Old Boys Weekend - Game 2 of 3

A Mini Helm's Deep?

This game was designed to fill an afternoon / early evening and leave time to set up the table for large Napoleonic game on the following day.

Scenario

Rather than one of the scenarios from the rule book I opted to put a unit of Rohan Levy (heavy foot) in a fortified position on a hill between two woods (both occupied by a scout unit).

Against them, Isengard would send forth an army, composed of: 3x units of Uruk Hai (heavy foot), 1x unit of Dunlendings (bellicose foot); 4x units of Orcs/Goblins (light foot); 1x unit of Warg-riders (light riders); and, 1x unit of Wargs (lesser warbeasts).

This army, split into two commands, that poured forth through the gap between the mountains and the forest, was so vast it could not all pass at once (hence only six units on the edge of the table in the photo below).

The other units would have to come on by activating to enter the table when the first wave have moved forward and made room for them.  

You will no doubt have spotted that this game is being played on hexagonal tiles[1] which are used for movement.  This increases move distance and ranges as those can only be differentiated in increments of 4".  This also means that unit separation means units cannot end their move in a hex adjacent to a friendly unit[2], although we do allow them to pass through such a hex if they have enough movement to get clear the other side.

Also, in this game many of the units were 'over-strength' having more than their usual compliment of figures, but no more strength points.  The first losses are always these 'surplus' figures and thus a unit's courage test is unaffected until they have lost all the 'surplus' figures and start losing those related to their strength points.

The Rohan foot and scouts, facing this tidal wave of evil were, unfortunately for them (and me, their commander), not over-strength.

And so the onslaught was unleashed.

The five 'evil' units nearest the camera, are all part of Steve's command, Martin, commanding the three furthest units had brought along his bad luck rolling PIP dice in the last game to infect his activation dice, and only managed to get one unit to move.

As might've been glimpsed in the above, the Rohan Scouts on their left flank, seeing the Warg pack dashing off on a right flanker moved into the 'hillfort' to help hold the levy hold on.

And as the pack closed in, the Scouts unleashed a volley of arrows, all of which missed!

But elsewhere, things were not going so well for the force of Isengard, as Martin failed to activate anything, his command staying largely stuck on the start line.

This wasn't all good for me, as Keith, commanding the relieving force of mounted Rohirrim, was not allowed to activate to enter the table until every Isengard unit had been activated (they had to try and activate units if possible).  Consequently, my small force was still on its own, and unsupported, as they received the first attack from the forces of evil - the Warg pack.

Despite being uphill and behind defences, my Scouts, who aren't really up for mixing it hand-to-hand lost the fight two-nil.  Their courage isn't great either so it was with some trepidation I rolled the dice[3] - I needn't have worried.

The Wargs regrouped, and after losing a pack member to the Scouts archery, came back for another bite of man-flesh.

This time the Scouts managed a one-all draw, but then both sides failed their courage tests and retreated 'Battered' (denoted by a yellow token, or tiddlywink).

While the Wargs were now out of the way for a turn or two, the Uruks, and the faster Orcs, were getting pretty close and levy were unsupported.  On top of all this, Martin had still failed to activate some of his units and thus the Rohan cavalry was going to be hard pressed to arrive before it was too late.

The Scouts then showed that failing courage tests was more their 'thing' as they failed to rally, lost another figure, and retreated again, just short of the table edge.  The Levy, determined to prove themselves more stalwart than their erstwhile companions loosed a salvo of arrows at the nearest Orc unit, killing two.

In the background of the above, the other Scout unit can be seen to have moved over to wood to the right, of the picture, to block (slow?) any attempt to turn that flank.

The Orcs then charged in, but were rebuffed by the Levy, but another Orc unit had now reached an undefended part of the fort's defences.

It looked like the end for the Rohan Levy, but then as the garrison was staring death in the face ...

Great horns of the north wildly blowing.  Rohan had come at last!

The arrival of the Éoreds (1x elite riders & 2x heavy riders) was triggered by the last of the Isengard units being activated for the first time.  Keith, in command of the mounted Rohirrim, had no problems activating all three of his units so although rather late, they had all arrived together.

But would they be in time?  It started well as the ravening hordes paused their mad career to indulge in missile fire against the Rohan Levy.  But their courage held (they rolled ten), no doubt boosted by the arrival of the cavalry.

The shower of missiles was followed up by a mass of Orcs swarming over the unmanned defences to take the Levy in the rear.

 Unable to resist the levy retreated across the defences ...

Out of the Frying-pan and into the Fire!

As if the plight of the Levy wasn't bad enough, the Warg pack, rallied after its earlier retreat had sniffed out the last Scout unit in the woods.

The Éoreds, galloping to the rescue were now on the brink of intervening.

But sadly, they were just too late, as first the Levy were overrun and broken ...

... and then the last Scout unit fled the field having been savaged by the Wargs.

The only bright spot in all this misery being the Wargs' courage also failing as a result of their loss fighting the Scouts, and they retreated back into the woods.

Their rescue efforts having come to naught, all the Rohirrim could do was to wreak a terrible revenge.  And as revenge goes, theirs was pretty terrible. The first Riddermark Éored slammed into a unit of Uruks, who promptly scored 11 hits out of their 12 combat dice killing three riders, while only losing one Uruk in return.  But while the riders' courage was undaunted the Uruks fled, battered.

The fleeing Uruks were then charged by Theodred and his Royal Éored ...

... and finally thumped by the second Riddermark Éored.

Despite this, the Uruks remained unbroken, albeit bloodied.  But if they thought that they might weather the storm they were soon dismayed by cries of ...

The Eagles are Coming!

Giant Eagles (greater warbeasts) actually, coming down from the mountains[4].

I will draw the story to a close at this point as it becomes a tale of repeated charges by the Rohirrim ...

... and their allies, the Giant Eagles, and the later arriving Eagles (lesser warbeasts) ...

... followed by a couple of Trolls emerging from the mountains.

In essence, it dragged on into a fight to the last man or dog / Warg - the last member of the pack finally slinking off table, albeit with belly full of man-flesh.

 

There were some interesting bits like the Orcs seeking safety in the hillfort ...

... but really my scenario design had failed in not providing a better end-game and victory conditions.  A shame really, as it was great fun up to the point where Rohan's cavalry started to vent their anger on the enemy to cover up for their failure to arrive in time.

I must do better next time.

Then it was time to clear away and set up the final game for the following day, and that game can be found here.

Notes:

[1] Hexon terrain, by Kallistra, as are the hills and mountains.

[2] Having a whole hex separation between units means units don't have to fit entirely within a hex, if they spillover a bit, it doesn't matter so long as it's clear which hex the unit is in.  This should show up in some of the photos where figures can be seen spilling over outside their hex, but are still well separated from nearby units.

[3] I rolled the Black Dice, being used by the servants of Saruman, by mistake, but rebuffed all calls for a re-roll with the White Dice.

[4] Other non-Rohan reinforcements could be called for a turn after all the Rohan cavalry had activated, but fully absorbed by the demise of my Rohan foot I had missed the first opportunity to do so.

Last of the Rings

The speed with which I finished off the figures in my last post left me feeling up for more quick retouching.  To this end I dug out two lots of Warhammer Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures I'd been intending to re-touch for some time.

First, the 'Dead' that I bought painted off eBay (for less than the cost of the basic figures) but wanted the paint job modified from a 'stone grey' to an 'ethereal green' and the basing changed to match the other figures in my collection.  I did an earlier trial 'touch-up' in an earlier post (Link) so this was a fairly quick bit of dry-brushing and re-basing on this bunch of 21 figures.

En-masse they look good, but up close the basic nature of the paint-job is more apparent.

Second, I had a unit of 12 Rangers of Ithilien painted by Fernando Enterprises.

While I like the green used for their cloaks, it is the same as that used on all my Rohirrim figures and I wanted to differentiate them.  To this end I re-painted the cloaks in more muted colours, better suited for Rangers seeking to blend into the woods.

While they make a coherent looking unit, I did them in two groups of 6, one lot with paler 'greyer' cloaks as Rangers of the North (Dunedain) ...

... and one lot in darker green/brown cloaks as Rangers of Ithilien.

This gives me some flexibility with these figures as they could all be used as the same troop type / unit, but they can also separated into two smaller units that can be distinguished visually.

Apart from a few metal personality figures, this effectively completes my LotR collection ...  

...  for now?

More Legions of the White Hand

Saruman had taken a drubbing in recent games, and so I felt I needed to give him the sort of numerical advantage that he sought to overthrow Rohan.  To this end I rooted out all the odd spare figures I had laying around plus a few very cheap eBay lots and sent them off to get painted by Fernando Enterprises.  One of the eBay lots was a sprue of 12 Dunlendings (link) as these would add another troop type.

Well, they all came back from Sri Lanka while I was tarting up the Uruk Hai reported in the last post.  But I managed to quickly do the required minimal retouching and basing (texturing and painting) for them to join the Uruks from the previous post to make an imposing reinforcement for the Army of Orthanc.

Added to my existing units, they bring Saruman's forces up to:

 

103 Orcs (aka Goblins)

47 Uruk Hai

12 Dunlendings

8 Wargs (unridden)

7 Warg Riders

2 Trolls

The Orcs were painted by Fernando to match previous batches and required no touching up at all, except the tips of their spears were painted red so I redid these with  gunmetal (but that was dead easy and very quick).  The Dunlendings needed a little bit more, but nothing a quick spot of paint wouldn't fix.  On the subject of fixing I had to mend two of the Dunlendings' weapons.  I can't fault Fernando for this as the figures were superbly packaged, and any blame is down to Games Workshop for the incredibly spindly weapons on these figures.  Anyway, I was very pleased with the Dunlendings and they deserve their own photo to show off the brushwork.

Also included in the batch of figures were five odd Riders Rohan figures I put together from spare bits and broken figures.  These were painted by Fernando to match the previous batch they did for me.

These figures are a very good match to the earlier batch but did require a little bit more tidying up.  I think that's because these are less detailed sculpts than the Dunlendings, and Fernando's painters do better when there's a clear feature to paint rather than one that requires a bit of interpretation.  I added and hand-painted the flag myself based on a design I foud online.  I'm rather pleased with it, especially the horse, which is clearly influenced by the White Horse at Uffington.  Hiding in the back of the above photo is a spare horse I decided to use as a casualty marker, complete with embedded arrow (the latter also had broken off so was replaced by another provided by a friend at my local club).

These, combined with my existing figures, give me a total of 20 mounted Rohirrim, more than enough for a skirmish.

Caveat on Fernando painting: I also sent some small batches of Blue Moon Miniatures 15mm US Cavalry ...

... and Plains Indians with a view to starting a new project.  

I was not pleased with the photos sent back, and in the end, Fernando said they had done all they could to fulfil my requests for changes and returned the figures at no charge.  While it was very reasonable to not charge me for these figures, I was surprised that some of the changes, like painting the moccasins a brown leather colour rather than black was considered too technically challenging.  

It seems that 15mm castings might not be their strength, especially fairly rough castings like Blue Moon.  OTOH their handling of the Dunlendings suggest that 

any modern range of 28mm plastic figures will turn out rather well.

WiP Packed Away

 Just for once it seems a quick job, turned out to be just that - a quick job.

The small batch of 13 painted Uruk Hai that I bought of eBay (see previous post) to quickly retouch to boost Saruman's forces is complete.

After the drubbings Saruman received in the last couple of games he needs something like this to put some fear into eth hearts of men.

 And if this isn't enough, I've also finished touching up the batch of painted figures from Fernando Enterprises that arrived while I was working on these.  They will provide an even bigger uplift to the Army of Orthanc but that will have await another post.

A Quick(?) WiP

With the 20mm Naps finally complete, and a batch of painted figures awaited from Fernando Enterpises, I was looking for something quick.  Then I saw this lot on eBay (photos from eBay listing).

They were reasonably priced, very painted much like my existing units of Uruk Hai, and just enough for one more Dragon Rampant unit to round off Saruman's army.  The paint jobs, shown more clearly below, looked like they would need minimal retouching to blend in.

When they arrived, I realised it might take a bit more work, as the hair was dry-bushed metal like the armour.  Nonetheless, I got stuck in and shortened those, ridiculous in my eyes, can-openers on sticks, and stripped the flock off the bases.  And this is as far as I've got so far.

To be honest the textured bases were nicely done but would not blend in with all my other units so I will give then my standard plain sand textured basing.

As I was writing this post the Fernando figures arrived, a good 24 hours before they were expected at the earliest - I haven't unpacked them all yet.  Hopefully this won't stop me completing these Uruks fairly soon ... I hope.