The Watchtower of Dol Guldur : LOTR

My iPad has been broken and the replacement has not arrived yet so limited blogging at the moment. This means I am behind and I have a couple of games to catch up on. So will try and get some blogging in over the next few days, first up a Lord of the Rings game, I had been re watching the Hobbit whilst painting so decided to run a scenario inspired on the film.

The Watchtower of Dol Guldur has a series ward spells protecting it, the Elves led by Elrond and the dark forces of the Necromancer have been despatched to capture the secrets held inside. The special rules for this scenario means that each side can only have one unit or character inside the protected area at one time and the force controlling the tower when one side hits 50% will be the victor.

The dark forces include Orcs, warg riders, a black knight and a troll

Elrond is supported by an elite force of Elven warriors and a small group of Dunedain 

Elrond also has Glorfindel, the spell protected area around the watchtower is marked by the obvious brown/grey board

Dark forces advance and spread out they heavily outnumber the elves but are much less resilient

The troll eyes up glorfindel

and wildly charges into crush him

The wargs are facing off with Elrond in the protected zone whilst the Necromancer fire spells and fire balls

The troll has pushed Glorfindel back but is then peppered by arrows

On the other flank the black knight has been seriously wounded and is repeatedly pushed back failing his morale check

The Eleven warriors make short work of the troll hacking him down

The archers prove very effective as you would expect

The final lone warg is soon despatched

But then more heavily armoured orcs charge forward......numbers are starting to count

Weakened Elrond has to withdraw in the face of the onslaught

But it is too late the Elf Lord is cut down by a fire ball spell

Seeking revenge the remaining elves charge towards the Necromancer

Whilst the Dunedain move in to capture the tower

At this point the dark forces reached 50% and the Necromancer evaporated into a dark cloud of dust drifting away on the wind, the good guys have won but it was a close run thing.

A fun scenario although the dark forces did seem to fail an awful lot of morale checks, the rules were Dragon Rampant and the magic cast by Elrond and the Necromancer gave just enough interest with out it becoming too powerful. I think perhaps another LOTR scenario not too far in the future....perhaps with Gandalf ?

Don’t go down to the woods today.....

You’re sure of a big surprise. A week or so ago having seen a lovely Warrior Priest on Michal’s blog I thought it was a long time since we had seen any of my Warhammer collection on the table. So for another virtual game I developed a simple scenario where the Empire forces led of course by a warrior priest were looking to clear out a nearby Forrest populated by dark creatures of the woods. No doubt the local village has seen a number of raids taking place, people disappearing etc...

We played with Dragon Rampant for ease as it works better for simple virtual games. I didnt take too many photos and realised afterwards that i didnt take a photo of the Beast / Herdstone which was actually located 3/4 of the way between the Empire entry corner and the Beast corner. The scenario required the Beast to set up two units randomly selected at the Stone to protect it the rest would arrive from the other three corners randomly on a dice roll. The empire would come on all from one point. The winner would be the side holding the stone when one army was down the only 3 remaining units

Onto the action...

The Empire forces also have a Griffin

As a ‘flyer’ this charges across the table making short work of a small unit of beast scouts but they do manage to get a wound on it

The rest of the Empire men spread out although they make slow progress

The braying of beasts as centigors and and other horned demons charge out of the Forrest (i should just say at this stage that although we dont play much Warhammer these days and GW have completely messed up, the concept, back story and world created for warhammer is in my humble opinion second to none i absolutely love the concept of the beleaguered human population living out their lives in constant fear in a dark medieval fantasy world)

The griffin is distracted by another herd who manage to rag it away from the objective

Greatswords playing as elite foot knights should be able to cut though the beasts

It not all the beasts are so small a massive Minotaur leaps forward towards the handgunners

My mounted warrior priest armed with a very large Warhammer ! He has magical spells but doesnt really make these count 

Swamped the greatswords are outnumbered

Hey see off the first assault but are then hit from the side as well

Wounded the Minotaur is eventually felled by the heavily armoured knights

But it is all over............and the Empire forces are forced to flee the Forest 

In reality the Empire forces never really got going and were hampered by some very poor dice rolling, this is sometimes the way with games although it was great to get the figures on the battlefield. i do miss Warhammer and am thinking about how we get some more games when face to face gaming is back.

In the meantime i have been prepping lots of figures....including a side line in Early WW2 German Zombies which i am looking forward to painting 🙂

“They run as if the very whips of their Masters are behind them” : LOTR

For our next virtual game we played a follow up to the previous capture the Hobbit scenario.  Despite some technical problems with my internet the game worked ok I think a re-run would see Saruman getting involved. Anyway suffice to say as a Tolkien and Peter Jackson fan we modelled it around the film where the ‘three hunters chase the Uruk hai across the plains of Rohan.

Three groups of Uruk and Lurtz must make their way to safety and Saruman in the distance. The three hunters, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli aided by a small group of Rohirim must rescue the Hobbit. The challenge is only Saruman knows which group is carrying the Hobbit

The three Hunters arrive over the crest of the hill, for once Legolas is of target with his bow though !

Initially Gimli charges in but the combat takes its toll on him and eventually he falls (perhaps wounded) 

By dint of a failed morale check the Hobbit seen above being carried in the group is revealed (and yes I do have the two hobbit carrying Uruk figures)

The Rohirim shoot at long range but have little effect

I have skipped a  bit here as the hobbit was released and recaptured several times, eventually Lurtz grabbed him only to be attacked by Aragorn.......but most un-cinematic, Lurtz lops the head off the Returning King of Gondor

With almost everybody else dead the pointy eared elf jumps in to save the day, kill Lurtz and save the Halfling !

Bravo some harmless fun for wargamers who love LOTR

And another gratuitous shot of cycling at the weekend I think I can class this as isolation 

Rescue/capture the Hobbits : Lockdown gaming using Zoom

Following the success of the semi solo ACW game I decided to hit the technology and attempt a live/remote game. My wife has been using Zoom (free app if you only have two people) for some exercise classes and this seemed a simple and easy platform. (Paul has blogged a picture of the battle from his viewpoint/armchair over on his Nord Blog listed to the right, so check it out )

So I set up a small LOTR game.

Here is the setup, running zoom on my iPad. I have a house full of drum stands which with an attachment make excellent stands for iPad, the idea was to get the position as close to a normal standing playing position. The trick is getting it so that as much as possible of the table is on screen with out being too far away. The report back was it was ok and I had tested previously on my miles iPad anyway. It’s not perfect but having the oppositions face on the screen does make it feel like a two person game. The max size I think you can get on screen with this set up is 4x4. We kept the rules simple Lion Rampant you obviously need to avoid lots of line of sight blocking terrain. I have heard or read of people with multiple cameras etc which would undoubtedly make it better. But this set up was effectively free and gave a very reasonable and fun game. I am going to try another game in a couple of days 👍

.....and so to the action

Objective of the battle was to seek out and capture or rescue two Hobbits these were hiding at one of four locations with the exact location not know to either party

The hiding locations are marked by the green tokens

But the troll with its wild charge is too angry to even hunt for the hobbit charging instead forward

Two units of infantry fighting outside the temple structure, the rules required at least one turn to hunt

The troll has been finished off and everybody near the temple are battered from the fight

Ha the berserkers find Sam in the pigsty....and start to take him off for evil treatment

Shortly after the Uruk hai locate Frodo in the bushes.....the game is up ?

Whilst it was clear Sam was lost.......useless fat hobbit anyway ! A tremendous fight took place over Frodo as befits his status as the ring bearer 

Eventually with their baseline in sight the last two Uruk hai were caught and put to death....Frodo is rescued but of course the ring is now on its way to The white city messing up most of Tolkien’s trilogy.😀

So a fun game played during lockdown the tech worked pretty well👍

Out of interest I went to town sat lunchtime to buy porridge amongst other essentials, it was warm and pretty scary to see a usually busy town centre on a Saturday lunchtime completely deserted 😢

Next up some social isolation on my bike.......I started to feel slightly guilty as I am lucky enough to live near to places so beautiful

and finally as I was putting the ACW away I treated myself to setting up my AWI british. A reasonable brigade in the bag, very happy with the results so far...

Hope you are all keeping well and getting some hobby time in👍