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Take the High Ground


I finally got the chance to play some 'Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game'. I bought a copy of the GW 'Fellowship of the Ring' boxed set at the Milleniumcon swap meet.  The game has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust ever since.  Little did I know there was a local contingent of players meeting at Ted's house. 

I had no idea what an awesome game this is!

We setup a 'King of the Hill' type scenario with Rohan forces vs. Uruk-Hai. Tony and I took the combined Uruk-Hai/Worg force setup the defense of the hill setup in the middle of the table. Ted and Brett took a combined warband of Rohan Riders and archers. A great time was had by all but for some odd reason Ted insisted on calling me 'Bob'?

Ted wrote up an excellent After Action Report. I have posted it with permission.


Well here goes and honesty first.

The Setup
Sat afternoon saw Tony, Mark (aka Bob), Mike and I gathered around a 4x6 table. Alphonso showed up a little later and added good commentary and appropriate smack when necessary. We played a 750pt game of GW's Lord of the Rings. The forces of Rohan were going to face-off against Saruman's Uruk-Hai forces. The Rohan forces consisted of a large warband of riders, a smaller mounted Royal Guard force, a large foot force and a smaller force of archers. Heroes on the good side consisted of Theoden, Eomer and Eowyn along with a Huntsman (who literally hit nothing the entire battle). The dark forces consisted of a large unit of Uruk-hai, a smaller unit of Uruk-hai with crossbows, a troll, a big unit of scouts and a medium sized unit of Warg riders, all led by Lurtz, Sharku, a captain and a shaman. Mike and I led the good side while Mark and Tony embraced the dark side.

Rohan cavalry crashed into Warg riders

So here goes the honesty, I read and even reread the rules before hand but in the heat of battle I really messed them up. We made a few big mistakes early on but thankfully I think it affected both sides equally.

The scenario was to "take the high ground" which consisted of a large hill in the center of the table. There was an interesting twist to the deployment in that if you rolled a 1-3 for your warband you deployed that force much closer to the center line. A 4-6 allowed you to deploy anywhere. This ensured we were in the scrum pretty quickly. True to form Mike's big unit of cavalry clashed with Mark's Warg Riders. Tony and I exchanged fire as I tried to soften him up before we tried to take the hill. The body count was slow to add up and after a quick check of the rules we corrected a big error and things started dying much quicker. My Royal Guard Cav made a flanking move to engage his forces from the rear and without hesitation Tony brought up the Troll to secure the hill.


Lady Eowyn
Both armies broke in the same turn but we managed to keep fighting. In the end we both had about a quarter of our forces remaining with the evil side having just a couple more so victory went their way. All in all it was a blast of a game and I'm looking forward to another battle soon. I think I'd like to drop it down to 500 points and possibly get in more than one game. I think I'll try and get that troll painted as he was truly the hero of the game as was one lone Rohan bowman in Mike's force that seemed to win multiple combats even with the odds stacked against him.

Thanks again to Mike for bringing a really nice painted Rohan force. I'm eager to get some stuff painted as the game really was blast. Looking forward to the next game.


Closeup

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