Last Saturday was Coronation in Ealdormere, the event where we crown our new King and Queen. It's handy to have a new set of Royalty every six months. If you don't like the current set, you just have to bide your time and they'll go away without all that messy Civil War stuff and lopping off heads.
Stepping up to the thrones were Princess Dagmar and Prince Quilliam. I've know Dagmar for some time and she is a very nice and talented person. I know less about Quilliam other than he seems to have a good head on his shoulders and is an amazing fighter. I'm looking forward to this reign.
The event itself took place at a campground near the city of Kingston (Greyfells in the SCA). The site has a large main building with three floors of space so there was plenty of room, even if the weather had not been absolutely gorgeous, which it was. There was also a duck pond near the building which had all sorts of interesting water fowl, including several different types of ducks and geese.
We headed out from Guelph on Friday morning for the drive to Gananoque which is where Eve's mom lives. The site is about a 30 minute drive from the site, which was very handy. We got to Gan and Eve's mom made us a nice roast chicken dinner with potatoes and mixed vegetables. It was very yummy.
Both Eve and I had projects to finish for the event. Eve had two awards scrolls to complete plus finishing work on her new gown and I had 50+ miniatures which needed to be based (have sand and static grass applied to them). I spent until about 1 am working on my stuff and Eve was up to 3. This seems to be par for the course for most events but at least it wasn't a two hour drive away.
We headed out with Elizabeth at around 9:30 am and got to the site just after it opened at 10 am. Being there early helped get us a great parking spot. Eve changed into her new dress, a Gothic era gown in a warm red-brown brocade with fur trim, and it looked fantastic. She would get several compliments on it during the course of the day. Eve made sure she got her scrolls delivered and I was on Elizabeth duty until the end of First Court. Elizabeth looked very sweet in her purple dress and we went outside almost immediately as the hall was rapidly filling up and was getting quite noisy. Elizabeth has a tonne of energy and it's fun trying to keep up with her. She liked to be near the duck pond and it was an interesting time keeping her dress clean. The geese could be a bit aggressive so I had to keep an eye on them. Sometimes I followed her, sometimes I lead her, and we went all over the site including the upper and lower parts of the hall. It was quite tiring but fun in its own sort of way. Court was quite long and I only caught bits of it as Elizabeth made her way through the Hall. I did get to see one of Eve's scrolls get given out and it looked really good, even at a distance, with the main motif in gold based on a piece of Norse era metal work and lettering in Runic.
Court ended at 1:30 and I switched off with Eve and headed over to the fencing list where things were starting to get going. There were about 15 fencers at the event, about twice as many as the RMIC probably expected. I got to see people I haven't seen in years like Gavin and his Lady, Estienne. We ran some authorizations, including a reauthorization for Lady Estienne who was back to fencing after about 10 years. I also reactivated Gavin as a Rapier Marshal and got Lord Daffyd started on the Rapier Marshal in Training process.
The tourney was a fun format, a round robin with a twist which the RMIC referred to as Fermat's Lst Tourney, as it employed three geometric shapes, a circle, a rectangle and a triangle. These shapes were marked out on the ground in rope and the idea was to keep at lest one foot in the shape. If you incapacitated your opponent you scored two points, and if you forced them out of the shape you scored one. The top winners for each shape would face off in the final. I did pretty well, but not well enough to be one of the final three, which were Lady Cristabell, THL Wilhelm, and Lord Daffyd. IIRC Wilhelm won first place and Cristabell and Daffyd tied for second. Lord Archibald was at the event and wanted to play Cut & Thrust with me and we had a lot of fun. I gave as good as I got, which pleased me as Archibald is a very good fencer and a lover of period fencing manuals and techniques. Wilhelm invited me to play at longsword, but we couldn't use C&T as he wasn't armoured for it. We, mostly, avoided doing any percussive cuts. All in all, it was a very pleasant afternoons fencing and I came out of it relatively unbruised. Thank heavens I remembered to put on my knee pads as Archibald did a beautiful stroke right across the side of my leg at knee level. It would have been right on bone but the knee pad absorbed most of it.
After the tourney was over I sought out Eve who was tired and needed to go back to Gan to rest. The only rest she'd had was taking Elizabeth on a trip into Kingston for some lunch and Elizabeth got to watch part of Wall-E on DVD. We said our goodbyes to some friends and headed out. Eve had wanted to stay for Second Court and see her other scroll given out, but was way to tired and we had run out of drinks of Elizabeth.
We drove back to Eve's mother's place and I volunteered to walk downtown and pick up a couple of orders of fries. The place we like to get them was closed but I found some really nice fries at a local pizza place. We had them along with hot chicken sandwiches and gravy. It was delicious, and I was ravenous by then as I hadn't had much for lunch. I spent the evening chatting with Bernita, Eve's mom, as Eve and Elizabeth crashed out. It was really fun to talk to her, and it was one of those neat meandering conversations touching on everything from Elizabethan naval tactics, to favourite SF writers, to silly TV shows. She enjoyed it because she doesn't get many opportunities to have an intellectual discussion except online and face to face is much more personal.
We all slept in the next day and after breakfast I tried to take Matthew to the local toy store, whose Sunday hours are apparently "By Chance", and we were out of luck. We did manage to get some neat Lego cars and a Hot Wheels car at a local department store. After we got back, I cut Bernita's front lawn, which had gotten a bit shaggy. It's the first time I'd pushed a mower in about 20 years as I've spent most of that time living in apartments. Next we packed up our stuff and headed back to Guelph. It was a good drive home, even when crossing the top of Toronto. We were glad to get home and the cats were happy to see us. I had a fun time at the event and in Gan. I think the next event I'll be at is called Fruits of Our Labour (FOOL) where I'll be running fencing for the day and Eve will be teaching. I'm also expecting Mark over tomorrow for a game of War of the Ring which I will hopefully write an entry on.
That's all for now.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Eves of Mirkwood can be a Hazardous Place
After almost two months, Mark and I were finally able to get together to have a game of War of the Ring. It's been awhile because I simply haven't been healthy enough, or the kids weren't healthy enough for him to come over and I certainly didn't want him to get sick and pass the joy onto his family.
Now, Mark is very cool in that he brings all the stuff we need to play the game, including the miniatures and the terrain. This time he even brought the table, or at least the table top. He had got a big piece of particle board and cut it into three 2' x 4' sections. This gave us a total playing surface of 6' x 4' when laid on the 6' by 2 1/2' foot dining room table. This gave us, literally, room to maneuver, and his green terrain map fits it perfectly.
Again, I was playing the Uruk-hai. I had a good force lead by Saruman. There was a two company formation of Uruk phalanx, a three company Uruk Warband, Vrashku leading two companies of crossbows, an Isegard Troll Captain, a company of Beserkers, a two company formation of Uruk-hai Scouts, and a three company + formation of Orcs with swords and shields. After previous experience dealing with cavalry, I put Saruman in with the phalanx, whose pikes would negate charge bonuses.
Arrayed against me was a mix of Rohan units with one surprise, three companies of wood elves accompanied by their King, Thranduil. For the first time, Mark had brought a spell caster to the table, and some of the best archers in Middle Earth. There were three separate groups of Rohan cavalry, two of Riders and one of Knights, accompanied by Eomer, Deowine and and Erkenbrand. I think there were three or four companies in each formation. There were also two formations of Oathsworn Militia with two companies in each and two, two company formation of Militia archers.
The game this time was not a fight over some structures as were the previous two games, but a fight to the death near the edge of Mirkwood Forest. There were a number of patches of forest on the board and a creek which separated roughly 1/3 of the board from the rest. The creek counted as difficult terrain put was not impassable.
I set up along one map edge with the Orcs to my far right, on the far side of the creek, but close to the Troll captain who could support them with his greater movement and ability to at the double. To the Trolls left was the Uruk hai Phalanx with Saruman, too his left were Vrashku's Talons beside the Uruk-hai warband. At the far left were the two companies of Uruk-hai scouts with bows.
I can't remember exactly how Mark deployed, but the wood elves were near the centre, flanked by the militia and some cavalry with the other archers on the far left opposite the Uruk scouts. IIRC Mark won priority on the first turn but let me move first. All of my units advance. My plan was to use the terrain as much as possible to keep my units from being flanked by cavalry. My first mistake was advancing the troll into range of the wood elf archers.
Erkenbrand and his cavalry moved towards the Orcs on the far right and the other two cavalry units at the doubled towards the centre Uruk-hai warband. The Militia hung back and the archers moved towards a clump of woods. The wood elves advanced a short distance so they could shoot but were out of Saruman's spell range.
Arrows from the wood elves fell like rain onto the poor troll, but after all was said and done, only three struck home, generating a single roll on the Very Hard to Kill table. Whew, dodged a bullet (well, arrow) but Mark rolled a 6 on the table, which modified down to a 5 causing two wounds. He then expended a point of might to bump the roll up to a 6 killing my 150 point unit. That was not a good start to the game though it did set the tone for the afternoon. Mark forgot that he had given me priority which meant my units could charge his cavalry, taking away their charge bonus, so he was forced to expend a point of might to call a heroic charge against the orcs who also tried a heroic charge but lost the die roll and were hit by 4 companies of cavalry. He decided not to attack the Uruk-hai war band in the centre. During the fight phase, about one and a half companies of orcs died, taking down a couple of Erkenbrand's riders in the process. The orcs were also Disordered.
Next turn I won priority, advancing the scouts into some woods, and moving the Uruks into positions were it would be difficult to flank them with cavalry. Saruman also began casting spells, launching a bolt of fire at the Elves, taking out three of them, but failing his focus roll so no further spells could be cast. The poor orcs remained disordered and thus would be charged again next turn, but could not charge and only had one attack dice. Mark's Rohirim and Knights in the centre lined up for a charge against the Uruk warband. Vrasku managed to whittle down one of the approaching groups of cavalry, killing four riders. The berserkers moving up the middle caught a storm of arrows from the wood elves, reducing their numbers by three. Mark was forced to declare a heroic charge so he could come to grips with the Uruk-hai warband, but I won the roll off and charged one unit of cav, in turn being charged by the other. At least I got rid of some of his charge bonus. The fight phase saw most of a company or uruk-hai warband die, for the loss of one horseman of Mark's, and the Uruks were disordered.
Mark won priority on the next turn, slowly advancing his wood elves and the militia began to advance as well but there wasn't a lot of movement on either side. Thranduil cast Natures Wrath on the Talon's killing a couple of them and cast Entanglement on the berserkers, severely limiting their advance towards a group of Rohan archers. Saruman countered with Exsicate against the wood elves boosted by Epic Ruination. Mark quickly expended a point of might, his last one, to try to block the spell and succeeded, saving himself a pile of potential damage. I followed up with bolt of fire taking out a few more elves but failing to Transfix them with my third spell. The wood elves and militia concentrated fire on the Talons killing some more crossbows, and their return fire plus that of the scouts killed another rider. My last remaining company of Orcs was charged by Erkenbrand and the two centre formations of cav charged the Uruks in the centre. He called out the Uruk captain in an Epic Duel, also using Epic Strike, getting eight rolls on the heroic duel table which killed the captain and 6 other Uruks. The follow on charges reduced the formation to one company. The last company of orcs on the right fell to Erkenbrand's charge.
The next turn saw Mark win priority again, and again there wasn't much movement, other than Erkenbrand wheeling around to join the fight in the centre and the militia slowly advancing. Vrashku's unit was hit by Nature's Wrath again plus shooting from the elves, reducing them to a single company. The berserkers were entangled again, plodding desperately towards a target, any target.
The lat few turns are a bit hazy for me, but what basically happened is Mark focused his spell and missile fire on the Talon's, wiping them out. The Uruk-hai warband in the centre was reduced to a single company. The Uruk-hai phalanx advanced part way across the creek and Saruman pounded the elves with spells, but got caught on the next term by Nature's Wrath which was enhanced by the creek. It really messed up that formation and Mark turned all of his cavalry towards Saruman and the phalanx. The scouts in the woods managed to shoot down the last two riders in one of the Rohirim formation as they turned to attack Saruman but then Saruman and the phalanx were destroyed by archery from the elves and the remaining cavalry. The berserkers survived but never made it into combat after being entangled three turns in a row. At the end of the game I was left with the scout archers minus a couple of dead, one company of Uruk-hai warband, and a half company of berserkers. I think Mark lost a full company of elves, one full formation of cavalry and a couple of other companies of cavalry. All in all not a good day for the forces of the White Hand. I think for the next game we are planning a re-fight, but there may be some variations in the forces.
Tactically, I did some good things. I used the terrain well to avoid being flanked by cav, something that has pain in the butt for me in previous game. I also tried to limit the huge charge bonus that cavalry gets, sometimes successfully. Still, in the end, it was a pretty crushing defeat, with Saruman fleeing from the board. The Elves were very effective at shooting, and Thranduil did some effective spell casting. He also had two units of Rohan militia that essentially did nothing in the game, not that they had to. Oh well, the forces of the White Hand will return, and it will be a dark day for men and elves.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Winter War
Well, it's been over a month since my last blog entry. Not much of interest has happened in that time, well at least things that would be of interest to someone who reads blogs. The Illness Fairy has visited our household on a number of occasions and I wish she would just go away.
At least now I have something interesting to blog about. Last Saturday was the SCA event known as Winter War, held in London, Ontario which is known in the SCA as the Shire of Trinovantia Nova (Trinovanti being an old name for the area where London, England currently is).
Our original intent was for the entire family to go. I had several responsibilities for the day plus I wanted to fence, which meant Eve/Asa would have been stuck looking after the kids in a less than controlled environment. She had also had a business trip to Calgary during the week and all the running around had left her quite tired. I decided that it would be best if I went on my own and managed to arrange a ride with a friend, Susan, known in the SCA as Magistra Nicolaa de Bracton of Leicester, who was coming from Ajax. She would swing by and pick me up at 9 am Saturday morning. This worked out well as she had things to drop off to me and she needed to pick up a set of throwing spears that Eve had brought back from Ohio. I told Eve about what I had done and she was relieved that she could stay home. She had two scrolls to complete for the event and this usually meant a late Friday night which would add to her fatigue.
It turned out to be a late night for me as well, as I needed to paint a bunch of miniatures for Dave in this case 16 High Elves, 8 Warriors of Numenor, and 2 Knights of Minas Tirith. I got all the painting done but didn't have time to base them. I figured I'd hang onto them and get the basing done and it would be one less thing for them to move, and Susan agreed that this was a Good Thing.
Nicolaa picked me up Saturday morning at 9 am. She had another passenger, an Eoforwician named Anneke. Because of the small car, a Honda Fit, I did a minimum pack, though I was amazed by how much stuff I could fit into a Fabricland cloth bag. I wore my fencing garb which helped to reduce the stuff I was carrying. We got to the site shortly after 10 am and I began to work on discharging the various tasks I had to get done. I dropped off my gear at the fencing list and went looking for someone I could drop the scrolls Asa had done off to. I eventually ran into Lady Kersteken, the Kingdom Signet, who was happy to take them off my hands, commenting on how awesome Asa was. During this time I was also able to drop of a bottle of Coke to Nicolaa, to whom I am apprenticed to in the SCA. It's always good to keep your Laurel happy.
The morning part of the event was taken up with a Kingdom Moot which I didn't attend. I hung around the fencing list talking to my friend Yoshi and getting ready for the fencing tourneys. After the moot ended fencing could start. Tadc was the Rapier Marshal in Charge. The first tourney would be a single elimination doubles tourney. I paired off with Baroness Eyrny and we did quite well, being one of the three final pairings with no losses. After a quick round robin settled nothing, they put all six of us on the list and , IIRC, we were eliminated second which meant we finished in second place.
The first tourney was followed by a lunch break during which I held a Kingdom Rapier Moot. Various things were discussed, like melee rules, gorgets, and the use of mail armour. It was well attended and I think people came away with some good info.
Following the Moot, we returned to the Fencing List, where I was to discharge my third task of the day. Lady Jocelyn, Preceptor of the Ealdormere Academy of Defence, could not attended the event, so she asked me to organize the three Prize fights that had been requested for the day. There was a Cadet prize and two Scholar Prizes. Luckily I had sufficient Cadets and Scholars to make them work and they went off without a hitch, with all three Prizors meeting the requirements for advancement in rank.
I then tracked down Lady Liadin, who was selling a type of special paper for doing scrolls. Asa wanted some so I made sure I got it. Liadin was nice enough to throw in some samples of smaller pieces for free. Yay! Another task completed!
There was one final tourney, also in a doubles format, but round robin this time. It also had the extra twist that each pairing was "chained" together, having to hold onto the end of a cloak. I paired off with Duke Sir Roak, who paid me a great compliment. He said he was surprised that a fencer of my caliber still needed a partner. It was a fun tourney and I think my team ended in second place with two losses. At one point in the tourney I was killed but Roak was still alive. I knelt down to show I was dead and Roak fenced from behind me, using me as a meat shield. At some point he managed to wrap the cloak around my helmet and nearly pulled my head off. After the tourney ended, I stripped off my fencing under armour and replaced it with a fresh shirt, but kept my doublet and slops.
At some point Nicolaa had told me that there were feast spots available and she signed me up. I did manage to pack a small amount of feast gear so a least I was prepared for that. It turned out to be an excellent feast and an amazing deal for $12. I sat with Nicolaa and Anneke. The feast was broken up into two parts or "removes". The first had a late winter theme, with lots of preserved foods and things that kept, like cheese and shortbread. The centre piece was a roast pork loin which was really, really good. The second remove had an early spring theme, with fresh salad, fresh bread with honey butter and the main dish being roast lamb. I've never been a big fan of lamb, but this one was very good. It also had a pear dish with spices that was awesome.
Feast was followed by Court. Their Majesties gave out a number of awards during the evening, including one of the AOA scrolls that Asa had done. He was a fellow fencer from the March of St. Martins and I was sitting beside him when he got called up. He was very impressed and thought the scroll was beautiful. The person who she had done the second scroll for wasn't there, having left the site early. It appeared that a lot of people left early and about four or five scrolls were not handed out. Oh well, that's what you get for skipping court. The members of the Order of Thorbjorn's Hammer were called up and a new member was inducted into our ranks.
We headed out shortly after court concluded and Nicolaa dropped me off at my place were we exchanged stuff. She was able to get the spears into her car after some struggle.
Sunday was Matthew's Karate Tourney in Maryhill, just outside of Guelph. Eve dropped us off and went grocery shopping with Elizabeth. Matthew was entered in the Forms competition and I also bought him a spot in a padded swords tourney. It was a long day. They did weapons first, and Matthew's club did well, one woman getting a first place. Then it was forms. Matthew did very well, despite illness keeping him out of karate for almost a week and a half, placing third in forms. After a very long wait, which included more forms followed by sparing, Matthew got to do the sword thing. He got third place but was a bit disappointed. I think he needs more practice and then I think he'll be a terror with one of those foam swords.
That's all for now. I'll blog again when something interesting happens.
At least now I have something interesting to blog about. Last Saturday was the SCA event known as Winter War, held in London, Ontario which is known in the SCA as the Shire of Trinovantia Nova (Trinovanti being an old name for the area where London, England currently is).
Our original intent was for the entire family to go. I had several responsibilities for the day plus I wanted to fence, which meant Eve/Asa would have been stuck looking after the kids in a less than controlled environment. She had also had a business trip to Calgary during the week and all the running around had left her quite tired. I decided that it would be best if I went on my own and managed to arrange a ride with a friend, Susan, known in the SCA as Magistra Nicolaa de Bracton of Leicester, who was coming from Ajax. She would swing by and pick me up at 9 am Saturday morning. This worked out well as she had things to drop off to me and she needed to pick up a set of throwing spears that Eve had brought back from Ohio. I told Eve about what I had done and she was relieved that she could stay home. She had two scrolls to complete for the event and this usually meant a late Friday night which would add to her fatigue.
It turned out to be a late night for me as well, as I needed to paint a bunch of miniatures for Dave in this case 16 High Elves, 8 Warriors of Numenor, and 2 Knights of Minas Tirith. I got all the painting done but didn't have time to base them. I figured I'd hang onto them and get the basing done and it would be one less thing for them to move, and Susan agreed that this was a Good Thing.
Nicolaa picked me up Saturday morning at 9 am. She had another passenger, an Eoforwician named Anneke. Because of the small car, a Honda Fit, I did a minimum pack, though I was amazed by how much stuff I could fit into a Fabricland cloth bag. I wore my fencing garb which helped to reduce the stuff I was carrying. We got to the site shortly after 10 am and I began to work on discharging the various tasks I had to get done. I dropped off my gear at the fencing list and went looking for someone I could drop the scrolls Asa had done off to. I eventually ran into Lady Kersteken, the Kingdom Signet, who was happy to take them off my hands, commenting on how awesome Asa was. During this time I was also able to drop of a bottle of Coke to Nicolaa, to whom I am apprenticed to in the SCA. It's always good to keep your Laurel happy.
The morning part of the event was taken up with a Kingdom Moot which I didn't attend. I hung around the fencing list talking to my friend Yoshi and getting ready for the fencing tourneys. After the moot ended fencing could start. Tadc was the Rapier Marshal in Charge. The first tourney would be a single elimination doubles tourney. I paired off with Baroness Eyrny and we did quite well, being one of the three final pairings with no losses. After a quick round robin settled nothing, they put all six of us on the list and , IIRC, we were eliminated second which meant we finished in second place.
The first tourney was followed by a lunch break during which I held a Kingdom Rapier Moot. Various things were discussed, like melee rules, gorgets, and the use of mail armour. It was well attended and I think people came away with some good info.
Following the Moot, we returned to the Fencing List, where I was to discharge my third task of the day. Lady Jocelyn, Preceptor of the Ealdormere Academy of Defence, could not attended the event, so she asked me to organize the three Prize fights that had been requested for the day. There was a Cadet prize and two Scholar Prizes. Luckily I had sufficient Cadets and Scholars to make them work and they went off without a hitch, with all three Prizors meeting the requirements for advancement in rank.
I then tracked down Lady Liadin, who was selling a type of special paper for doing scrolls. Asa wanted some so I made sure I got it. Liadin was nice enough to throw in some samples of smaller pieces for free. Yay! Another task completed!
There was one final tourney, also in a doubles format, but round robin this time. It also had the extra twist that each pairing was "chained" together, having to hold onto the end of a cloak. I paired off with Duke Sir Roak, who paid me a great compliment. He said he was surprised that a fencer of my caliber still needed a partner. It was a fun tourney and I think my team ended in second place with two losses. At one point in the tourney I was killed but Roak was still alive. I knelt down to show I was dead and Roak fenced from behind me, using me as a meat shield. At some point he managed to wrap the cloak around my helmet and nearly pulled my head off. After the tourney ended, I stripped off my fencing under armour and replaced it with a fresh shirt, but kept my doublet and slops.
At some point Nicolaa had told me that there were feast spots available and she signed me up. I did manage to pack a small amount of feast gear so a least I was prepared for that. It turned out to be an excellent feast and an amazing deal for $12. I sat with Nicolaa and Anneke. The feast was broken up into two parts or "removes". The first had a late winter theme, with lots of preserved foods and things that kept, like cheese and shortbread. The centre piece was a roast pork loin which was really, really good. The second remove had an early spring theme, with fresh salad, fresh bread with honey butter and the main dish being roast lamb. I've never been a big fan of lamb, but this one was very good. It also had a pear dish with spices that was awesome.
Feast was followed by Court. Their Majesties gave out a number of awards during the evening, including one of the AOA scrolls that Asa had done. He was a fellow fencer from the March of St. Martins and I was sitting beside him when he got called up. He was very impressed and thought the scroll was beautiful. The person who she had done the second scroll for wasn't there, having left the site early. It appeared that a lot of people left early and about four or five scrolls were not handed out. Oh well, that's what you get for skipping court. The members of the Order of Thorbjorn's Hammer were called up and a new member was inducted into our ranks.
We headed out shortly after court concluded and Nicolaa dropped me off at my place were we exchanged stuff. She was able to get the spears into her car after some struggle.
Sunday was Matthew's Karate Tourney in Maryhill, just outside of Guelph. Eve dropped us off and went grocery shopping with Elizabeth. Matthew was entered in the Forms competition and I also bought him a spot in a padded swords tourney. It was a long day. They did weapons first, and Matthew's club did well, one woman getting a first place. Then it was forms. Matthew did very well, despite illness keeping him out of karate for almost a week and a half, placing third in forms. After a very long wait, which included more forms followed by sparing, Matthew got to do the sword thing. He got third place but was a bit disappointed. I think he needs more practice and then I think he'll be a terror with one of those foam swords.
That's all for now. I'll blog again when something interesting happens.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
A Close Run Thing in Rohan
The month of February has arrived and it was time for a refight of the last game of War of the Ring Mark and I had played. Again, it would be Isengard, lead by Saruman of the White Hand against Rohan, lead by Eomer. Last time I won a narrow victory.
The forces were exactly the same as before but Mark chose to divide up his companies into a slightly different configuration of formations. He broke his archers into two groups and rearranged his cavalry into three formations. This would make his force more flexible and less vulnerable to certain spells.
I kept my forces the same, assigning Saruman to the Uruk-hai Warband and the Captain to the Phalanx. Vrashku and his crossbows were on the far right flank, Saruman and the warband were in the centre with the Troll and Berserkers slightly his right, the Phalanx was to his left and the Sappers were on the far left. The phalanx was a bit further over this time, lined up to try and take one of the three buildings that were the objectives of the game. The big difference in Mark’s deployment was putting an archer unit close to each flank.
I won Priority for the first turn and At the Doubled what units I could. The Vrashku advanced with two companies up and one back, coming into range of the archers on their flank. The warband and the phalanx both made their rolls but because of the restrictive terrain could not move up as far as they would like. Next time I think I’ll just go through the terrain rather than try to go around it, as it will help maintain my formation and only slow me down slightly. I ended out of spell range of all of Mark’s units, not a bad trick for a narrow table. I tried to cast Dark Fury on Saruman’s formation but failed the spell roll and chose not to expend a point of Might to bump it up. I did use Saruman’s Overlord ability to allow the Sappers to do a Heroic Move, giving them 18” of movement, placing them beside one of the objective buildings. I should have moved them into the building for the extra defence. Mark managed to At the Double two of his three cavalry formations and set them up for a double charge on the Warband with Saruman. My clever move of the game, which I had been thinking about since the last game, was to at the double the Troll Captain into the centre building, which I did.
For shooting, things initially went quite well for me. Vrashku called a heroic shoot and unloaded on the archers across from him. Hitting on 5’s and 6’s he did 11 hits to the formation. One more would have killed it so he expended a point of might to eliminate it completely by boosting one of his die rolls. Vrashku was down to one might but had killed an entire formation. Mark’s archers on the other flank shot up the Sapper unit, unfortunately doing four hits and killing it. There was an earth shattering kaboom, but no units were affected by it when I rolled 6” for the blast radius. Dang! It did make us realize that we goofed last game and they should have actually blown up much earlier. He also softened up Saruman’s formation with some thrown weapons and horse archery.
In the charge phase I was hoping Saruman’s Voice ability would prevent him from being charged, but this failed. In order not get charged by both units I chose to charge the closest one. Mark declared a heroic charge for both formations, which I countered with one of my own. I won the first roll but not the second. I’m not sure we played that right but I’ll have to do some rule checking. By charging the one cav formation I left myself open for an attack from the rear by the other cav. Mark also declared a heroic duel with both Erkenbrand and Eomer. Eomer also called an Epic strike, raising his fight to 10. I maxed out my dice roll and Eomer did well, beating me by 5, giving him that many rolls on the Heroic Duel chart. He rolled 6’s on three of them killing Saruman outright and doing a number of hits to the actual formation.
The rest of the fight phase saw the rest of the formation annihilated by the remaining cavalry attacks. Mark, being the nice guy that he is, decided we should do a reset and let me try it differently. This was most generous of him. For the refight I decided not to charge his cav but let myself be charged. This eliminated the attack to the rear as he could only get to my flank, but his one formation would get its lance bonus and both formations would have their charge bonus. Again Saruman’s Voice failed to beguile the Rohirim into not attacking. Again, he called heroic duels, and Saruman survived the fight with Eomer but was killed off by Erkenbrand, doing even more casualties to the formation and again the rest of the formation being wiped out by follow on attacks. So, either way, Saruman was very damn dead without having got a single spell off. That was a serious blow to my moral. In retrospect I should have had more units closer to him guarding his flanks. It may have also been wise to place him with the phalanx formation as that would have eliminated the cavalry charge bonus. Taking off 6 dice per Cav Company charging might have been worth the slightly lower defence. Having units prepared to hit his cav in the flanks, like the berserkers, would have been a good idea as well. So, one of my most valuable units was gone. Mark played it masterfully, using his heroes to eliminate my hero. It did cost him a fortune in might to do, but he’d essentially torn the heart out of my force. I perhaps should have gone second, as Mark would have moved into casting range allowing me to soften up some of his units before they hit me, or perhaps Immobilize one of them.
I still had an effective fighting force, and it was time to focus on the objectives. Mark won Priority for turn 2, and manoeuvred his cavalry for a strike at Vrashku’s Talons, seeking revenge for his dead archers. He also wanted to get away from the troll in the building. A block of his infantry and the Three Hunters moved up the centre. I moved the Talon’s into a position across the corner of the board which would prevent them from being flanked. I moved the Phalanx up, managing to get one company into the building. We play it that you can temporary split up formations to occupy terrain. The berserkers moved so their backs were to some woods to prevent rear attacks from the nearby cav. The troll moved out of the building so he could charge the Rohan knights close to him.
Mark shot up the Talon’s using horse archery and thrown weapons, and the archers on the far flank managed to get some solid hits on the company of Uruks in the building. I focused my crossbow fire on Deowine’s unit of 3 companies of Rohirim, but with something like 18 rolls, only managed to eliminate a single company (4 hits total). The troll threw a rock at some cav but did not get enough hits to eliminate a knight.
The charge phase saw two units of Rohan cavalry plow into Vrashku, eliminating two companies in the fight phase which was a better result then I’d expected. He also charged the troll, failing to do any hits for the loss of knight. The Three Hunters charged the berserkers in the flank, killing 6 of the eight guys in the formation. That hurt. My special teams, except the troll, were sucking.
Mark won Priority for turn three (was it really only turn three?). He moved a block of Royal Guard infantry towards the building occupied by the Uruk phalanx and occupied the building on my right flank with some oathsworn infantry. I moved the troll back into the centre building and another company of Uruks into the left flank building. The last two berserkers retreated into some woods. On the shoot phase the last of the Talon’s went down under a hail of bow fire and thrown spears. The troll managed to bring down a Knight with a rock. The archers did nothing to the Uruks in the building they occupied. The Royal Guard charged the Uruks in the building but came off the worst for it, taking two casualties for nothing in return. They were proving a tough nut to crack. The Three Hunters charged the Troll in the central building managing to inflict two wounds on him after expending a bunch of might, but he was still alive.
On turn four Mark again won Priority and wheeled his riders back across the table. Basically he was going to throw everything he had at Uruks in the building. Time was almost up and despite being badly bloodied, I still held two of the buildings. A combination of archery and fighting eliminated the Uruks in the building. I attempted to charge the Three Hunters in the flank with my two berserkers to reduce the number of attacks on the troll, but their charge failed. After a mighty expenditure of Might, the troll went down. The Three Hunters started the game with 8 Might and used it all. I was able to get the last company of Uruks into the building after winning Priority on turn five and they held out for the last turn of the game.
A lot of my problems were caused by my set up. I really should have done more to protect Saruman. Again, Mark played his assault on the Master of the White Hand very, very well but as noted above, there are things I could have done to minimize the damage. Despite the big loss early on, I fought my forces as well as I could and things came down to the wire. Mark manoeuvred his cavalry brilliantly, exploiting their advantage of rapid movement, but also discovered they’re not of much help when you want to occupy a building. The Troll Captain certainly proved his worth. In the building he had a defence of 10 making it very difficult to hurt him. I think I played the first game better tactically, and If I had of repeated some of the things I did there this game would have gone much better for me.
Until next time, TTFN.
The forces were exactly the same as before but Mark chose to divide up his companies into a slightly different configuration of formations. He broke his archers into two groups and rearranged his cavalry into three formations. This would make his force more flexible and less vulnerable to certain spells.
I kept my forces the same, assigning Saruman to the Uruk-hai Warband and the Captain to the Phalanx. Vrashku and his crossbows were on the far right flank, Saruman and the warband were in the centre with the Troll and Berserkers slightly his right, the Phalanx was to his left and the Sappers were on the far left. The phalanx was a bit further over this time, lined up to try and take one of the three buildings that were the objectives of the game. The big difference in Mark’s deployment was putting an archer unit close to each flank.
I won Priority for the first turn and At the Doubled what units I could. The Vrashku advanced with two companies up and one back, coming into range of the archers on their flank. The warband and the phalanx both made their rolls but because of the restrictive terrain could not move up as far as they would like. Next time I think I’ll just go through the terrain rather than try to go around it, as it will help maintain my formation and only slow me down slightly. I ended out of spell range of all of Mark’s units, not a bad trick for a narrow table. I tried to cast Dark Fury on Saruman’s formation but failed the spell roll and chose not to expend a point of Might to bump it up. I did use Saruman’s Overlord ability to allow the Sappers to do a Heroic Move, giving them 18” of movement, placing them beside one of the objective buildings. I should have moved them into the building for the extra defence. Mark managed to At the Double two of his three cavalry formations and set them up for a double charge on the Warband with Saruman. My clever move of the game, which I had been thinking about since the last game, was to at the double the Troll Captain into the centre building, which I did.
For shooting, things initially went quite well for me. Vrashku called a heroic shoot and unloaded on the archers across from him. Hitting on 5’s and 6’s he did 11 hits to the formation. One more would have killed it so he expended a point of might to eliminate it completely by boosting one of his die rolls. Vrashku was down to one might but had killed an entire formation. Mark’s archers on the other flank shot up the Sapper unit, unfortunately doing four hits and killing it. There was an earth shattering kaboom, but no units were affected by it when I rolled 6” for the blast radius. Dang! It did make us realize that we goofed last game and they should have actually blown up much earlier. He also softened up Saruman’s formation with some thrown weapons and horse archery.
In the charge phase I was hoping Saruman’s Voice ability would prevent him from being charged, but this failed. In order not get charged by both units I chose to charge the closest one. Mark declared a heroic charge for both formations, which I countered with one of my own. I won the first roll but not the second. I’m not sure we played that right but I’ll have to do some rule checking. By charging the one cav formation I left myself open for an attack from the rear by the other cav. Mark also declared a heroic duel with both Erkenbrand and Eomer. Eomer also called an Epic strike, raising his fight to 10. I maxed out my dice roll and Eomer did well, beating me by 5, giving him that many rolls on the Heroic Duel chart. He rolled 6’s on three of them killing Saruman outright and doing a number of hits to the actual formation.
The rest of the fight phase saw the rest of the formation annihilated by the remaining cavalry attacks. Mark, being the nice guy that he is, decided we should do a reset and let me try it differently. This was most generous of him. For the refight I decided not to charge his cav but let myself be charged. This eliminated the attack to the rear as he could only get to my flank, but his one formation would get its lance bonus and both formations would have their charge bonus. Again Saruman’s Voice failed to beguile the Rohirim into not attacking. Again, he called heroic duels, and Saruman survived the fight with Eomer but was killed off by Erkenbrand, doing even more casualties to the formation and again the rest of the formation being wiped out by follow on attacks. So, either way, Saruman was very damn dead without having got a single spell off. That was a serious blow to my moral. In retrospect I should have had more units closer to him guarding his flanks. It may have also been wise to place him with the phalanx formation as that would have eliminated the cavalry charge bonus. Taking off 6 dice per Cav Company charging might have been worth the slightly lower defence. Having units prepared to hit his cav in the flanks, like the berserkers, would have been a good idea as well. So, one of my most valuable units was gone. Mark played it masterfully, using his heroes to eliminate my hero. It did cost him a fortune in might to do, but he’d essentially torn the heart out of my force. I perhaps should have gone second, as Mark would have moved into casting range allowing me to soften up some of his units before they hit me, or perhaps Immobilize one of them.
I still had an effective fighting force, and it was time to focus on the objectives. Mark won Priority for turn 2, and manoeuvred his cavalry for a strike at Vrashku’s Talons, seeking revenge for his dead archers. He also wanted to get away from the troll in the building. A block of his infantry and the Three Hunters moved up the centre. I moved the Talon’s into a position across the corner of the board which would prevent them from being flanked. I moved the Phalanx up, managing to get one company into the building. We play it that you can temporary split up formations to occupy terrain. The berserkers moved so their backs were to some woods to prevent rear attacks from the nearby cav. The troll moved out of the building so he could charge the Rohan knights close to him.
Mark shot up the Talon’s using horse archery and thrown weapons, and the archers on the far flank managed to get some solid hits on the company of Uruks in the building. I focused my crossbow fire on Deowine’s unit of 3 companies of Rohirim, but with something like 18 rolls, only managed to eliminate a single company (4 hits total). The troll threw a rock at some cav but did not get enough hits to eliminate a knight.
The charge phase saw two units of Rohan cavalry plow into Vrashku, eliminating two companies in the fight phase which was a better result then I’d expected. He also charged the troll, failing to do any hits for the loss of knight. The Three Hunters charged the berserkers in the flank, killing 6 of the eight guys in the formation. That hurt. My special teams, except the troll, were sucking.
Mark won Priority for turn three (was it really only turn three?). He moved a block of Royal Guard infantry towards the building occupied by the Uruk phalanx and occupied the building on my right flank with some oathsworn infantry. I moved the troll back into the centre building and another company of Uruks into the left flank building. The last two berserkers retreated into some woods. On the shoot phase the last of the Talon’s went down under a hail of bow fire and thrown spears. The troll managed to bring down a Knight with a rock. The archers did nothing to the Uruks in the building they occupied. The Royal Guard charged the Uruks in the building but came off the worst for it, taking two casualties for nothing in return. They were proving a tough nut to crack. The Three Hunters charged the Troll in the central building managing to inflict two wounds on him after expending a bunch of might, but he was still alive.
On turn four Mark again won Priority and wheeled his riders back across the table. Basically he was going to throw everything he had at Uruks in the building. Time was almost up and despite being badly bloodied, I still held two of the buildings. A combination of archery and fighting eliminated the Uruks in the building. I attempted to charge the Three Hunters in the flank with my two berserkers to reduce the number of attacks on the troll, but their charge failed. After a mighty expenditure of Might, the troll went down. The Three Hunters started the game with 8 Might and used it all. I was able to get the last company of Uruks into the building after winning Priority on turn five and they held out for the last turn of the game.
A lot of my problems were caused by my set up. I really should have done more to protect Saruman. Again, Mark played his assault on the Master of the White Hand very, very well but as noted above, there are things I could have done to minimize the damage. Despite the big loss early on, I fought my forces as well as I could and things came down to the wire. Mark manoeuvred his cavalry brilliantly, exploiting their advantage of rapid movement, but also discovered they’re not of much help when you want to occupy a building. The Troll Captain certainly proved his worth. In the building he had a defence of 10 making it very difficult to hurt him. I think I played the first game better tactically, and If I had of repeated some of the things I did there this game would have gone much better for me.
Until next time, TTFN.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Kingdom of Ealdormere 12th Night
Kingdom 12th Night, January 2010
Last weekend was the annual 12th Night event for the Kingdom of Ealdormere. What is 12th Night you ask? 12th Night was traditionally the 12th day after Christmas, a time to celebrate as apparently people in the Middle Ages thought those 12 days were pretty darn spooky. It was a time to blow off some steam and there were often role reversals, with Lords playing peasants and vice versa (as long as the peasants didn’t take themselves too seriously). Sometimes you’d even get things like cross dressing.
After a pretty easy pack we left our place around 10:30 and picked up two of our SCA friends, Devin and Andrea, and headed off to the event. It was about an hour and a half away and the driving weather was good. We arrived about noon.
Ealdormere’s 12th Night is a pretty laid back affair. It was held at a community hall in Mono Centre which is near Orangeville. The site is quite pretty but a bit small. We attended last year and almost went back home when we saw the layout. This year the space seemed to be organized a bit better and easier to handle. Having the two kids with us always complicates things for us, but I guess we were feeling less stressed than last year. We set up in a corner of the hall and relaxed for a bit. For once, there was no drama getting Matthew into his SCA garb. There was SCA armoured combat in a downstairs part of the hall but no fencing, which was actually kind of nice, because it meant I could just hang around and schmooze. Most of the organized 12th Night activities seemed to be outside. There was some organized sledding events and a bunch of stuff on the ice rink like human curling and Ealdormere Armoured Hockey. I didn’t catch much of this as we were setting up when a lot of it was happening and we wanted to stay in the warm for a bit.
As 12th Night is a time where people can be a bit different, I went with a different choice of garb than my usual Elizabethan. It’s nice to have a good selection of garb in the wardrobe and I think I can do almost every period between the 11th and 16th centuries. This time I went a bit exotic, wearing a 16th c. Persian red silk caftan and blue puffy harem pants. I was also wearing a dark blue turban with a nice pin on it. Around my waist was a green silk slash, which also doubles as my rank scarf for the Ealdormere Academy of Defence. I looked pretty spiff. It is January so I also wore my brown wool Norse coat with some gold silk trim. Belted with the green sash it actually looked very appropriate for the Persian look I was going for. Asa went with her Norse garb as it is warm and comfortable, and can take messes better than silk garb. Matthew wore one of his tunics and Elizabeth was in a pretty purple dress that we had gotten at an auction sometime last year.
The event had some local people who owned a team of horses and a wagon, and they were having regular rides for the attendees. I took Matthew on one of the trips and it was nice. The wagon wound its way through Mono Centre and there was some nice scenery, including the house of an Australian ex-pat, judging from the street sign in the shape of the continent and a totem pole with Koalas and kangaroos carved on it. Matthew had fun on the trip, but talked a bit too much about various horsey bodily functions, much to the chagrin of the Lady sitting across from us when her son started to repeat some of the same things.
They had a nice area set for kids, which included a table of craft and colouring supplies. Matthew had fun playing with the various kids there. He played cards, coloured and messed around with a giant Megablocks castle set that someone had brought. Elizabeth was given plenty of chances to run around with Asa and I switching off chasing duty. At one point I took Matthew to the tobogganing hill. From the angle I first saw it from I didn’t think much of it, as it looked like a big mound of snow. When we got there I was much more impressed as the little mound I had first seen was on the lip of a valley. There were some very nice icy runs and our flying saucer shaped toboggan flew down the hill. Matthew had a lot of fun and it was a near perfect hill. I couldn’t stay out too long as, even with the wool coat, it got pretty cold standing at the top of the hill.
A lot of time was spent just chatting with various friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in awhile. Lady Jocelyn was there with her boyfriend, Rurik. Gunther was there with Mistress Nicolaa as were Angus, Isabeau and there daughter Aurora. There were a number of others and it was nice to see them all. There weren’t a lot of the traditional 12th Night shtick. There was no Lord and Lady of Misrule or silly contests, at least indoors. Some people got into the spirit of things, and I noticed several strapping young lads who looked vaguely familiar and slightly feminine. The lack of shtick, which I admit has gotten oppressive at other 12th Nights, was a bit disappointing.
The Queen was in attendance with the Princess of Ealdormere and there was a Court. Lady Jocelyn’s SO is now Lord Rurik as he received his Award of Arms, and Lady Catriona was inducted into the Order of Thorbjorn’s Hammer, a high level award for skill in the Martial Arts, of which I am also a member. She is amazing at Thrown Weapons, using her expert skill with the throwing knife, axe and spear. Lady Jocelyn was presented with a cup called a quaik (sp?) and charged by Their Excellencies Septentria to always keep it full and share it with others, an old Septentrian tradition.
After court we decided to head home. We were not staying for feast and it was getting dark out rapidly. We stopped in Orangeville for a quick supper and then proceeded home without incident, dropping off Andrea and Devin at their places. They made for very pleasant travelling companions.
It was a fairly relaxed event and Matthew and Elizabeth were well behaved. I’m glad we went, and my only real quibble was the lack of some of the traditional 12th Night stuff. Maybe next year.
TTFN
Last weekend was the annual 12th Night event for the Kingdom of Ealdormere. What is 12th Night you ask? 12th Night was traditionally the 12th day after Christmas, a time to celebrate as apparently people in the Middle Ages thought those 12 days were pretty darn spooky. It was a time to blow off some steam and there were often role reversals, with Lords playing peasants and vice versa (as long as the peasants didn’t take themselves too seriously). Sometimes you’d even get things like cross dressing.
After a pretty easy pack we left our place around 10:30 and picked up two of our SCA friends, Devin and Andrea, and headed off to the event. It was about an hour and a half away and the driving weather was good. We arrived about noon.
Ealdormere’s 12th Night is a pretty laid back affair. It was held at a community hall in Mono Centre which is near Orangeville. The site is quite pretty but a bit small. We attended last year and almost went back home when we saw the layout. This year the space seemed to be organized a bit better and easier to handle. Having the two kids with us always complicates things for us, but I guess we were feeling less stressed than last year. We set up in a corner of the hall and relaxed for a bit. For once, there was no drama getting Matthew into his SCA garb. There was SCA armoured combat in a downstairs part of the hall but no fencing, which was actually kind of nice, because it meant I could just hang around and schmooze. Most of the organized 12th Night activities seemed to be outside. There was some organized sledding events and a bunch of stuff on the ice rink like human curling and Ealdormere Armoured Hockey. I didn’t catch much of this as we were setting up when a lot of it was happening and we wanted to stay in the warm for a bit.
As 12th Night is a time where people can be a bit different, I went with a different choice of garb than my usual Elizabethan. It’s nice to have a good selection of garb in the wardrobe and I think I can do almost every period between the 11th and 16th centuries. This time I went a bit exotic, wearing a 16th c. Persian red silk caftan and blue puffy harem pants. I was also wearing a dark blue turban with a nice pin on it. Around my waist was a green silk slash, which also doubles as my rank scarf for the Ealdormere Academy of Defence. I looked pretty spiff. It is January so I also wore my brown wool Norse coat with some gold silk trim. Belted with the green sash it actually looked very appropriate for the Persian look I was going for. Asa went with her Norse garb as it is warm and comfortable, and can take messes better than silk garb. Matthew wore one of his tunics and Elizabeth was in a pretty purple dress that we had gotten at an auction sometime last year.
The event had some local people who owned a team of horses and a wagon, and they were having regular rides for the attendees. I took Matthew on one of the trips and it was nice. The wagon wound its way through Mono Centre and there was some nice scenery, including the house of an Australian ex-pat, judging from the street sign in the shape of the continent and a totem pole with Koalas and kangaroos carved on it. Matthew had fun on the trip, but talked a bit too much about various horsey bodily functions, much to the chagrin of the Lady sitting across from us when her son started to repeat some of the same things.
They had a nice area set for kids, which included a table of craft and colouring supplies. Matthew had fun playing with the various kids there. He played cards, coloured and messed around with a giant Megablocks castle set that someone had brought. Elizabeth was given plenty of chances to run around with Asa and I switching off chasing duty. At one point I took Matthew to the tobogganing hill. From the angle I first saw it from I didn’t think much of it, as it looked like a big mound of snow. When we got there I was much more impressed as the little mound I had first seen was on the lip of a valley. There were some very nice icy runs and our flying saucer shaped toboggan flew down the hill. Matthew had a lot of fun and it was a near perfect hill. I couldn’t stay out too long as, even with the wool coat, it got pretty cold standing at the top of the hill.
A lot of time was spent just chatting with various friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in awhile. Lady Jocelyn was there with her boyfriend, Rurik. Gunther was there with Mistress Nicolaa as were Angus, Isabeau and there daughter Aurora. There were a number of others and it was nice to see them all. There weren’t a lot of the traditional 12th Night shtick. There was no Lord and Lady of Misrule or silly contests, at least indoors. Some people got into the spirit of things, and I noticed several strapping young lads who looked vaguely familiar and slightly feminine. The lack of shtick, which I admit has gotten oppressive at other 12th Nights, was a bit disappointing.
The Queen was in attendance with the Princess of Ealdormere and there was a Court. Lady Jocelyn’s SO is now Lord Rurik as he received his Award of Arms, and Lady Catriona was inducted into the Order of Thorbjorn’s Hammer, a high level award for skill in the Martial Arts, of which I am also a member. She is amazing at Thrown Weapons, using her expert skill with the throwing knife, axe and spear. Lady Jocelyn was presented with a cup called a quaik (sp?) and charged by Their Excellencies Septentria to always keep it full and share it with others, an old Septentrian tradition.
After court we decided to head home. We were not staying for feast and it was getting dark out rapidly. We stopped in Orangeville for a quick supper and then proceeded home without incident, dropping off Andrea and Devin at their places. They made for very pleasant travelling companions.
It was a fairly relaxed event and Matthew and Elizabeth were well behaved. I’m glad we went, and my only real quibble was the lack of some of the traditional 12th Night stuff. Maybe next year.
TTFN
Friday, January 15, 2010
A Bloody Day in Rohan
What another battle report you say? So soon? Why yes! Mark and I have been really enjoying our games of War of the Ring, so much so that he wanted another game a mere week after our last game. As can be seen from the last post, things didn’t go so well for me in the last game, but I hoped this battle would be different.
My last couple of armies drew heavily from the Fallen Realms list with some support from Mordor and Isengard and they met with mixed success. For this battle I would be going exclusively with Isengard. My original army was around 1300 points but Mark asked me to tone it down a bit, so I ended up with 1005 points. My leader was a major villain, an Istari gone very bad, Saruman of the White Hand. He had lots of things going for him in terms of special abilities and some excellent combat spells which he could boost in strength. I was hoping he was going to do serious damage to whatever forces opposed his plans. I placed him in a three company formation of Uruk-hai warband, who had the high D to keep him safe. I also took three companies of Uruk-hai with pike, a three company formation of Vrashku’s Talons (Uruk’s w/crossbows and a strong captain), a company of Berserkers, a company of Sappers (basically a mobile bomb company) and an Isengard Troll Captain.
Arrayed against me was a Rohan themed army. I don’t remember its exact composition, but it included two big formations of cavalry, one of Riders and one of Rohan Knights. One of these was lead by Erkenbrand. There was a foot unit of Royal Guard including Deorwine, a foot unit of Oathsworn Militia, and another unit of Oathsworn Bowmen. The nasty surprise was the Three Hunters, a special unit made up of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. These guys were scary with tonnes of might, and some very special Special Abilities. If any unit on the map made me nervous, it was them.
Mark came up with a neat scenario. Down the centre of the board were three Rohan dwellings, which were the objectives of the battle. Who ever held the majority of them when time was called (2:15 pm) would be the winner. This was different and more interesting then beating on the other force until an obvious winner emerged. There were also a couple of patches of trees. We alternated units for set up. I placed the Uruk-hai warband and Pike in the centre, with the berserkers, troll and the Talons stretched out to my right and the Sappers on my left flank.
Despite the objectives of taking the buildings, I felt the best way to win was to eliminate as much of the opposing force as possible, which would make it easier to occupy the objectives. Saruman, I hoped, would be the key to this. My account of the battle is a bit of a gloss as a lot happened. I’ll try to hit the high and low points as best I can.
I lost Priority in the first turn. Mark move his cavalry up to get in position to charge Saruman's formation using At the Double. I moved what units I could At the Double, in order to get Saruman into spell casting range which was 18” for the spells I wanted to use. The troll went under cover in some woods. The Talons manoeuvred for a good shot at the Oathsworn bowman. Saruman has a number of good combat spells to choose from, the most obvious of which is Bolt of Fire. I went with a different plan though. He can use a spell with the hard to pronounce name of Exsiccate. You roll a number of d6 equal to the number of companies in the target formation and then do the total of the dice in strength 1 attacks. Saruman is Touched by Destiny, which means he can do a free Epic action each turn. One of his Epic abilities is Epic Ruination which can boost a spells strength by 2. My average roll on 4-5 dice was around 16. That meant I would get, on average, this many strength 3 attacks per spell. If I rolled a 6 for the spell effect, it would be strength 5 hits. I was hoping this would be the magical equivalent of a machine gun, and take down hordes of guys. It didn’t. I only took down a couple of horsemen despite two Exsiccate spells and a Bolt of Fire. That was disappointing. In the shoot phase I did better. The Talon’s locked onto the Rohan bowmen who were in the shadow of one of the objective buildings. The Talon’s had moved at the double, but Vrashku called a Heroic Shoot and used his Take aim ability. The poor archers were mown down by a hail of crossbow bolts, taking 14 hits. Ouch! As noted earlier, Mark had lined his cavalry up for a charge against Saruman’s unit. He then had Erkenbrand issue an Epic Challenge trying to call Saruman out and defeat him in combat, but thanks to Saruman’s high C he was able to ignore it. Saruman also managed to talk the Knights out of charging him, but they used Might to boost their roll, but then rolled a 1 for the actual charge. This left things up to the Riders. Their charge hurt the Uruk-hai warband but not nearly as bad as it could have. Mark had several instances were the dice went against him and it was frustrating. He had his usual great tactical sense but at critical moments the dice would fail him. I had my fair share of crappy dice rolling, especially for spell effects, but the Dice Gods were not with Mark today. He did call out Saruman in a Heroic Duel, which killed several Uruk but failed to kill Mr. S.
After the first couple of turns I played defensively. I tried to keep my big formations from being flanked or charged in the rear. My luck was quite good on my Priority rolls and I kept the initiative throughout much of the game. At one point Saruman transferred his flag from the depleted Uruk Warband to the Pikes, which was a good move. I managed to clear the bowmen out of the building on my right flank and occupy it with the Talon’s. In the centre my Troll Captain and Berserkers tangled with The Three Hunters. The Troll went down as did half the berserkers, but they took Aragorn and Gimli with them. At one point I was able to get my Sappers up to the building on the left flank, which was occupied by some Royal Guard, but the mad bombers failed to self detonate. The Guard then left the building on their move. No matter how hard they tried, the Sappers couldn’t quite get themselves to blow up, and Mark didn’t kill enough of them to set them off. They did occupy the building and digging them out would have had explosive consequences. Mark tried a couple of tactics to get them to detonate while his units were out of range but there was no earth shattering kaboom. Saruman kept throwing spells around and they did inflict a fair amount of casualties, but I had been hoping for more. He did prove useful in preventing several charges. At was essentially the endgame Mark moved his Knights into a position to charge but I had the Priority and was able to countercharge. The Sappers held out in the building despite a hail of bowshots from Legolas. I even managed a surprise crossbow shot on the Royal Knights when they were lining up for a charge. A lot of Might was burned through early in the game which was important later as it prevent things like Heroic Charges into my poor Uruks.
Time was almost up. There was a chance the sappers could be taken out and that would leave me in possession of just the one building. Still a victory, but a lesser one. Mark had units near the centre building which may have been able to take it thus making things a draw. We tried to rush through another turn or two after time but we made some mistakes that left the final outcome unresolved. I was victorious, but if the game had of continued properly that might have changed. The number of casualties taken by both sides was quite amazing. I lost the full formation of Uruk-hai warband, the troll, half the berserkers, almost a full company of crossbows, all but two of the sappers, and several pike. Mark lost his Riders, his Oathsworn Bowmen, the Royal Guard, 2/3rds of the Hunters, and several other Men from the other units.
I was happy with my tactics and the way my units worked. The big unit of crossbows could be devastatingly effective. Saruman was very helpful and had uses beyond his spells. His ability to prevent charges was crucial at least twice. The toughness of the Uruk-hai, especially the D7 warband absorbed a lot of punishment. I would have loved to see the sappers go Boom but it was not too be. D6+4 Strength 10 hits to every formation in range would have been something to see. They did serve their purpose though and were points well spent. My great fear is that they would be taken out by archers and go off amongst my own ranks but they were on the opposite flank from the bowmen. I tried to limit the flanking ability of the cav by keeping units close together so they could not be got around. I also tried to keep the amount of dice they could use down by charging them at every opportunity.
We plan on refighting the battle with the same forces in the near future. There are things I would do differently, but I’m sure there are things Mark will do differently as well. He is a lot of fun to play with, and his attitude to gaming is excellent. Even when I could sense his frustration with the dice, he persevered, and fought the good fight.
This weekend is the Kingdom of Ealdormere’s 12th Night and I’ll try to post about that after the event.
My last couple of armies drew heavily from the Fallen Realms list with some support from Mordor and Isengard and they met with mixed success. For this battle I would be going exclusively with Isengard. My original army was around 1300 points but Mark asked me to tone it down a bit, so I ended up with 1005 points. My leader was a major villain, an Istari gone very bad, Saruman of the White Hand. He had lots of things going for him in terms of special abilities and some excellent combat spells which he could boost in strength. I was hoping he was going to do serious damage to whatever forces opposed his plans. I placed him in a three company formation of Uruk-hai warband, who had the high D to keep him safe. I also took three companies of Uruk-hai with pike, a three company formation of Vrashku’s Talons (Uruk’s w/crossbows and a strong captain), a company of Berserkers, a company of Sappers (basically a mobile bomb company) and an Isengard Troll Captain.
Arrayed against me was a Rohan themed army. I don’t remember its exact composition, but it included two big formations of cavalry, one of Riders and one of Rohan Knights. One of these was lead by Erkenbrand. There was a foot unit of Royal Guard including Deorwine, a foot unit of Oathsworn Militia, and another unit of Oathsworn Bowmen. The nasty surprise was the Three Hunters, a special unit made up of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. These guys were scary with tonnes of might, and some very special Special Abilities. If any unit on the map made me nervous, it was them.
Mark came up with a neat scenario. Down the centre of the board were three Rohan dwellings, which were the objectives of the battle. Who ever held the majority of them when time was called (2:15 pm) would be the winner. This was different and more interesting then beating on the other force until an obvious winner emerged. There were also a couple of patches of trees. We alternated units for set up. I placed the Uruk-hai warband and Pike in the centre, with the berserkers, troll and the Talons stretched out to my right and the Sappers on my left flank.
Despite the objectives of taking the buildings, I felt the best way to win was to eliminate as much of the opposing force as possible, which would make it easier to occupy the objectives. Saruman, I hoped, would be the key to this. My account of the battle is a bit of a gloss as a lot happened. I’ll try to hit the high and low points as best I can.
I lost Priority in the first turn. Mark move his cavalry up to get in position to charge Saruman's formation using At the Double. I moved what units I could At the Double, in order to get Saruman into spell casting range which was 18” for the spells I wanted to use. The troll went under cover in some woods. The Talons manoeuvred for a good shot at the Oathsworn bowman. Saruman has a number of good combat spells to choose from, the most obvious of which is Bolt of Fire. I went with a different plan though. He can use a spell with the hard to pronounce name of Exsiccate. You roll a number of d6 equal to the number of companies in the target formation and then do the total of the dice in strength 1 attacks. Saruman is Touched by Destiny, which means he can do a free Epic action each turn. One of his Epic abilities is Epic Ruination which can boost a spells strength by 2. My average roll on 4-5 dice was around 16. That meant I would get, on average, this many strength 3 attacks per spell. If I rolled a 6 for the spell effect, it would be strength 5 hits. I was hoping this would be the magical equivalent of a machine gun, and take down hordes of guys. It didn’t. I only took down a couple of horsemen despite two Exsiccate spells and a Bolt of Fire. That was disappointing. In the shoot phase I did better. The Talon’s locked onto the Rohan bowmen who were in the shadow of one of the objective buildings. The Talon’s had moved at the double, but Vrashku called a Heroic Shoot and used his Take aim ability. The poor archers were mown down by a hail of crossbow bolts, taking 14 hits. Ouch! As noted earlier, Mark had lined his cavalry up for a charge against Saruman’s unit. He then had Erkenbrand issue an Epic Challenge trying to call Saruman out and defeat him in combat, but thanks to Saruman’s high C he was able to ignore it. Saruman also managed to talk the Knights out of charging him, but they used Might to boost their roll, but then rolled a 1 for the actual charge. This left things up to the Riders. Their charge hurt the Uruk-hai warband but not nearly as bad as it could have. Mark had several instances were the dice went against him and it was frustrating. He had his usual great tactical sense but at critical moments the dice would fail him. I had my fair share of crappy dice rolling, especially for spell effects, but the Dice Gods were not with Mark today. He did call out Saruman in a Heroic Duel, which killed several Uruk but failed to kill Mr. S.
After the first couple of turns I played defensively. I tried to keep my big formations from being flanked or charged in the rear. My luck was quite good on my Priority rolls and I kept the initiative throughout much of the game. At one point Saruman transferred his flag from the depleted Uruk Warband to the Pikes, which was a good move. I managed to clear the bowmen out of the building on my right flank and occupy it with the Talon’s. In the centre my Troll Captain and Berserkers tangled with The Three Hunters. The Troll went down as did half the berserkers, but they took Aragorn and Gimli with them. At one point I was able to get my Sappers up to the building on the left flank, which was occupied by some Royal Guard, but the mad bombers failed to self detonate. The Guard then left the building on their move. No matter how hard they tried, the Sappers couldn’t quite get themselves to blow up, and Mark didn’t kill enough of them to set them off. They did occupy the building and digging them out would have had explosive consequences. Mark tried a couple of tactics to get them to detonate while his units were out of range but there was no earth shattering kaboom. Saruman kept throwing spells around and they did inflict a fair amount of casualties, but I had been hoping for more. He did prove useful in preventing several charges. At was essentially the endgame Mark moved his Knights into a position to charge but I had the Priority and was able to countercharge. The Sappers held out in the building despite a hail of bowshots from Legolas. I even managed a surprise crossbow shot on the Royal Knights when they were lining up for a charge. A lot of Might was burned through early in the game which was important later as it prevent things like Heroic Charges into my poor Uruks.
Time was almost up. There was a chance the sappers could be taken out and that would leave me in possession of just the one building. Still a victory, but a lesser one. Mark had units near the centre building which may have been able to take it thus making things a draw. We tried to rush through another turn or two after time but we made some mistakes that left the final outcome unresolved. I was victorious, but if the game had of continued properly that might have changed. The number of casualties taken by both sides was quite amazing. I lost the full formation of Uruk-hai warband, the troll, half the berserkers, almost a full company of crossbows, all but two of the sappers, and several pike. Mark lost his Riders, his Oathsworn Bowmen, the Royal Guard, 2/3rds of the Hunters, and several other Men from the other units.
I was happy with my tactics and the way my units worked. The big unit of crossbows could be devastatingly effective. Saruman was very helpful and had uses beyond his spells. His ability to prevent charges was crucial at least twice. The toughness of the Uruk-hai, especially the D7 warband absorbed a lot of punishment. I would have loved to see the sappers go Boom but it was not too be. D6+4 Strength 10 hits to every formation in range would have been something to see. They did serve their purpose though and were points well spent. My great fear is that they would be taken out by archers and go off amongst my own ranks but they were on the opposite flank from the bowmen. I tried to limit the flanking ability of the cav by keeping units close together so they could not be got around. I also tried to keep the amount of dice they could use down by charging them at every opportunity.
We plan on refighting the battle with the same forces in the near future. There are things I would do differently, but I’m sure there are things Mark will do differently as well. He is a lot of fun to play with, and his attitude to gaming is excellent. Even when I could sense his frustration with the dice, he persevered, and fought the good fight.
This weekend is the Kingdom of Ealdormere’s 12th Night and I’ll try to post about that after the event.
TTFN
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Another Dark Day for Men (well, Evil Men that is)
First, in something totally unrelated to the rest of this post, I must mention the fact that I had a pretty fabulous Christmas this year. The main part of this was due to the fact that my lovely wife had ten days in a row off and we got to spend plenty of time together. There were lots of very nice presents for everyone in our household and tonnes of good food, including the best Sloppy Joe's I've ever had. Now that the holiday season is over, it's back to some other fun things, like table top miniatures gaming.
The last battle I played in went quite well for me, with my mix of Uruk-hai and Evil men winning a pretty convincing victory over the forces of good. Our next game was going to be a refight using similar but slighted changed orders of battle.
Again, I was playing evil. I like playing evil in LOTR: WOTR but I'm not sure why. Maybe it'd because most of my own LOTR mini's are evil. I was notorious in high school for sticking to playing the good guys, especially the Federation in Star Fleet Battles and Ranger or some other Good character in D&D. The main difference between my forces from those in the last game was the addition of a Ringwraith, in this case Khamul the Easterling. He is a pretty expensive unit, so I lost two companies of Uruk-hai, and the remaining company was converted to crossbows, and lead by an Uruk-hai hero named Vrashku. The increase in points allowed Mark to expand his Ranger and Cavalry forces for the good side. You can see the respective forces in the pictures posted with this blog. You might notice that Mark had the weight of numbers on his side.
Mark says that he is slightly scared of magic users in WOTR, especially powerful ones like the Ringwraiths. They can cast up to three spells a turn and have all the other abilities of heroes, but only one point of Might. Khamul also has an ability called Essence Leech, which gives his formation a save against casualties and can cause those casualties to rebound onto a nearby enemy unit. As cool as he is, I'm not sure he's worth it in a small to medium game of WOTR, as he sucks up a lot of points and can leave you badly outnumbered.
We set up as usual, using the nice terrain mat Mark has plus his spiffy rocky outcroppings and trees. We faced each other as if we had entered along the long edge of the table, which meant in the first turn we would almost certainly be in arrow range of each other. You can see the initial deployments in one of the pictures.
I may be mixing up the first couple of turns here but you'll get the idea. Mark won the first Priority (initiative) roll and decided to let me go first. I hot footed my Uruk crossbows into some woods and advanced the rest of the army. Mark also advanced with his cavalry starting to sweep around both flanks. The first shooting phase was mediocre for me, taking out one Gondorian cavalryman. I did manage to use Khamul to Transfix one of the units of his cav, but in retrospect, I should have used the spells differently. His shooting phase was much more devastating than mine, with a lot of his stuff locking on to the troll. He managed to inflict two wounds on the Troll with his Avenger Bolt Thrower, which was then finished off by something like 36 shots from his Rangers. It was a terrible blow. The troll was one of the main reasons I won the last game and he was dead in the first turn. I should have used Khamul to cast Pall of Night on the bolt thrower and the Rangers, reducing their effectiveness, and I should have deployed the Troll closer to cover. He also took out some of my Uruk-hai crossbows with his formation of Gondor archers. Taking one company of anything is a mistake. The charge phase saw me blow my charge roll with my Haradrim against the Transfixed Gondor cav, so nothing happened there. I tried to charge his other unit of cav with my Haradrim foot but couldn't get close enough, and they counter charged with a Heroic charge, wiping them out but expending all of their Might in the process. The next turn saw the rest of my Uruk crossbows fall, despite the cover of the woods. They got charged in the woods, but could only fight with half their number. So, I was down to my three companies of Easterlings, including Khamul and some Haradrim Cav. I tried to limit my losses by fighting defensively, keeping the archers under palls of night to reduce their effectiveness and manoeuvring to get out of their line of sight. Faramir and his cav managed to charge the Easterlings from the rear but a combination of Essence Leech and two handed weapons destroyed the entire formation. The remaining Easterlings were whittled down by archery fire and then the other unit of cav hit them, finishing them off. The Haradrim cav, who I had kept largely intact by avoiding a headlong charge into the heart of the enemy forces, decided discretion was the better part of valour and hit the road.
Well, that battle went about as wrong as it could, other than the high point of taking out Faramir. I'm still getting used to magic so I have to work on picking the right spell for the right situation. The early Transfix would have been useful if I hadn't failed my charge roll. The Pall of Night might have been a better choice, and my troll may have survived to get under cover, or at least get into charge range. Also, taking Vrashku and his Talons was a mistake. If your going to use a Legendary unit, make sure you have at least three companies in the formation. We made one little mistake, in that when fighting from cover it's half the capacity of the terrain in terms of companies, not individual figures. This means my Uruks in the woods would have shot and fought at full strength. The Uruks were a point sink as was Khamul. The loss of the Troll, another points sink, was a nasty blow, and my forces never recovered after it was lost. I'm thinking in small to medium WOTR battles, numbers are important, and big points sinks, like a magic user, even a powerful one like Khamul, should be avoided. About half of his forces never actually engaged, with most of the damage being done through missile fire and cavalry. His big block of infantry in the centre didn't do a lot, except for a formation that took out the last of Vrashku's Uruks who were hiding in the woods.
Next time we play, I'm hoping to take an Isengard (lots of Uruk-hai lead by Saruman of the White Hand) themed force but I'm not sure who I'll be up against. There is a distinct chance of pointy eared bastards in the offing.
TTFN.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
