Clash of Kings Charity tournament held for Chris Hobart in association with MERV

This has gone on for several years now and helps Chris in his outreach programs.

Tournament

Members tell me you need a facebook account to register.

Clash of kings Tournament with the DC Hobbit League

One of our members, Chris H, contacted Devin of the DC Hobbit League and in conjunction the two devised a tournament to highlight mighty heroes.  This involved the generation of unique scenarios (pdf) which centered around the king in your army.  This was a charity event held at our awesome FLGS Battlegrounds, which opened early and provided us with exclusive use of as many tables as we needed.  We had a total of 14 players so we took over their tabletop room which has 8 6x4 tables.  Good enough for us.  I brought 2 dozen donuts from Sugar Shack which originated here in Richmond and we started gaming about 10am.
My army list:
Warband 1
The Knight of Umbar with Fell Beast;
6 Haradrim Warrior with Spear;
6 Castellan of Umbar

Warband 2  
Suladân the Serpent Lord with Horse;
6 Serpent Guard
6 Castellan of Umbar

Warband 3
Haradrim Chieftain with Spear;
1 Haradrim Warrior with Banner;
11 Haradrim Warrior with Bow; Spear;

Warband 4  
Corsair Bo'sun with Spear;
1 Haradrim Warrior with Spear;
5 Haradrim Warrior with Bow; Spear;
5 Corsair Reaver

51 models, break at 25, 16 bows with poison as well as some poison with the serpent guard.

The first game was the Behind enemy lines scenario, I faced Cole, who brought an army led by Gulahvar with a cave troll, 3 spectres and 8 orcs in his leaders war band, then a shade and more orcs and the dwimmerlaik and black numenoreans.   Made the mistake of casting too much too close to the dwimmerlaik and my Knight of Umbar went poof.  I reduced his leaders war band to 2 and I put two wounds on gulahvar, which ended up being regenerated ( more on this later ).  we totally calculated points wrong in this game.  We stated he scored 4 for killing my king ( although Cole did not, my king lost all his will and dissipated) and I scored 2 for killing more than half his kings war band.  I should have scored 2 more since I wounded his king, but forgot.  Goes to show you, read the scenario and calculate the points correctly.
Second game was the scenario grudge match, I played Joel B who brought Elrond on horse, storm caller, captain and a mix of kings guard and regular high elves.  We started with about six or seven rounds of our kings slapping each other and not wounding, managing to remove both of our heroes mounts.  In the end Elrond removed all the fate on my king and the knight of Umber had to limp off the field. Which he did, earning me five points.  I was going to keep my kings war band back but decided to risk them in order to garner more points. I then managed to kill half Joel's king's war band earning me a further 3 points.  No one was broken so I ended with 8 points.
Third game was Regicide, I played Jacob brought the mouth of sauron( king) 6 black numenoreans, 6 morannons w/ shield and spear, a dragon with fly and breathe fire, the dwimmerlaik on fell beast and an unnamed wraith on horse.  This scenario really hurt me due to my king not being able to kill things and the two wraiths attempting to sap will my king ( and the dwimmerlaks special rule would have cost roughly 50% more will to resist).I kept the dwimmerlaik tied up in the middle with all my bowman, while chasing his king with my other units.  Jacob moved his king and favorites into the corner, I did the same in my corner.  His dragon chewed on some harad/numenoreans while I tried to chase his king with reavers and more numenoreans. Between the wraiths, the dragon and their terror a lot of my models were frozen in fear.  I finally managed to get his king trapped next to a building but with only 4-5 units, while he still had his full war band ( and his king acted as a banner).  He tried like hell to kill suladan, but never pulled it off.  I could win some fights but could not kill very well.  Ended up zero zero, no one broken and I lost only one kings favorite( black dart).
Now during this game we realized that Gulavhar should not have regenerated wounds from throwing a model, which means my fights with Gulavhar in my first game should have gone differently and I probably would have killed him.  Oh well.
My last game was against Alex ( I think, I was pretty burned out by this point ) who brought Durburz, Gundabad captain and shaman, the spider queen and a drums, spiders, marauders and goblins.  First thing I did was try and shoot the spiders and kill the spider queen.  Two turns and the knight of umber killed the spider queen, I then lost the knight of umber after rolling two 1's for a fate roll.  That did not cost me points though. I knew losing my king was not points worthy for me and used him aggressively.  His shaman got off earthquake which was very effective at killing, I will watch out for that one in later games.  So I killed his highest point, non king model with my king and it was more than half my kings cost, plus his king was still alive at the end, earning me 7 points.  I almost broke him, one more turn and I would have, but we ran out of time.
Overall I earned a 3rd place, not bad, probably could have been higher had I paid closer attention to the scenario victory points.
I will link to photos when Devin post them
Thanks for reading.

Size Comparison, alternatives to GW

So, I wanted some Men of Dale but I refuse to buy them from GW, specifically because Men of Dale only come 10 to a box.  Really?  Ten?  Were these for some kind of special set and then just sort of thrown into a  box, with the rules?  I am sure Peter Jackson probably screwed GW's plan for The Hobbit by changing from 2 to 3 movies, but really?  Ten?  Your entire army building rules revolve around groups (warbands) of 12 warriors lead by a hero.  Not even an option to build a captain.  Anyway, I wanted Men of Dale, so with a little help of another blog I found out about Thunderbolt Mountain.  You can read about them on their about us page, but I was blown away by their great miniatures, and I found my Men of Dale.  The byzantine warriors with spear and shield fit the bill.  So I ordered some up.  While trimming away the base is a little painful it really only takes about a minute with clippers.  So far I am happy with them, they are a little skinny but are the right height which to me is more important.  Below you will see a size comparison of some Games Workshop Lord of The Rings, some Thunderbolt Mountain, and a Red Box Games mini( soon to be my Men of Dale Captain).

Reward for the campaign

The diligence of participating in our current campaign will be rewarded.  Winning the most hex tiles, and therefore having the most Kingdom Points will bring you fame and fortune throughout Middle Earth!  Which means we will know who won.  To that end I wanted to bring in something that was unique and allowed everyone to have a shot at the ultimate reward.  Okay, maybe not ultimate but a prize anyway.  So at the end of the campaign we will raffle off a pair of unique dice.


Every KP you have will get you one raffle entry.  They are machined out of a single piece of aluminum and are slightly smaller than your typical 16mm dice.  Not a lot, but I thought it would be a nice unique piece to add some incentive to the bunch.

Last week's roundup

If you haven't had a chance to stop by FTW Games in awhile, I recommend trying to make a Thursday game night some time soon. There's always fun to be had, and this past Thursday, we had an action packed game! The game was a total of 4000 points between 4 players.



 I originally started collecting the GW Lord of the Rings miniatures as a hobby to paint and play SBG. I never got around to playing SBG much, and after 7 years in mothballs I resurrected what I could find of my collection and started to finish painting and collecting them again. My wife purchased me a box set of Riders of Rohan after I broke my collar bone as a way to ease the pain of not mountain biking, and the addiction started again!

 

These pictures include models from the battle that took place on 1/24/2013. It is always fun to watch the armies of Middle Earth clash together and see the outcome of an army build against someone else's.



I hope this inspires some of the "retired" folk to come out of their Hobbit holes and get down to FTW this Thursday for an adventure in Middle Earth again!



An album of all pictures taken during the game.

Februa...wwhhhhaaatttttt!!???

So, here we are nearing February and GW has put up some advanced order for The Hobbit.  Now, let me say these are some nice looking plastic models, you can't tell from the paint jobs ( especially when you compare them to the Warriors of Chaos ) but looking at the sprues shows they have a great level of detail.
Great job GW, those elf cavalry look great, as do the grim hammers.

Now, if only I could afford them. Okay,I can afford them, but I can not justify them.  Wargames factory offers 12 cavalry or 32 infantry models for less than $20.  Gripping Beast offers 44 infantry for @ $30 and Perry miniatures offers at least 12 cavalry for @ $30. True mulitpart, variable models.  Do they look as good as GW do in relation to the Hobbit?  No, but they are more than usable, and a good paint job will take them far.   We also do not play in a GW store, so no one cares what miniature represents rohan, elves or orcs.

I can not, for the life of me, figure out how 6 Rivendell Knights can be more expensive than 6 Morgul Knights when they are all made out of the same material.  They are almost 30% more, where does that price difference come from?  Those 2 dead extra models? I was really looking forward to these, was planning on buying them too.  Will I now? No.  I simply can not justify the price.  I thought the grim hammers might be less expensive than the hunter orcs. I know, I know that was a pipe dream but I really wanted them, I still want the hunter orcs on wargs, but I will not pay this price.

Some will say, " just go on the internet and get them for at least 15% off".   No, If I do that then there is no reason for Rob to have a game store, he could just stick to internet sales.  Then I will not have a place to throw dice.  My friends and I do not have the space to hold all the warmancers and game at the same time.

More to come.....

Hobby stuff yeah!

A little bit of painting going on, still have not had a chance to play the new SBG rules yet. However I have had time to paint. First up is a figure from Red Box Games, which will be utilized as a black numenorean Marshall. The figure was fun to paint, it is a little warhammery skully but does stand out among the regular black numenoreans.
Next up is a Great Beast of Gorgoroth. This was a quick paint job, a true finecast nightmare. There were so many air bubbles in the figures that I lost count. The actual beast came out pretty well. Each figure is removable via a pin. I am looking forward to using this with the new monster rules. At some point anyway.

the Hobbit & SBG

LotR SBG rules got an update in the form of the just released Hobbit rules. The major changes are as follow:

Heroic Uses of Might.
Heroic Move, Shoot, and Fight remains unchanged. There are four additional heroic actions.
Heroic March: allows all friendly models within 6" to increase their movement by 3" if on foot, 5" if mounted. Models cannot charge as part of the march. It is not clear to me whether this increases movement is in addition to other bonuses, such as that provided by a Uruk Hai drummer for instance.
Heroic Channelling: allows magically effect of spells casted to be more powerful.
Heroic Accuracy: allows all friendly models within 6" to reroll their in the way roll when shooting.
Heroic Strike: allows the hero to increase his Fight by D6 and it applies before any other effect (such as transfix).

Monster and Monster Mount Attacks.
Rend: all attacks against one model but applied against its strength rather than defense.
Hurl: allows the monster to grab a model in base to base whose strength is less than the monster's, compare Strength +D6 and if the monster's is higher, the model is thrown a number of inches equal to difference in the modified roll off. The hurled model suffers a S3 hit for each model caught in the path of the hurl, and an additional S6 hit at the end. This appear great against multi wound models.
Barge: all enemy models in the fight back away 3" chosen by the monster and the monster then gets a D6" charge to fight again. This seems the equivalent of heroic fight and thus not available if the monster is part of a heroic fight.
Note: a chariot is considered a monstrous mount so it can hurl, rend and barge? LOL!

Special Weapon Attacks.
Declared before the Fight/Duel rolls.
Piercing strike with axes and picks: wielder gains D3 strength but defend at minus D3. Does a two handed axe also get to pierce?
EDIT by Jobu: special weapon rules only apply to one handed weapons, so a two handed weapon does not get any special rule.
Stun with clubs and staffs: wielder cannot wound but a defender is reduced to Fight 1 and Attack 1 on a roll of 4+. This is only good when attacking with a companion. But since this attack is declared after the fight/duel has already been won, I am not sure how reducing the enemy's Fight makes a difference.
EDIT by Jobu: This applies until the end of the FOLLOWING turn, so it may be useful if you need to get another model into the fight the next turn.
Whirl with flails, scourges and whips: wielder is fight 1 but a win allows a strike against all enemy models in base to base. This should be used when surrounded.
Bash with maces, mauls and hammers: allows the wielder to roll off on a D6 + Strength against a single enemy model in the fight. If the wielder's roll is equal to or greater than the defender, the defender is knocked to the ground. Not sure if an infantry model can bash a cavalry model to the ground, or even a monster/monster mount.
EDIT by jobu: this is very useful to trap a model for any subsequent strikes against it in the same duel/fight.
Feint with daggers and swords: allow a model to fight at minus D3 fight but reroll to Wound roll of 1. Should always be used when facing a higher Fight enemy.
Support with spear and pikes: allows a model to directly fight one base away rather than adds an attack to the front model. It appears pikes are no different from spears.
EDIT by Jobu: yes, but at least a pike can support another pike.  Pike blocks just got more expensive.

Elven blade wielder wins tie Fight rolls on 3+ rather than 4+ unless fighting against another elven blade. Khand chieftains and kings wield elven blades by the way.
Edit by Jobu: they are also usable when mounted now, which they were not before.