Time to try and get another game running at the club, and this event was all about Middle-earth.

 

 

A small scale affair to "test the waters", I set the points at 500 with maximal 1 Hero of the highest level allowed.  

 

As I was the reserve player, and need time for book keeping as well between round, I prepared myself an army consisting of (part of) The Fellowship, because 6 models play faster then 40... so Aragorn (with bow), Legolas, Gimli, Boromir (with shield), Merry and Pippin came along with me.

 

  

Now, the event itself had a nice 8 seats filled out of the 12 I made available, including myself as the reserve player as we had some last moment cancellations and no-shows, something inert at organising events.

 

Oh well, that means apart from second breakfast, there was third breakfast as well... 

 

And as such, the tables set up, pairings where guided to prevent people of the same gaming group facing in round 1, and off we went for 3 games of Middle-earth!

 

 My first game, the for me impossible Domination, saw me face The Easterlings of Tim (yes, I made a deployment mistake here, corrected in the following games as it would have actually helped me had I deployed correctly) led by Amdur.  Who with his special rule was bad news for Aragorn and Boromir.  This resulted in a 17-4 defeat on my part.

 

In the other games, the Easterlings drew against the Expedition in the East, Thranduil defeated Thorin's Company, and Angmar bit the dust against the Balrog. 

  

The second round put me against Mats and his Expedition to the East in the Fog of War scenario, and this was a far closer affair, as he found his treasure, and barely escaped by half an inch of losing his targetted scenery piece, making it a 10-6 defeat for the Fellowship.

  

Other results this round saw both Easterling forces fail, respectively against Thranduil and against the Balrog, while Thorin's Company went under versus Angmar.

 

In the final round, I faced "support crew" Andy and his Thorin's Company.  Both had only 6 models (well, technically I had 4, as I kept the hobbits far away) in a bout of To the Death.  But Aragorn proved to be the better swordsman over Thorin, and in the end I won 18 to 3, saving some grace...

     
 

In a civil war, Tim's Easterlings defeated Heikki's, the Expedition to the East lost to the forces of Angmar and Thranduil had to recognise his superior in the Balrog. 

 

As the dust settled over the fields of battle, it was time for the awards ceremony, and here are the full results.

 

1. Glenn - Moria - 9 points, 42 VP's

  

2. Sam - Angmar - 6 points, 32 VP's

 

3. Tim - Easterlings - 6 points, 30 VP's

4. Niels - Thranduil - 6 points, 29 VP's

 

5. Mats - Expedition - 4 points, 24 VP's, and winner of the Participation Raffle, which he handed to Niels 

6. Tomsche - Fellowship - 3 points, 28 VP's

7. Heikki - Easterlings - 1 point, 10 VP's

 

8. Andy - Thorin's - 0 points, 5 VP's, and winner of the Wooden Spoon price.

 

We also had all participants vote on best painted, and the result here was pretty overwhelming.  Out of a maximum to be had of 14 points, Heikki scored 11 points, and was a clear winner.

 

To give an idea, second place only managed 3 points (meaning the field was pretty close together on a painting level for the rest), and was shared by 3 people: Niels, Mats and myself.

  
 

But so the day ended with a happy crowd and a cozy little tournament, and my job was done to introduce the club to the wonderfull game of MESBG... or was it...

 

BECAUSE, of course, peer pressure.  We wanted to pass the torch to organise a second edition next year, but I understand you need to be a special kind of cookie to want to run tournaments.  Okay, in the case of Andy we are talking a big box of special cookies.  But while I at first didn't have plans, I let myself be convinced and as such:

 

See you there! 

 

Disclaimer: thanks to the participants that shared pictures in the event group, I happily used them for some more eyecandy in the report. 

 

 

 

 

Commanding the Galadhrim, the elite warriors of Lothlorien, he comes with heavy armour and an Elven bow, and he is a solid all round hero for the game, especially on these lower values.  Helped for a high Fight stat due to him being an Elf, he also has the "One Final Blow" special rule should he fall in melee like he did in the movies (though nowhere near did he die in combat in the books).  Add to that the Expert Shot and Sharpshooter generic special rules, and you have a great centerpiece.

 

The model is the classic metal cast, and I painted him up as movie accurate as possible, with a reddish leather chest piece, black robes and a reddish cloak.  Now to get his warband assembled and painted in the coming months between deadlines of other projects, and all will get ready nicely on time as a result.

 

I opted for a very light, foggy grey for the elven cloaks, in the same style as I do on my Idoneth thralls clothing.  For the main clothes, I'll be varying various tones of olive greens and some browns and dark greys to contrast the detail a bit.

And of course, being fair haired they get blonde hair...

 

The bases where done in the same basic green as I use on my Old World Empire of Man, with the characters later on receiving some flowery tufts, the rank and file troops will get a small patch of moss to add some woodland feel to them.

And the first one as such to be finished is Balin, the wise old dwarf in the company who as we all know will become the ruler of Moria.

The version of the Company is the unarmoured ones, as they are seen in the first adventures in the trilogy, but all the members have some fun special rule one or the other.  In Balin's case, this can be spending Will to re-roll the priority dice.  

Though it has to be seen of course how it might change with the new edition on the horizon.

I painted him in the dark red jacket colour he started as such the adventure with to reclaim the Lonely Mountain, armed with his sword-mace.

He was a fun little model to paint, and one by one his companions will be joining the finished models line hopefully, aiming to have the whole company ready by the middle of next year.  As I said, it is an inbetween project after all.

Some more Rohan foot soldiers, this time all with throwing spears, to bulk out the force if not in points, at least in numbers.  because let's face it, the average rohirrim isn`t a force to write home about in the MESBG game, but if you bring enough of them to the party...

The throwing spear also is a handy weapon that can do some serious ravaging to the enemy battleline before you engage, but at the cost it cannot be used as a supporting weapon.  This means that even on foot, the rohan force is all about taking the fight to the enemy more then taking on a defensive posture.

 

 

And this batch also includes my favorite model of all the "first generation" plastic LOTR models.  There is something about the defiance yet arrogance in this models pose, as well as the sculpting of the flowing cloak, that always made this guy look like he will become one of those unsung heroes in the background...

The sculpts by nowadays standards are ancient, released back in 2002 with The Two Towers edition of the game, yet still stand up nicely in quality.  Except they tend to be a bit small, being "pure" 28mm models.

But that means while adding a modest 28 points to the army tally, they can be usefull on the battlefield none the less, as Rohan is a force of mass cavalry boosted by cheap-ish heroes to swamp your enemies where you want to on the battlefield.

The model itself is from Games Workshop, and was in all honesty quite a simple paintjob, even at "three tones" as I usually do for character models.

Dressed in a large black trenchcoat, pants and tophat, and considering his diminutive size, he only has three colours if you look at the model objectively, so he was finished within a day of starting painting on him.

As with all Hobbits, he isn`t a great hero at all in game terms, but quantity is a quality in itself and that is definitly the case for a Hobbit force... and a 25pts Hero of Fortitude is always handy to have.

Nothing to spectacular, 5 Rohan archers join the force, as I got round doing these who where hopefully going to be in last month's AHPC.

But that didn`t happen, as you could read last week, I haven`t touched a brush for figures near a long shot.  But this weekend I literally forced myself back in action, the result being the first of some warriors getting rounded out.

 

So that adds a modest 35 points to the total of this year's goal, but it is better then nothing...

 

 

Paint a model for an army you don`t currently play: one of the early entries in the AHPC where these Hobbit archers, a force I haven`t fielded yet as I will need to paint a lot of the little guys still.

Finish a model that has been in your to-do pile for over a year: well, loyal fatty Bolger has actually been in that limbo for no less then 4...

Not to bad for a year in which I used the challenge mostly for all sorts of different ranges and projects, and once I (finally) get going at the Easterlings, some more squares should be able to be scratched off...