Battle report-Fords of the Isen

Posted at my groups Blog.

http://richmondwarmancers.blogspot.com/

Battle report-Fords of the Isen
Scenario from WotR with modifications: 1500pts per side.

Rohan(Theodred/Arwen/Eowyn/Haldir) and Grey Company/Elves(Thranduil/Aragorn)
Mordor(Gothmog/Khamul) Fallen Realms(Shadow Lord)

Lots of death and carnage.

Turn 1 priority Good
On the far north Aristo charged up with Arwen.
I lost a siege bow before the end of the first turn( thank you natures wrath ).
Moved moranons to help cover the north. Aristo was moving Theodred up the middle ford. 2nd siege bow takes out 4 rohan infantry.

Turn2 priority Good
Formation of orcs with 2 handed weapons moves into south ford, gets shot at and has to move back 3 inches.Arwen casts Entagle on moranons with Khamul. Moved Gothmog and Black guard into the middle ford along with 5 companies of warg riders. Khamul castes visions of woe, enfeble and wings of terror. Aristo charges and loses 2 heroes( Eowyn/Arwen) and an entire rohan cav formation in this turn. He charged into the moranon orcs which contained kahmul. Kahmul won the Heroic Duel with Eowyn thanks to Epic Strike. A combination of spellcasting and a counter charge by harad to his flank was deadly. Arwen fled :).


Turn3 priority evil
Mostly shuffling and a little shooting in the round meant the loss of one of theodreds knight (which was joined by thranduil), while moranons and mahuds/halftrolls moved up the northern ford. Moved a formation of orcs with 2 handed weapons in the south ford into terrain and a formation of mahud was entering the south ford.
Theodred charged the Warg riders who, because of thranduil promptly failed their courage test and were reduced by 1 company but saved themselves by rolling a 6 for the panic test, but the River Isen took another warg rider. Thranduil suffered no losses.

Turn 4 priority evil
Evil shooting did nothing, orcs with 2handed weapons in defensible terrain between the south and middle fords too afraid to leave with an elf around. A heroic charge was called by Theodred and countered by Gothmog but the black gaurd could not fit into the ford so he called epic defense. Thranduil promptly frightened the bejesus out of the remaining warg riders, dispatched them and charged into Gothmog and 2 companies of Black Guard. Even with D9 lances hurt, and I swear Aristo has magic dice. Lost 5 while he lost only one The river took another 2. Still stunned at this point after the loss of an entire formation of warg riders due to being charged by terror causing elf, yes, elf, not plural. Lost a lot of black gaurd to same elf even with defense 9 and needing 6/4 to wound. Black Gaurd had to back up 1 inch.

Turn 5 priority evil
Moved Gothmog to moranons with kahmul, should have moved khamul to Black gaurd. Lost the second siege bow (thank you natures wrath). Galadrim knights came up the middle to protect the rear of Theodred/Thranduil and charged orcs in terrain. Shadowlord casts spell ( can't remember what ).Harad shooting does nothing, moranons and harad move further to the other side of the north ford. Hails of arrows reduce black gaurd by 2 more. They charge into Theodred. They lose 1 more I lose 2, river takes rest. Theodred is in full retreat. Orcs with 2 handed weapons take out 2 knights while losing a company, I thought that was pretty good.

Turn 6 Priority good. Natures wrath kills remaining orcs in terrain. Lots of shooting from grey company kills some harad in the north.( we forgot about shadow lord special rule here). Moranons move up . Harad engaged rohan and take some losses, river does huge damage.

At this we had to call it because we have jobs. Pretty much a draw, evil had north and south fords and rohan was on the hurt.

some notes:

My magic was going well.
I need to remember to move kahmul to a company being attacked.
Gothmog does rock....." i'm sorry, you called what with might...oh yeah me too, for free."
I think I like 2 hnd weapons, but defense 3 blows.
Natures wrath really hurts if you are defensible terrain. ( does it work in buildings? ).
Shooty armies are not that great if your target is D6 or higher.

Jobu

New Ringwraiths

Here is a post on warseer with pictures of the new mini's for the betrayer and the knight of umbar.
Here is the link to the post not the thread.

BFG at BoLS

I am guess blogging about BFG at Bells of Lost Souls.

My first post is here. My next post will likely about the turn sequence and the one after that will be about the models. Afterward I will likely post about each fleet lists.

BFG Game at Hobby Town July 18th

A few of us (me, the Bennetts, and the Lesers) are planning to play BFG at Hobbytown this Saturday from 10AM to 3PM or so. Join us if you want to learn more. I should have enough models for all to play at least 500 points.


Update:
A total of 8 of us showed up for BFG today, myself, the Bennetts (3), the Lesers (2), Chris and Harry. Harry is from Albany NY in town visiting friends. Somehow he found us on the web and showed up with 1000 pts worth of very nicely painted Chaos cruisers. I thought it was perfect as he allowed us to play four on four. I hope the next time he comes we can all set up another BFG game.

As it turns out, some other 40k players also declare themselves BFG players. It would be great if we can set up a club head to head competition!

We played 3.8k per side and had a great time.

The scenario was Fleet engagement; we chose Wedge and Chaos chose Cross. The two fleets deployed on long edges parallel to each other facing opposite direction. This prevented the Imperial fleet from charging Chaos with its armored prow. We did what we could to maneuver toward the enemy but seemingly always one arc behind. This led me to realize that Imperium should not try to come directly toward their opponent but should instead come on at a converging angle so that the current enemy ships are toward the one corner of our front arcs, expecting that once the enemy ships move, they will remain in the other corner of our front arc.

Previously I have also been reluctant to leave bomber markers on the table because of fear of being taken out. However, I think that the chances they will be taken out by ship fire is remote (requiring 6s to hit). When enemy carriers launches fighters to take out your bombers they aren't launching bombers or assault boats against my ships. In addition, interesting enough, damages taken by attack crafts are renewable (with re-rolls) similar to shields. By having bombers out, I have alsos extended the range of my bombers to 40cm per turn.

Final thought, the obvious thought. Concentrating fires to cripple ships is more effective than spreading fires across many ships' shields.

HobbyTown Update

Michael C (Aristo):
"Spoke to a new employee at Hobbytown on Saturday afternoon. He said his job is to handle all the people interested in Games Workshop stuff. He himself is big into 40k. He seemed supportive of idea to stay open til 9 pm, also to get group terrain and more standing tables for people to use as well as obtain more merchandise to sell. "

HobbyTown

As most of you know by now, we no longer has access to HobbyTown after 8pm. What this means is that

1. All current gaming nights (Thursdays) will have to be privately hosted. As we previously decided, gaming host decides the game and scenario being played.

2. As long as this works, we should be alright. But one of the reason we went with HobbyTown is to be visible, thus able to recruit new players into our group. If we want to do so, we will have to play on a weekend afternoon. Maybe once a month?

3. We might also want to revisit the idea of dues if this can help us maintain a desireable gaming venue

WotR Shopping Consideration

A thought on buying models for WotR. The current rules give 10 factions to play, and allows taking any combination of formations within each factions. But I suspect that there will be more detailed books for each factions as they did with SBG-LotR. If so, these books may place additional restrictions on what combinations are allowable. For instance, you may not be able to mix Gondor with Arnor for instance, or Corsairs with Khand. Please keep this in mind as you formulate your army roster and decide what to buy next. It may be better to be a theme purist with your army composition, at least for a while (to say 1000 points).