AAR - Isengard vs Mordor

MAÚHUR - I'm starving. We ain't 'ad nothin' but maggoty bread for three stinkin' days!

SNAGA - Yeah. Why can’t we have some meat? What about them? They’re fresh.

UGLÚK - They are not for eating! They have an Elvish weapon the master wants it for the war.

GRISHNÁKH - What about their legs? They don't need those. Ooh… They look tasty!

UGLÚK - Get back, scum!

SNAGA - Just a mouth full, a bit of the flank.

Pippin and Merry recoil in fright. Uglúk jumps on the Orc and cuts off his head, which bounces off the hobbit's shoulders.

UGLÚK - Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!!

As you may have realised from the text above Orcs and Uruks will eat pretty much anything, even each other. And its with that premise in mind that Scott and I got together for a return to Middle Earth and the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. As some of you that follow Scott’s blog may know both he and his lovely wife recently purchased their own business and are very busy with this new adventure, therefore it was a stroke of luck that both of our diaries cleared at the same time to allow a little gaming to take place at Chez Bowman.

So I travelled up from my new pad in Whitby to Paraparaumu (I quote the names because it’s a great example of how wacky NZ place names can be) and arrived at Scott’s to find the board set and a rather gruesome (but lovely) Mordor force awaiting destruction by my Isengard Uruk Hai. This would be a little practice for Scott for the LoTR tournament at Call to Arms in Wellington (I’m not playing) and a good opportunity for us both to brush up on our rules and tell a cool story.

Scotts force comprised a bunch of Morannon Orcs with a healthy quantity of Orc bows, some Mordor Uruk Hai, Gothmog and Shaman (both on Wargs) and Grishnakh (hidden in the reserves).

I took Lurtz leading some Scouts and Orcs, an Uruk Captain leading the obligatory Uruk Hai (tanks!), Some Orcs lead by another Uruk Captain and some Warg Riders lead by an Orc Captain.

The mission we rolled had both of our forces split with half in reserve until turn 3.

Not much happened in the first few turns, I shifted my Uruks diagonally, taking advantage of the trees to hide from the nasty Orc archers and following up with my scouts and Lurtz (who took the heroic option of hiding at the back).

Scott wisely kept his fragile, squishy Orc archers behind his shield wall of Mordor Uruks and loosed off a few stray arrows, felling a pikeman and basically being annoying (missile fire in LoTR is pretty much ineffective and annoying, unless you have a lot of it!!!).

Then it all went pear shaped. Turn 3 and I had initiative, rolled for my reserves and got them. Woohoo. But then I rolled to see which board edge they arrived on and rolled a 3 – Scott gets to pick!

So obviously they came on miles away from anywhere. But never mind, they had captains with Might so I could call a few heroic march’s and they’d get in to position as a second wave (fingers crossed). So more shuffling on my part and my Uruks start to advance down the road to Scott’s shieldwall.

This is where the pear comes in, Scott’s reserves arrive, but luckily I get to decide where so I pick his side of the board, thinking that then he’ll just bring them on behind his already deployed troops.

But no, Scott being the evil mastermind that he is (I’m sure he has a white cat and a golden gun hidden away in his palatial manor somewhere) decides to charge on his Mordor Uruks and Grishnakh straight into my Warg Riders, totally negating their charge ability. 

What ensued was a blood thirsty killing spree and after about 3 turns I managed to extract my Warg Riders with only a few of them left. To deal with this rather annoying threat I had to detail my Orcs who were busy marching towards the Mordor Shieldwall flank to tackly the Mordor Uruks…… It wasn’t pretty.

Meanwhile I threw caution to the wind and marched straight towards the now inverted horseshoe of Mordor archery, my Uruks high defence keeping them alive. Scott also threw caution to the wind and charged in (we’d had a good natter, cups of tea and it was getting late), however Orcs’ vs Uruks is not the best match up and my Uruk’s refused to die.

We called it there, we learnt a few nice tactics (like always support with spears or pikes, never get into base contact because when they support they can’t be killed if you lose the fight).

Ahh, good times. I’m sure Scott will follow up with some kind of write up about his adventures at Call to Arms, so keep em peeled!