so now we decided to get it fixed. So we hired someone to put a new roof on the garage. Hopefully I will be able make the room a little bit better when the roof is done, so that will be the focus for the coming months. 

And hopefully my shoulder will get better, so I can paint some more stuff. I still have lots on the painting list, and the collection is still growing.