Middle Earth Battle Companies - Week 2: First Blood!
Welcome back to our journey through Middle earth. This week we catch up with a handful of games that took place, a breakdown of some of the hero levels ups and a final showing of the map.
Elliot’s White Hand Vs. Stephen’s Blades of Bruinen
Show of Strength
The first match-up pitted the Uruk-hai of Isengard against the Elves of Rivendell. This match-up was sure to be a juicy one as Elliot had that critical Strength 4 with his Uruk-hai to wound Stephens elves on a 5. However, the beauty of the elvish kin is that they are a whopping fight 5. This meant if Stephen rolled a 6 he would instantly win the duel. Then he would be looking for another 5/6 depending on the type of Uruk. This scenario was just a straight-up murder scenario. Whoever killed more would be the victor. Early game, it seemed to be in the hands of Isengard with their superior numbers. However, Stephen's consistent rolling of 6’s meant that Elliot could not get a chance and wounding anything. A few more turns went by as Stephen's elven block began cutting down the Uruks and sure enough, it became a victory for the elves. This meant that Stephen got to move an extra block. Elliot had the unfortunate luck of rolling an injury for one of his heroes, which made my first game very interesting. Having gained some lovely influence to improve his elves, Stephen wisely decided to give some of them horses. Which would become a terrifying force for the rest of us to play againts in the future.
Josh’s Iron drakes Vs. Elliot’s White Hand
Rescue!
Since I was hosting and we were at odd numbers, I decided to allow everyone else to have the first game. As mentioned before, with Elliot’s heroes injured, we would have to play the Rescue scenario! The objective involved Elliot placing his injured hero in the centre of the map with my company surrounding him and the rest of his forces trying to break my dwarves. That would then allow for his lone hero to run off the board. In a regular scenario, this would be perfect for dwarves since their movement is not great so waiting for combats to come to them was the idea. Unfortunately, Elliot had a few bowmen, and even though they would be hitting on 4s and wounding on 6s, it still was a risk, since he would just pick me off a shot at a time each turn. So, I made a bold and some may say dumb strategy of rushing up my leader and trying to kill the bowman. Despite him winning the duels he just couldn’t wound and soon enough Elliot’s hoard had trapped and murdered my leader. Having lost a hero and even more outnumbered I figured the best chance I had would be to try and break Elliot’s company before his hero fled the board. The game ended with a loss for the dwarves. However, it was not all so bad as I rolled so well on the injury chart that I got an additional bunch of influence to spend to upgrade my troops. Elliott opted to upgrade some of his boys with heavy armour for extra defence and managed to get a feral Uruk-hai as a reinforcement. I on the other hand gave two of my heroes Goats and gained an additional crossbow. All in all, I think we both won on that one!
Ben’s Blains Oathtakers Vs. Henry’s Angmar
Show of Strength
Our final game this week pits the dwarves against the orcs of Angmar, this scenario was the same as the first game we recapped, Show of strength. Ben’s strategy involved splitting his dwarves into pairs to try and allow his archers to thin Henry's lines. During the game, ben focused his troops more centrally towards the board which meant he was only facing half of Henry's troops. While He was winning the duels the wound rolls were not kind and he failed to wound many models. This allowed henry to bring in the rest of the army and within a few turns the orcs caught up to the dwarves ending in a defeat for Blains Oathtakers. The highlight of the game had to be an orc killing Nut the archer and henceforth being known as “NutBuster”. Ben's plucky hero Nor managed to avenge this fowl kill and with it, some history for these two companies had been fleshed out.
Campaign Map
The campaign map below showed off the further free expansion and winner tiles that we all collected throughout those games. Some players got iconic locations netting them extra campaign points whilst others made further progress towards capturing those elusive locations hoping to grab them for their next game.
Legend:
Josh - Red
Stephen - Blue
Elliot - Black
Ben - Green
Henry - Orange