Friday 31 January 2020

More Middle Earth gaming

James, Martin and matt came over to the Sherwood Soldier Shack for another "playtest" game using James' own rules.
Matt and I took the downtrodden hardworking orcs in the face of elven elitists and their bourgeois dwarfen allies.

This was "just a small game"according to James.

Matt and I were excited by the sheer volume of Orcs we were in command of. So we deployed them all together in one huge battle line. It looked great. If a little tactically naive.


The elves, predictably had cavalry. Good, hard cavalry. Though James wanted to give them extra rules as if they were in some way his favourite unit or something.



In addition to Orcs, we had some trolls (Reaper Bones ogres - someone always asks where they're from)




The battle began with warg riders catching some elf light cavalry unprepared - they tried to evade but fluffed it and were too far from their leader to benefit from his re-roll.


Meanwhile more elf cavalry bore down on the Orcs.


Fortunately we had plenty of them.


On our left the trolls pushed up on the dwarfs.



A roiling cavalry melee broke out. That the wargs did surprisingly well in.




The dwarfs caught some skirmishing orcs but were then faced with some angry trolls.




Meanwhile the werewolf (there wolf) leaped onto some of the other dwarfs and tore them asunder.





After snacking on dwarf warriors the werewolf (feel free to do the joke yourself) chomped on a dwarf hero.


The elf infantry meanwhile faced a never-ending tide of Orcs.







The dwarf warriors and their lord were cut down and then the archers were dragged into the combat.




Eventually the elf cavalry managed to finish off a resilient group of skirmishers - only to come face to face with a huge column of altogether tougher orcs.



At this point the death of the other elf cavalry and their hero finally broke the elf and dwarf forces and the Orcs were able to claim the field.

Another great evening of gaming. James rules work really well - though we're still ironing out some kinks. It plays fast but with enough moments of heroism, balanced out by the grind of mass combat to feel like a proper heroic Middle Earth or other fantasy setting game.

11 comments:

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    1. Thanks. i should probably point out that the vast majority of the models belong to James - Martin and I contributed a paltry few each.

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  2. Very nice we haven’t played a big fantasy game for a while so it might be time to roll them out again

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  3. Looks like a really fun game with lots of nice looking miniatures.

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  4. Looks great Tom. Good to hear that James, Matt and Martin are getting some games in. I hope to be back in the UK for a while later this year, would be good if we could do something.

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    1. Be great to see you and get a game in. When are you thinking?

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    2. Looks like mid-May - around Partizan - at the moment.

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    3. Excellent, be great to see you. A game with James and co. in the Soldier Shack then a curry in Sherwood should be possible to arrange :)

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  5. Another good looking game. The Orc hordes certainly look impressive and a get well deserved win.

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