Battle Report - Isengard vs Gray Company

I am planning on running a campaign for the club come January. In preparation I've come up with 21 new scenarios.  A couple are based on some from the book but most are new, and therefore in need of testing.  A couple of weeks ago Tony and Jonathan kindly agreed to help me test one out.

The flanking force arrives

I've studied a lot of history.  My first degree was in history, sadly unusable in career.  When I was writing these scenarios I wanted to capture some of the themes that consistently show up throughout history.  One of those is the desire to attack the flank.

This looks like a nice big block of Uruks and Orcs.  They disappeared like blood in the sand.  I'm really not sure where they went.

Here's the next turn.  There are not nearly as many Uruks in this picture.

In this scenario one side starts with a third of their army off the table.  Starting at a certain point they start rolling for it to enter.  Mostly, it will come on where they want it, but there is a chance it will get lost and come on late or in the wrong place.

My line advancing.  They are leaving a clear corridor for the crossbows to shoot.  Not that it did any good.

Since we had three of us for the game, Tony and I teamed up, as we both had Isengard along.  Jonathan went with his Gray Company list with an Ent.  I deployed on the right with Tony on the left.  We had a good selection of crossbows and expected our shooting to be fairly effective, even if it was heavily outnumbered by Jonathan's.  We did not account for his usual dodgy six rolling ability.

Lurtz, shooting with his ablative armor in place.

While the battle last an hour and a half it can pretty much be summed up in a paragraph.  Tony and I marched forward into a hail of armor piercing arrows.  The survivors got stomped by the ent.  Jonathan's reinforcements came in and were attacked by my reserve.  It came down to the last turn of the game.  I only needed to kill one model for a tie, and failed, giving Jonathan the much deserved win.

Tree Beard.  Getting all stompy and angry.  Jonathan did a great job with him, as seen here.

I think the scenario worked well.  It added a twist to the game, forcing us all to think a bit more.  It was not unbalanced or complicated.  Of course, during the campaign armies will not be balanced, points wise, but during testing its best to play them that way so that you can ensure that the scenario gives a good game to both players.

This is it.  I just needed to kill one squishy ranger with my big bad Uruk Hai.  Fail.

All in all, it was a fun night and successful from the testing standpoint.  Only twenty more to test out and we're golden.