Battle Report - Harad and Corsairs vs Wood Elves

Last League night we had four players for the club night.  We were prepared for a three person game, with each of us bringing a 300 pt list and a 600 pt list.  Happily that was not necessary as Jake joined Jonathan, Tony and I for the game; and a real corker it was too.

This pretty much sums up this game for me.

Battle Report - Harad vs Elves

Sunday was Father's Day, here in the states.  For me it meant a new grill, with a smoker, gaming, family time and no responsibilities.  It was a great day.  The Traveller and I smoked some ribs and brisket and got a game of LotR in during the intermissions.  Sadly, my shade monkey was not out helping me.

The, self described, shade monkey.  It wasn't even Father's Day yet. 

Battle Report - High Elves vs Isengard and Galadrim

The Thursday night league has closed but that is still Lord of the Rings night down at Collectormania.  We have not had any games in a couple of weeks and Jonathan and I were both Jonesing.  In addition, Huntsman is back in the rotation, so there are three of us who plan on being there every week.

Last Thursday was the last night back and with three of us we had to get creative.  We decided to play a three player game, (all right, so not really that creative when you have three players).  There was an objective in the center of the table, victory points for each model within six inches when the game ended.  There is random deployment with a die roll determining where each warband comes in.  A 1 means, not this turn, 2 your opponent chooses a North/South edge, 3 your opponent chooses an East/West board edge, 4 you choose N/S, 5 you choose E/W and 6 you choose any board edge.  There are also points for wounding and killing the enemy general.  For players of LotR this is the Hold Ground scenario.  The effect of this deployment, with just two players, is chaos as warbands come in all over the table and head for the center to mix it up, often fighting as they go.  With three players there was even more confusion. 

Initial deployment.  Arwen will come in behind the ruins top center.  Galadhrim top left and bottom left with Rumil's band bottom center.

The next Project II

This one is a little bit embarrassing, since the pictures are poor.  My photo foo is low today, obviously.  I have some ideas on what is causing me problems so hopefully I can improve on that.

Here's my new list:

Warband 1
Arwen - 60 pts
High Elf warrior with Banner and spear - 35 pts
6 x High Elf Warrior with shield - 60 pts
4 x High Elf Warrior with Elf Bow and spear - 48 pts
1 x High Elf Warrior with Elf Blade - 10 pts

Warband 2
Erestor - 80 pts
6 x High Elf Warriors with shield - 60 pts
4 x High Elf Warrior with Elf Bow and spear - 48 pts
2 x High Elf Warrior with Elf Blade - 20 pts

Warband 3
Galadhrim Storm Caller - 60 pts
6 x Galadhrim Warriors with shield - 54 pts
4 x Galadhrim Warriors with Elf Bow and spear - 44 pts
2 x Galadhrim Warriors with spear and shield - 20 pts

39 Models
599 points
3 Might
7 Will

The force is short on might but with two Nature's Wrath and Erestor's special rules I think it will balance out.  Now for painting and play testing.  I had to convert all of the sword and shield elves.  I've been working on that for the last two weeks and finished yesterday.  I still have to make the spears for the High Elf archers.  I'm, quite frankly, procrastinating on that since I don't want to do it.

Pictures below, I've included one of the Galadhrim, just for the sake of completeness.

Erestor, banner and Arwen.  Archers in the rear.

The next project

One warband for my new army.

Here's the first warband for my new army.  Twelve Galadrim warriors, four with bow and spear, two with spear and shield and six with sword and shield.  The warband is led by a storm caller, which brings us to an interesting story.

Games Workshop makes a Stormcaller model.  It used to be available as a single metal model in a blister.  With the new format they repackaged it into a box of Galadrim command and made it in resin instead.  This is totally awesome because it means not only is the individual model I want more expensive but I have to buy three other models, that I have no use for, in order to get it.  Of course by totally awesome I mean it sucks ass.

At this point the only models I'm buying from that company are one offs that I need to finish an existing army.  I have to add a few heroes due to the new warband creation rules.  I'm not going to rant here, I'm really not, but what the hell GW?

The Storm Caller is the chappy front and center.

I'm making a conversion to get my storm caller.  Everything you see here is straight out of the box.  The staff is a spear, with some work done on the hand to make it fit.  I'll dig through the bitz box to see if I have something appropriate for the end of the staff.  Worst case I'll make something, badly, out of green stuff.

The archers have had spears added to them.  The two spears, and all but one of the sword and shield elves, are straight out of the box.  The last sword and shield dude has been re-cut to make his two handed stance into a single hand stance.  It's a little awkward now but should look fine once he has the shield attached.

The other two warbands of this army are High Elves and are requiring a huge amount of converting to get right.  I've had to make shields for the sword and shield elves.  I am also having to scratch build spears for the archers, as the only way to get High Elf shields and spears is by buying the three model metal blisters of spear elves.  I'm not going to be doing that, thank you very much.

More to follow on the Storm Caller and the other two warbands.

Battle Report - Harad vs Galadrim - Again

The ongoing grudge match between Harad and Lothlorien continued tonight.  I got to Collectormania early.  Jonathan showed up a bit later and, yet again, we were left with only each other to play against.  Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy playing against Jonathan, he's a great opponent and our games are always nail biters.  It's just that, if you look at the bat reps on this site, you'll see that we play each other more than anyone else.

Now that the league is over we are firmly into the new "Warbands" era, leaving "Legions" behind for good.  This means a new meta-game.  All armies, in the local group, have gotten smaller.  We are, mostly, still trying out new lists and making our first purchases of new models, mainly heroes.

Jonathan's list was Rumil, an archer captain and a mounted captain.  Rumil had his phalanx, spears and pikes, though smaller than under Legions.  The archer captain was leading, oddly, eight archers.  The knight captain had four knights, two with bows and six sword and spear elves.  My list is pretty much the levy of Kharna list.  The Betrayer, Haradrim King, Taskmaster, Chieftan, one Warrior of Abrakhan with horn, six Abrakhan guards, twelve haradrim with spears and eighteen warriors of Kharna with bows.  This gives me eighteen shots hitting on threes with poison re-rolls on a third of the dice (1-2).  With the points for the Kharna upgrade I could add five more models.  So far, in four games, the upgrade seems to be worth the points.  We'll see how it works out in the long run.

Initial Deployment.  The Taskmaster's ill fated band is behind the ruins to the left.  You can see the hornblower.

Battle Report - Harad vs Galadrim (Warbands)

This last Thursday was the last night of the league down at Collectormania.  Only Jonathan and I showed up to play, and he was about to leave when I walked in, twenty minutes late.  He suggested that we try the new warband composition rules.  I threw together a list and off we went.

The Galadrim were led by Rumil, who is the default choice of all Galadrim players.  He was asssisted by two captains, one mounted.  There were the usual five knights (2 with bows), the phalanx and the archers.  He had 36 models total, though we discovered later that he had been playing two short.

My list was the serpent's sting list from the blog.  I was able to look it up on my phone and just copy it to paper.  I wanted to test the Haradrim Warriors of Kharna with their shoot of 3 accompanying the Betrayer with his poison re-roll on a 1-2 instead of a 1.  In the interests of full disclosure, I went into this game expecting the 2 point upgrade for Kharna warriors to not be worth it.

We rolled Lords of Battle as the scenario.  Cause as many wounds as you can.  Points for expended fate as well.  Once one side is broken, roll a d6 every turn and the game ends on a 1-2.  The new scenarios have alternating deployment, which we both liked.  Coupled with the fact that, on average, half of your army will be in the forward half of the board it gets the game rocking sooner and adds some additional tactics during the deployment phase.

Initial Deployment.

Here is the Galadrim Phalanx, led by Rumil with the archers off to the left.

Battle Report - Hard vs Galadrim

Last night was League night down at Collectormania again.  Rhys and I got there early and hung out for awhile.  We talked about the new books coming out this weekend.  We talked about what new models we are likely to see.  We talked about Russ's new orc models.  We watched Craig (Harad with a Mumak and Serpent Riders) play a game against Jonathan (Galadrim).  When that game was over I asked to get one.  I wanted to play Craig as I have not played him yet and I haven't played against a Mumak in years.  On the other hand Evil is behind in the League and I wanted the game to count.  I played Jonathan, which is not second best by any measure.  He is a great opponent and he has beaten me the last two times we played, both good reasons for a re-match.

Battle Report - Harad vs Galadrim

Last Thursday Jonathan and I played my first game of the league. It was a reprise of the game from the week before, his Galadrim led by Glorfindel and Rumil against my Haradrim. I was tripped up at the last second by the League rule that you can only ally one faction into your army, a rule I believe we should change, by the way. Consequently I was forced to drop my Far Harad and went with a list that consisted of Bob the Budget Nazgul, a Haradrim King, a Haradrim Chieftan, a Haradrim Task Master, a banner, a hornblower, six fat guys (Abrakhan Merchant's Guards), fourteen archers and the rest spears for a total model count of 56. We played Domination with the MitM change of only three objectives.

I had a big hill in my deployment zone. there was a ruins between my zone and the objective to my left. The rest of the terrain, of which there was a lot, did not really factor in the game so I'll leave it off. I made a lot of mistakes in this game. Jonathan only made a couple. He, again, got a well deserved win with a minor victory. One more turn would have given me the minor but two more would have made it his game again. This was a real nail biter and I found myself thinking about it quite a bit the next day, which is the mark of a great game, to me.

We started off with a general advance on the part of the elves towards the left and center objectives. The elven phalanx headed towards the left while the cavalry and archers, with Glorfindel riding along, went towards the center. I left my archers behind the hill, firing in volleys most of the game (mistake number 2, I waited way too long to start firing directly). I split my force with a strong infantry force heading towards the left objective and a smaller force going over the hill and towards the center, (mistake number 1. I shouldn't have split them the way I did and had too many high value units in this group with no meat shields.)

My volley fire was average over the course of the game but started out strong. I killed both knight archers and another model in the first round. I got rid of most of his highly prized archers over the course of the game with volley fire. Jonathan killed all of my fat guys with arrows, a very disapointing development but well deserved the way I left them hanging out in view.

I pushed my infantry up into the ruins, about twelve inches short of the left objective, and stayed there. This was where Jonathan made the only real mistake of the game. He brought his phalanx up and charged me. Between the wall bonus and some good use of transfix/compel, I kept Glorfindel out of the fight, killed Rumil and managed to bounce the phalanx. Jonathan realized that he didn't need to fight me and pulled back to the objective, still too strong for me to sally out and contest him.

He also shifted his archers and remaining knights to hold the other two objectives. this is when I realized that the reason I was feeling outnumbered was that I had 15 models hiding behind the hill. I marched my archers out to contest the center and right objectives. Killing Rumil had made me a happy little Haradrim. I had also put a wound on Glorfindel with a Black Dart, something generally frowned upon in tournament play. Most players consider it too risky for too little pay off. Now Glorfindel found himself facing down a haradrim gatling gun of fourteen poisoned bow shots. This is where I made mistake number 3. I rolled all the dice at once. I killed the hell out Asfaloth but didn't have enough left to finish off the elf, though I did put another wound on him. I would have been better off taking the individual shots. The reason I did this is becase it was almost 2100 and I had Rhys (7yrs old) with me. I had already gotten a testy phone call from Mama and 2100 is closing time, though Chris very nicely and characteristically offered to keep the store open for us. So I was rushed. I took another turn to kill Glorfindel. Another moral victory in my eyes.

I managed to take the right objective and was one turn away from having more models on the center objective. I had broken but my hornblower more than paid for himself. Jonathan was one model away from breaking. I had moved my Nazgul up so his phalanx would be taking break tests with no heros on a -1 courage. He was moving troops up to the center objective, who would start arriving a turn after I controlled it. We survived the roll on the first turn after I was broken but the second one ended the game.