MESBG – Isengard vs The Army of the Dead

Ok for some of you that may have read any of my other posts you’ll know what force I tend to play in Middle Earth, therefore when I say “Ouch” it is something of a spoiler for the outcome of this game!

Bryan and I managed to find some time in our rather hectic lives to get a game in, we’ve finally managed to finish the kitchen renovation so was able to set the board up with plenty of space to move around and some decent light for photos.

So this was a 600 pts game using the Clash by Moonlight scenario. I’d decided to take some wargs and a captain, a block of uruks with captain, some crossbow uruks with captain and Lurtz with a few orcs and a uruk scouts. I was going to take a few berserkers however the new rules make them particularly dangerous for your own troops as well and I still haven’t figured out how to use them!

Bryan had a bunch of dead dudes, the King of the Dead and Aragorn!

On with the show.

The first few turns saw us jockeying for position, the scenario rules scuppered any chance for me to make effective use of the crossbows, also the combination of Harbinger of Evil (-1 courage) and terror meant that Bryan had the upper hand when it came to choosing charges (my uruks would have to roll for terror on a courage of 2 to charge, the orcs on 1).

Bryan finally decided to get stuck in and in the first couple of turns my uruks held their own, their fight 4 really keeping me in the game. The Army of the Dead wound using their opponents courage value and not their defence so my troops great armour was irrelevant.

My warg riders and their captain consistently refused to pass their courage test to charge which made them into very expensive infantry rather than super useful cavalry!

Interestingly Lurtz was my man of the match, his courage of 5, 3 attacks, 3 might and high fight value really helped. They have bumped his cost up to 90pts however he’s probably worth it.

As I alluded to at the start, Bryan wiped my force out completely, even my army special rule of only taking break tests at 66% didn’t help, as soon as I hit that point the Harbinger rule meant my orcs and uruks were bugging out like the proverbial teenager after the family meal!

It was  a fun game, we’re going to have a rematch in a few weeks and I may just have to paint up Saruman and Grima to give me a few more options!