Recaping the B.I.G. Battle for Middle Earth 2!
The weekend has passed and that means the B.I.G. Battle for Middle-Earth 2 has come and gone So, for this week we will be recapping the day and congratulating the winners and those who took part! It was a fun-filled day where 28 players fielded 600 points of glorious Middle Earth Armies. We had showings from Mordor, Rivendell, Isengard, Gondor, and many more.
Round 1 began with a classic ‘To the Death!’ Nice and straightforward for all the participants playing early in the morning! For those who don’t know this scenario entails both players trying to quarter the other. With the usual banner VPs and Leader wounds also reward VPs. I always enjoy this scenario as it’s very simple to know what you have to do and for the first game of the day, it allows everyone to turn their brains on for the day ahead. As I was the tournament stand-in, this scenario was good fun for my Gondor who was led by Boromir. The lovely shield wall rule and 6” banner went a long way for my army. Of course, being the stand-in, I never went in trying to win my games but defiantly giving my opponent a good game!
Round 2 followed shortly after with Domination being the scenario for this one! A quick rundown of domination. The game ends when someone’s army is quartered. The board has one objective in the centre of the map and each player then takes turns placing another objective 6” from the board edge and 12” away from any other objectives. This lasts until there are 5 total objectives on the board. VPs are scored if a player has more models than their opponent on the objective, They also score them if they wound an enemy leader and they score them if they break their opponent. This scenario was good fun as it began to show the versatility of everyone’s army. Certain lists such as the eagles would struggle due to numbers not being able to contest the objectives. I did the tried and trusted run up to my opponent and give them a good fight contesting only a few of the objectives.
We called for lunch before returning for the last two games of the day, but before that, we looked around the table for the best-painted army. Ellen herself would be the judge for this tournament having no bias towards one army or another and I have to say she chose a great army.
Once everyone has returned we began round 3 with another objective scenario this timing being ‘Divide & Conquer ‘ similar to the previous VP's reward from the last two only this time there were 3 objectives in the middle of the map 12” apart with the central one rewarding the most points. I came face to face with the dragon Emperor a lovely model from ForgeWorld! I had only faced the Emperor once before, and that list was against a horde of war drakes. This list was more refined and more of a challenge. The game went as well as it could have since I was never planning on winning I abandon the main objective in the hopes of getting some combats done! Ingold did do two successful wounds on a black dragon knight which died instantly lacking in fate so that was a particular highlight of the game for me!
The final round was Destroy the supplies, where each player had to destroy the three objective markers in their opponent's deployment half. I went up against not only another Gondor army but another Josh as well! We had a great game with both our Boromirs doing lots of killing, his in particular, was much more deadly, having put him on a horse! Ontop of that his rangers did make a significant dent in my troops. Josh did end the day with a win which he left very happy about!
Finally, to end the day, we began the award ceremony. I'd like to personally congratulate the following:
1st Stephen Denbigh
2nd Ross James
3rd Jordan O'Brien
Best Painted Sean White
Wooden Spoon Ben Colston
Again congratulations to all the winners and a big thank you to everyone who took part. This tournament was even bigger than the last one and it's fantastic to see the community continue to grow. Lastly thank you all for reading our weekly blog tune in next week for another!