Painting Status I

This is my army list, to be painted by the end of the league, which I think is the end of February.  So it will be the end of the league or the end of the month, whichever comes last.

Haradrim King
Haradrim Taskmaster
Haradrim Chieftan w/ spear
Nazgul
6 x Abrakhan Merchant's Guards
1 x Haradrim Raider with Horn
1 x Haradrim Raider with banner
26 x Haradrim Raider with spear
14 x Haradrim Raider with bow

52 Models.

I have now painted 11 Haradrim Raiders with spears and 1 Nazgul.  They all still need to be based.

Test models - Harad

I have two test models done for my Harad army, as well as the Nazgul.  I use almost all Vallejo Game Color paints with GW washes and some metalics.  I also have some Army Painter Dark Tone dip as well as a can of Antique Walnut MINWAX.  Unless stated otherwise all colors are Vallejo.

Battle Report - Harad vs Eagles

Last night was the second night/week of league play.  We had a large turnout with nine people getting games in.  Off the top of my head we had two Harad armies, one horde infantry (mine) and one with a Mumak.  There were the Eagles of the Misty Mountains.  There was a woodelf army and an Isengard army.  Two Moria armies, one with a cave troll and one with Black Shields and a Dragon.  There was also a Dwarf army led by Durin.

My game was against Russ and his eagles.  He had six eagles including Gwahir.  I had the same list as last week, Nazgul, Harad King, Harad Chieftan, Taskmaster, horn, banner, 6 Abrakhan Guards, 26 spears and 14 bows.  I don't like the banner.  I will not play it after this round of the league.  I never make my re-rolls with them and even if you accept the odds at 50% I think the 3 inch range is too short to make it worth while.  The horn, on the other hand, paid for itself again last night.  In this case it was the huge number of terror tests I had to take in order to charge the eagles. 

The table, looking towards the Eagle deployment zone, after the battle.

League Night

Today is league night at Collectormania.  Last week I had to change my list and drop my Far Harad in order to comply with the league rule that you can only have one ally.  This rule was a holdover from the first round of the league when there were a whole bunch of new players and they wanted to keep it simpler for them.

After some discussion we have decided to open it up to the normal army building, Legions of Middle Earth, rules.  This will help people prepare for the Mayhem in the Mountains tournament in September.  They will get to build tournament legal armies and play against them as well.

After all of that, I have decided to keep my list the same for the rest of the league.  I'll be sticking to a list of Harad with a Nazgul allied in.  This will force me to learn to play the less great aspects of my army without the Far Harad crutch.  It will also simplify my painting and give me something to work on for the next round of the league.

I'm actually pretty sure I'll be able to stick to this decision, though a total shellacking tonight could test my resolution.

P.S.  I'm totally going to try to remember my camera tonight.

Four month plan

I re-read this blog last night, just to see where I've been.  That's the main reason I'm keeping it, to help myself track this hobby.  Here's some themes I took out of it.

1.  I need a deadline in order to paint.
2.  A goal of 20 models a month - painted is reasonable.
3.  I love terrain.
4.  I need more pictures.
5.  If you want to do something someone has to organize it.

Based on these five things here's what I am going to aim for.

1.  I am currently in a six week league at Collectormania.  I am going to aim to have my Haradrim list painted by the end.  This is a stretch goal, to say the least.  It will put me way above the 20 a month, but what the heck.
2.  I am going to paint more than 20 models in January.  I only have a week and a half left so I'd best get cracking.  February is going to be the same story.
3.  I am going to make some Harad specific terrain.  This will be done after the current league round.
4.  I will take my camera to the shop tomorrow night (Thursday) and I will take pictures of my games.
5.  I want to play in a campaign.  I have been planning to build a 3-D campaign map for the last couple of years.  My goal will be to complete that by the end of April.  That way we can play a campaign out in the league, two rounds from now.

So, nothing to grandiose but definitely some stretch goals there.

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.

Long gone but not forgotten

It has been over a year since I last updated.  I had to run off and fight a real war and that took up pretty much all of my time.

I'm back now.  I have hobby time.  I might even have the desire to work on this blog.  I have not played much in the last year.  I have gotten in two games of LotR in the last two weeks.  I have joined a league and that encourages regular play at least once a week.  I am hoping to get some Warhammer fantasy games in as well as exploring some of the historical rule sets out there.

For LotR I bought a new Harad army right before I deployed.  I got them assembled and basecoated.  The development of that army will probably be the core of this blog for the next few months.  Just like the last time I was actively working this blog, I'm building up for Mayhem in the Mountains in September.  That gives me a lot of time get them painted and to play test the hell out of them.

I'm also going to work on some terrain for the army; perhaps enough for a table at MitM.  I have a Bree table which I can contribute if it's needed but I would like to have a table for the new army as well. 

So, I hope to be hitting this space with battle reports, painting progress and terrain construction.  We'll how it goes.

More Test games

I played another game of LotR the other night.  We are all fine tuning our armies and just trying to get some practice in.  This time I played against Chris Ward, who is always a fun opponent.  We rolled randomly for scenarios and got the night fight one, which is my favorite.

Chris has a nicely painted Uruk army led by Saruman.  I was anxious to play against him because I do not have a lot of experience vs magic.  In addition to Saruman there were a captain, a handful of crossbows and an equal mix of shields and pikes as well as three berserkers.  His model count was 37.

I was running my new list.  Faramir, Captain of Ithilien with rangers and Osgiliath veterans.  My model count was 50.  I really feel the lack of might in this army, with only Faramir's three.  On the other hand the 12" banner, fight 4 within six inches of Faramir and the high model count all work well.  Faramir's better stats are nice too.

As I said, we rolled for a scenario and got "Ill met by moonlight".  We each divided our army in half, with a hero forward.  We were playing on part of the Osgiliath table.  I say part, because we only had some of the tiles and none of the scatter terrain.

Chris had Saruman, the five crossbows and berzerkers forward with the rest of his numbers split, pretty evenly, between pikes and shields.  I had Faramir, all of my rangers and veterans forward with only veterans to the rear.

Chris had to set up first and he built a firebase in a ruin in the very center of the table.  I placed my rangers to each side of that, with veterans in front.  Faramir, valiantly, hid behind a ruin so the crossbows and Saruman couldn't start the game by crushing him.

The first few turns were fairly even.  Our shooting was effective, as usual in this scenario.  The +1 to hit meant he was killing rangers on a 3 and I was killing Uruks on a five.  I had more shooting his was better.  It evened out.  He rushed everything but the crossbows and a couple of shields towards my right flank, which is where Faramir was now.  Both of us were moving our reinforcements up as fast as we could.  My left flank archers were sliding up towards his table edge.  In the way rolls were saving his crossbows, I only killed one through shooting the whole game, though his normal warriors and a beserker were not so lucky.

We finally engaged on the right flank, Saruman threw out a scorerous blast which killed one veteran and knocked over a couple of rangers.  The first round of combat was pretty tame.  Faramir got in one charge, killing two Uruks.  Saruman then blasted him six inches.  Faramir lost his horse but was unhurt, and no one was behind him.

Chris had moved his reinforcements over towards the brawl, dropping a couple off on my left flank, with the crossbows and their guardians, and a couple more in the center, forming a wall between two buildings.  I split my reinforcements, just about evenly, between my right and the center, with a couple heading over to help my left flank out.

Things were looking pretty bad for the forces of good.  Faramir was locked down every turn.  Chris had more models in the main fight and many of mine were squishy rangers.  We then had two brutal, for the Uruks, turns of combat.  In the first turn I killed six Uruk Hai.  I blew away nearly his entire center formation, between the buildings, opening up my route into his rear.  I killed a couple in the main fight, evening things up there enough for me to hold my own.  I also gained clear dominance in the flight on my left flank.

The rest of the game was just me closing the trap on the Uruks who were pinned in on my right.  I broke him but Saruman's standfast meant he didn't have to take any tests.  The fact that he had no room to maneuver and that I was coming at him from, literally, all four directions, meant that almost all of the fights were going my way.  With F4 and a reroll out to 12 inches Chris just couldn't win enough to make a difference.

Chris had some bad rolling going on in the end there, but I think my banner is what made the biggest difference.  In the end, the last turn, I killed Saruman when I jumped him with nine dudes.  He rolled a 1 for the fight, which was not really epic at all.  I offered to let Chris re-roll it, since that seemed like a sour note to end the game on, but he stuck to his guns and took the 1.  We hit 25% over the rest of the turn and the game was over.

I was not broken so it was a Major victory to me.  We didn't keep track of the kills for our heroes, but I think Saruman got one or two and Faramir got two or three.

On my side, I was really pleased with how my army worked.  I really feel the lack of might in the late game, with only one hero.  On the other hand the F4 is pure gold.  The 12" banner really paid off in this game, though this is the first time that it has.  Ranger shooting was as good as always and the large numbers were really useful.  I shielded more in this game and that helped me stay above break until the end.

For Chris, as he said, "I don't know if my army sucks or not with rolling like that".  I had two good rounds of combat that pretty much determined the game.  Saruman was good, making all of his spells and fighting off my troops until he was really, really, outnumbered.  There were a couple of places that Chris could have played differently, but with his center getting blown away in one round of combat there was not much he could have done to salvage it.

It was a fun game, as always against Chris, and I learned more about how my army works.  I'm pretty sure this is the list I will take to MitM.

Slacktastick

I've been slacking.  I not only haven't been updating the blog but I haven't really been doing much, at all, hobby wise.  I started a new job July 1st.  It is killing my soul.  I have no energy left at the end of the day.  I'm getting to be in great shape, working off all of the angst though.

Today I got in a game of LotR.  Keith had an, unexpected, day off and gave me a call.  I arranged to meet him down at the shop for a game.  He brought his Dwarfs and I brought my Gondor, with a twist.  I have been trying the new Faramir, Captain of Ithilien.  I changed out all of my Warriors of Minas Tirith for Osgiliath Veterans.  This means they have fight 4 within six inches of Faramir.  Along with this he acts as a banner for them and the rangers within 12 inches.  I had to drop my horn, Cirion and my knights to get him in but he seems to be worth it.

Keith and were play testing one of the Scenario's for  Mayhem in the Mountains.  This is the one I wrote a battle report about earlier, on the Bree table.  Each player divides their army in half.  Hero's have to be evenly divided.  One half deploys between 18 and 24 inches in, the other half up to 3 inches in.  This puts half of the force toe to toe with the enemy.  Night fight rules are also in play so bows and crossbows can only shoot 12 inches but they get plus one to their roll to wound.  This makes bows MUCH more powerful than normal.

We were also playing with table layout for the Osgiliath table.  We have five 12 inch squares of ruins, which work well, but we both think we need some barriers, walls and barricades as well as some difficult terrain we can throw down.  We also need to bevel the edges of the MDF that the ruins are based on as the square edges caused us quite a bit of positioning problems over the course of the game.

I only have one hero, so had to place him up front.  I also front loaded all of my rangers into the forward force, with the rest filled out with Veterans.  I placed them as far back as I could, but they were easily in charge range of the Dwarfs, if Keith got Priority.  Keith had Dain and Gimli, with Gimli forward.  He also had a mix of Khazad Guard, Iron Guard and Dwarf Warriors.  At the last minute I convinced him to try Dwarf Warriors with bows instead of Rangers.  I'm not sure how well that worked out, since the plus 1 to wound made all shooting better.  More play testing is probably called for.

Happily, I won priority.  Gimli promptly called a heroic move, countered by Faramir, who won the roll off.  One Veteran engaged Gimli, putting an end to his move.  Everyone else fell back while Faramir repositioned to a more central position, closer to where Gimli was.  There was some combat to Faramir's right, and my rangers started picking off Dwarfs like it was cool, which it was with me. 

Keith had 40 models in his army, while I had 50.  From the first turn on, I was ahead in the body count pretty much the entire game.  Dwarf armies rely on their awesome armor saves to stay alive.  With the shooting rules in this scenario, that is not as much of a factor for them.

Combats were going my way, my reserves were moving up faster and I had fire superiority.  Keith's front line was not holding up very well and Gimli was not killing anything.  By the time Dain and his boys got up there were not many of the first line Dwarfs left.  Dain managed a Heroic combat into Faramir.  Sadly, for Dain, Faramir had charged that turn, though a different model.  This gave Faramir four dice, instead of three, letting him win the combat, knock Dain down and put a wound on him after using up his fate.  This was the only charge Faramir got in the entire game, getting charged by Dain or Gimli every turn after that.  Dain died in the next round of combat but Gimli lasted the rest of the game. 

Once I broke Keith his Dwarfs started to fade, though slowly.  It took several more rounds of combat for me to kill enough to get him to 25%.  It is actually easier to kill Dwarfs with shooting, in this scenario, than it is with a sword.  That plus one on the die roll is better than the +1 strength of a hand weapon over my shooting.

I walked away with a major win.  Any time I get anything better than a loss against Keith I'm thrilled.  He is a great player, probably one of the best in the country, since he took second at Adepticon. 

I think we are both very happy with the scenario.  We have played it twice, on different tables, and it worked very well on both.  It changes the game a lot, forcing players to think on their toes and develop new tactics on the fly.  The table needs some more work, but it is going to work out well once we add some more terrain to it.

I needed a good game to take my mind off of work and this, as always against Keith, was a great game and a lot of fun.  I feel very good about where we are with the tournament preparations.  I hope we have people actually show up.

More on 8th edition Warhammer

I have played three more games of 8th Edition Warhammer since my last post.  It just gets better and better.  I got in two 1000 point games and a 1500 pointer.

The first 1000 points was against demons.  It was my first time playing them since they got their own book.  Things were going pretty well until the Blue Scribe got behind my line and got off the Vortex spell.  Half of my army died in that one round, including General "I always roll once worse than what I need and now I'm dead" who will not be missed.

After that the game was pretty much over.

The next game was against High Elves.  Rob had a big block (30?) of Lothern Sea Guard, some archers and some swordmasters, all lead by a mage.  I dropped a perfect shot on him from my Rocket battery and killed all but one LSG and the mage.  That was the first shot of my second turn.  Game over.  Now we all understand why big blocks my not be a no-brainer.  They probably still have their place, but there is a lot to be said for redundancy.

The third game was 1500 points vs Autret and his Vampire Counts.  My dice were a little bit above average, his were crap.  I channeled an extra dice in five times during the game.  I had a couple of turns where I had more dispel dice than he had casting dice, which is very bad for VC.

This was my first game against VC as well.  They were just as hard as I expected.  They also died really fast to my light spells.  Shooting in two ranks was awesome.  My cannon killed one of his vampires on the first shot of the game, which didn't help him out all.  His dire wolves got a first turn charge (he went second) on my mortar, in a building and wiped it, then failed four of five difficult terrain tests and lost all but one dog. 

I learned a lot more about the rules and about VC.  I also got to teach another person the new rules, so we have five or six people who have played them now.

This weekend we will be running some events to get everyone going on them, so it should be a fun time and a great way to get even more people to play.

Accomlished this week.

It was a busy week.  I got a lot done and played my first game of Warhammer 8th edition.  I began the week by finishing base coating my Warhammer trees.  I then got the first coat of dark brown paint on them.  Two more, dry brushed, coats and the trunks will be done.  After that it is down to the bases and, finally, the leaves.  I have nine trees to do all told.  These need to be done for September for the Mayhem in the Mountains LotR tournament we are hosting at Collectormania.

The next thing to be done was base coating my Sorylian fleet for Firestorm Armada.  I hit them with Army Painter Desert Yellow primer.  They will be bleached bone and some shade of blue, as yet undecided.  Bleached bone is my favorite color and seems to end up in most of my armies somewhere.  The bases and flight stands are black.  I need to drill a hole in the end of the bases and in the ships and glue a pin into the base.  Magnets and other such attachment methods all sound nice but are too much work at this point.

The next project was assembly on my M10 3" GMC Tank Destroyer Platoon for Flames of War.  This involved cleaning and gluing two M10's two jeeps and an M20 utility scout car.  There are crews for all vehicles and two dismounted carbine teams.  I still need to clean the flash off of the crews and mount the carbine teams on their bases.  That will happen at the same time as the infantry company gets stuck to theirs.

The third project of the week was making my new Faramir, Prince of Ithilien.  I don't like the new model very much.  I also didn't think a lot of the mounted model of my mounted Faramir blister.  Easy fix.  I glued the shield from a Warrior of Numenor to the mounted Faramir model.  Boom!  Bob's your uncle.  Done.

In preparation for Fantasy 8th edition, which I am super excited about, by the way, I borrowed the book from the shop and read through the rules.  As I went I compiled a list of changes from 7th.  14 pages later I had a PDF we could use, down at the shop, to learn the new rules.  I also listed out the new spells so we can all plan our armies when we don't have access to the book.  Magic items will be next, if I can borrow it again.

We played a 1500 point game.  I didn't use any magic items, and Jud only used the ones from the High Elf book.  We left the special terrain rules out of it but we rolled for the scenario and got the one where you deploy a foot apart at an angle and roll to see which units will come on as reinforcements. 

Jud brought High Elves.  A unit of five or six Dragon Riders with Musician and Standard but no champion.  Two units of Spear Elves, one of 20 and one larger.   A big unit of archers and a unit of 20 Lothern Sea Guard.  He had one dispell scroll on his Level 2 fire mage, who was his general.  He also had a mounted BSB with the +D6 to CR banner, which he put in with the Dragon Princes.

I had my Empire.  One unit of 25 swords, full command, with a ten handgunner detachment and a 12 swordsman detachment.  One unit of 25 spears full command with ten crossbows and 12 swords.  One unit of five Knights with great weapons, banner and musician, one unit of five pistoliers with musician and outrider with repeater pistol.  Artillery was a great canon, mortar and Hellstorm.  My heroes were a General of the Empire with full plate, shield and pistol, a mounted BSB and a level 2 with the lore of life.

He had to leave his seaguard off.  I lost my BSB and cannon. 

Here are my impressions.  This is a completely new game.  I loved it.  Movement is about the same but the phase is easier to understand.  All charge stuff happens at once now.  In my experience people usually moved their chargers when they declared them.  Now that is how it is supposed to work.  Random charges are something that I was not really all that worried or excited about.  After the first game I have decided that I like them a lot.  They add to the phase.  Before, I just had to know how far eight inches was.  Now I can take the chance and go for that 16 inch charge if I'm feeling lucky. 

Magic is AWESOME!  This is great stuff.  I love the winds of magic.  I love the new lores.  I love everything about this.  Our two level 2's got spells off, they affected the game.  They were viable but not overpowering.  My support spells were critical at times.  His damage spells killed a bunch of dudes.  His double six killed half of his archer unit.

Shooting is about the same but my warmachines were really good.  I usually made most of my guesses, and you still have to be good at placing the first spot for the canon and Hellstorm, but I killed a lot of elves with artillery.  True line of sight was a pain in the ass, just as I thought it would be, and added nothing to the game.   I do not like this rule.

Close combat was wildly different.  You beat me by 12, my leadership is 9 with the general in there and I'm stubborn with the BSB.  I'll just stick around for the rest of the game, thanks.

You won combat with your Dragon Princes?  Wait, they're not going to run off the table for the rest of the game?  They're going to reform and get a charge off next turn?  Crap.

It goes on and on.  Being able to move through terrain was great.  We had a bunch.  It was tactical.  It didn't stop the game.  It looked great.

My detachments play completely differently in this edition.  I ran 3x3 CC detachments all through 7th.  Now, with 5 wide and at least two ranks to take away ranks, they are a lot more vulnerable.  I am going to have to give some serious thought to how to make them work.

The game was fast and fun and, TLoS aside, I liked every single rule.  I love 8th edition.

LotR gaming

We had Lord of the Rings day down at the shop today.  It was a very successful day, in my book.  We had eight people playing, including two new players, one of whom ordered the rule book.  We got to play two of the scenarios that we are developing for the, as yet to be named, tournament.  We kept up interest among the folks who have armies and a couple of us tried out new armies.

I played three games this afternoon.  One of the advantages of 350 point games.  I was trying out the High Elves, and I really need to make some changes.

The first game was against Rob and his Easterlings.  Rob played it better, tactically, and my elves just did not work the way I had hoped they would.  I set up first.

We had some of the new Osgiliath ruins in the center, with trees and wall around it.  We were playing the same scenario as my game against Keith the other night.  The picture above shows my initial set up.

Rob held me in the center and flank and crushed my elves on the right.  After that it was all mopping up.

My second game was against Curtis, who has never played before.  I have been trying to talk him into it for awhile, so he agreed to come down today and give it a shot.  I brought my Isengard army for him to test drive.  He had a good grasp of the rules and had been asking a lot of questions in the game with Rob.

The initial set up of the Uruk's.  Five crossbows are under the hand to the right.

And my elves on turn two. This was a straight up meeting engagement, since it was a teaching game.  My shooting was a lot better this game and I was able to force him to come to me.  I set up just my side of the line of walls, allowing me to gang up on him as he came through.

I did not get any pictures of my third game, against Russ.  He had a Mordor army made up of a generic Nazgul (10 Will) two specters, four trackers, a bunch of Black Numenorians and orcs backing them up.  We were playing a scenario in which each player has a hero in the center of the board and the rest of their army six inches in.  You are pretty much forced to fight at least one round of combat, as otherwise you can't use your stand fast.

This was a really annoying army to fight as the specters kept pulling my troops out of position, leading to the death of my captain, while the Wraith kept my courage down and black darted things.  We played that there were no In the Way rolls or any effects of casting in to combat.  That doesn't feel right to me, but I can't see where, in the rules, that would be wrong.

We both broke and he just got me down to 25% first.  That army build is definitely one that works your skills.  Terror, the specters and the Nazgul are all things that work well together to throw a monkey wrench in your plans.  I have not beat Russ with that army yet.

This was a game between High Elves (cleverly disguised as Galadrim) and Dwarfs.

We got two of our scenarios tested by a bunch more people.  Everyone liked the Stormy Weather one.  (Half your army in the middle of the table).  The Parlay scenario had a lot of questions.  We will have to work on it to see if we can simplify it and still keep the intent.

As far as my Elves went.  Their shooting was as good as I thought it should be, though S3 is not a huge improvement over S2 it is twice as good in a lot of conditions.  My spears did exactly what I wanted them to but my Elves with Elf Blades were too squishy.  I will have to give them shields.  I think the archers also need to have spears as they were squishy in the later stages and would have been better off providing more attacks to my other models.

I may have to re-consider my desire to not ally in Galadrim.

All in all, a very successful day of gaming.

High Elves

I have decided on High Elves as my next Lord of the Rings army.  This will be my army for the tournament, yet to be named, that we are hosting in September.

I have two of the Last Alliance box sets.

 

These form the core of my army.  The problem with this set, and the range in general, is that there are only the two troop types, for High Elves, in here.  You get eight archers and eight elves with Elf Blades.  Spears come in blisters with three.  There are no models for hand weapon and shield, even though this is an option in the book, and one I would like to use.

I am going to have to hack up one of my models to see if I can position the arms right for him to be holding the sword one handed.  After that it will be a matter of figuring out if the Galadrim shields can be made to work, they are slightly different.

The easy answer, of course, is to ally wood elves with my High Elves.  I just don't want a Gladrim army though.  It may still come to this, but I am going to give conversion a shot first.  Of course, on the down side, that means I need another box of Warriors of the Last Alliance and a box of Galadrim to work on this.  I also need a couple more blisters of spears.  

The other downside of all of these Last Alliance boxes is that I now have a bunch of Warriors of Numenor with shields.  Spears and bows are all blisters as well for this army.  For now they have been stuffed into a used yogurt container against the day I decide they are worth my time and money.

I'll be sure to take pix of the conversion process.

Construction Complete

I have spent the last week assembling madly.  I have gotten a lot done.
1 x Land Raider Crusader
1 x Baal Predator
1 x Vindicator
2 x Razorback

And for LotR:
16 x High Elves with Elf Blades
16 x High Elves with Elf Bows
6 x High Elves with spears and shields
1 x Arwen

I still have 72 Moria goblins to get done.  I also need to do some painting this month.  At least twenty models is my goal.  We'll see how that one goes.  I also need to assemble two sets of the new Osgiliath ruins.  I suspect that I will be buying some more of those.  They are truly an awesome terrain set in a game system that sorely needed some more support from GW.

In Work

I am currently in an assembly frenzy.  This last week I have put together 18 High Elf bowmen and 18 High Elves with Elf blades as well as three with spear and shield, Gildor, Erestor, Cirdan, Thranduil, Galadriel, Saruman and Madril.  Oh yeah, and Faramir's horse.  I also assembled two sets of the old terrain of Middle Earth.  I have 72 moria goblins in progress on the de-flashing and gluing to bases phase.

I also picked up two of the Osgiliath ruins sets today.  I am really looking forward to assembling these.  With these two sets and the three sets of the old Middle Earth terrain I have I will be able to put quite a bit of LotR specific terrain on  the table.  It also means I will have a bunch to contribute to the tables for the tournament in September.

The goblins and terrain are going to be on hold for a week or so, though.  To my surprise I find myself with an assembly commission.  I was in the store today when a guy came in with nine boxes of space marine tanks.  He does painting commissions and doesn't have time to assemble these tanks.  I took half and Ian took half.  Five tanks for $65 dollars.  Awesome!  That'll buy me some models, "off the books", as far as the wife is concerned.

Play testing

As part of the tournament we are planning, for the fall, we are developing new scenarios and testing table layouts.  Wednesday night, my wife being out of town, Kieth came down and we played in my basement.

I laid the table out in the Bree layout that I had come up with.  The table was laid out with a village in the center.  There was a large village square with a fountain.  Surrounding the square were houses, two per side.  There was a road, lined with walls running out of the east side (north being Keith's side of the table - to the right in the picture below).  There were some fences and trees in various places around the town.

(The sunken road is nearest the viewer in this picture.)

The effect of this layout was that there was a good sized area in the center to fight in, divided in two by the fountain.  The road turned out to be a pivotal location, allowing flank charges into the village and a defended wall on each side.

(The sunken road is top right in this picture).

The scenario we came up with is a combination of several others.  Each player divides their army in half.  We are still trying to decide if we want to have the opponent choose the force that will be deployed forward or the player, though we went with the player choosing their army last night.

Half of the army deploys between 18" and 24" in, on the table.  This means that the two armies start with half of their troops right in each others faces.  The other half of the army deploys three inches in from the table edge.

Night fight rules are in play, meaning that bows can only shoot 12 inches but they get plus one strength.  This had the effect of forcing players to close on each other and, theoretically, it shortens the time they have to shoot.  It also makes the shooting much more dangerous than normal.

The other scenario element that we added in was a modified contest of champions.  Normally in that scenario it is decided by the champion who kills the most enemy models.  A lot of people (including me) really dislike this scenario.  In our scenario a major victory means that you have reduced your opponent to 25% but you are not broken.  A minor victory is achieved by reducing your opponent to 25%, but you are broken.  The kills of your champion add bonus points.  In our game Faramir ended up killing eight dwarfs while Dain only got three kills.  That gave me five bonus points for my minor victory.  We liked this because it makes the scenario about more than just what two models do, and it also has the potential to really get some spread on the player's points in the tournament.

Keith deployed first.  He had Dain with half of his force, divided equally by type (Khazad Guard, ranger, etc), in the village square.  Half of this company was on each side of the fountain.  The other half of his army was set up in the center of the table in his rear deployment zone.

(Dain is the red beared fellow, second from the right in the left hand company.  The shield bearer is the unpainted mini to the left).

I also divided my army in half by type, except that all three of my knights were in the rear deployment zone.  Faramir and Cirion were both forward with their half of the army.  Faramir, a bunch of WoMT and three rangers were set up in the road, just outside the square.  Cirion and the rest of the forward WoMT were in the east corner of the square, as far back as I could get them.  There were five rangers to the west of the village.  The rear deployment zone had knights, the horn blower and six rangers, off to the west.  The WoMT were in the center and five rangers were in the east.

(Faramir and his company along with the three rangers who are bait for the trap.)

I got priority first turn and moved Fararmir, in the second rank, and his band so that they were across the road, right on the edge of the square, with both flanks secured by buildings.  The rangers in the road moved up to the wall.  Cirion's lads backed up so that they had their flanks held by buildings, but they bulged out into the square.  Another part of his force moved up to fill the gap between two buildings, to the west of Cirion.  All of the rear troops moved forward at full speed.

Cirion's troops were setting up a trap for Keith.  By bulging out into the square they gave the Dwarfs an opportunity to have more Dwarfs fighting than humans.  If they moved forward to engage these troops then they would have to ensure that they split off enough troops to keep Faramir and his company locked up in  the street.  Once the Dwarfs had committed to this course of action, Cirion and his lads would fall back, past the houses, so that the situation was reversed and fewer Dwarfs would be forced to fight against more humans, who would have both flanks protected by houses.

(Cirion and his boys move back to increase their odds.  The Dwarfs have bounced off of the wall after their first attack, top right.)

The second part of my trap was based on Faramir, and was, by far, the riskiest part of my plan.  If Faramir and his lads got locked in combat to the front then they would not be in a position to react if the Dwarfs could get over the wall and into the sunken road, from behind.  It appeared that the only thing keeping this from happening was three rangers along the wall.  No problem, thinks the Dwarfs, we can take some D4 rangers.

In Keith's first turn he pushed forward on both sides of the fountain.  The eastern block pushed up so that their flank was on the house, with Faramir's lads just around the corner.  Dain's lads moved forward, trying to minimize how much shooting they would take from my rangers on the west side of the village.

My shooting was completely useless.  Keith managed to kill a couple of WoMT.  The additional strength from the scenario rules made the bows much more deadly.  I, again, won priority in turn two.  I used the opportunity to move the rear half of my army forward, running everyone as fast as they could go.  The knights moved up the western board edge.

Keith moved Dain's forces forward, leaving the other half of his force in the square in place.  He split his rear force in two, half heading directly towards the square and half heading towards the sunken road, which was still only guarded by my three rangers.  Shooting was, again, inconclusive.

Turn three Keith finally won priority and decided to move into combat.  His eastern force swung in to engage Faramir's company and block of the road.  He split the force advancing on the sunken road, sending a third of it off towards the square and the rest towards the wall.  Dain's force advanced against Cirion's company, pushing off a force to guard against the small group of WoMT between the buildings.

My shooting, this turn, was finally decent, with a bunch of Dwarfs falling.  All of the combats were inconclusive, with losses on both sides.  At the end o this turn we had each lost seven models, meaning bad news for Keith with his smaller army.

Turn four finally saw the Dwarfs reach the sunken road.  Two Dwarfs got in to combat with three rangers.  All of the troops who were originally deployed in the square were now in combat.

I pulled Faramir away from the street fight, where he had been in the second rank, and threw him up to the wall against the Dwarfs attacking the rangers.  The WoMT in the center pulled back behind a building, leaving the alley open.  I was hoping that Kieth would try to cross the fence, allowing me to engage his force piecemeal.  He didn't fall for it.  The WoMT who were coming up the center, from the rear deployment zone, split, with half hiding behind a building and the rest moving to reinforce Cirion.  Keith ended up forgetting how many troops I had behind the building and, when they finally came out, late game, he was shocked by ten fresh troops piling in to combat.

The fight in the sunken road went against the Dwarfs, with Faramir getting his first kills.  In the square, neither battle line was moving.  Dain was not getting kills but a few models were still falling to archery.  My rangers, on the western edge of the village, kept moving forward, behind cover, and dueling with his rangers, who were in the open.  My knights were swinging around the rear of the village.  I'm sure that Keith expected them to get in to the fight in the square.  My plan was to have them hit the Dwafs at the sunken road from behind, then swing back around to the square.  Additionally, I had gotten the reserve rangers up to the road and there were now eight there instead of three, along with Faramir and a WoMT spearman supporting him.

This was the decisive turn.  Keith's force in the square was engaged all along the line.  His rangers were losing the archery duel and hid behind the fountain, short buggers.  The force at the wall had just seen its advantage in numbers disappear.  Keith pushed everything he could up against the wall and bounced, losing several dwarfs.  In the next turn he pulled back, allowing Faramir to shift back to the fight at the edge of the square and the rangers, along the wall, to shoot at will.  The dwarfs along the sunken road evaporated over the next couple of turns.

In the road, Faramir managed to turn the fight and break through the dwarf line.  The knights finally reached the fight, one being dismounted by rangers and one killed, but they killed off the last dwarf in the way and the remaining, mounted knight, charged into the combat in the square.

(The Dwarf attack on the sunken road is over.  Faramir is about to blast his way through the dwarf line and Cirion is about to eat Dain's axe.)

Dain was slowly pushing back Cirion's company, killing Cirion in the process.  The WoMT line just wouldn't break though, with the ten troops behind the house providing the numbers to hold Dain and his band.  The dwarf Shield Bearer was having no luck in killing hi opponents, even with his free Heroic combat every turn that he was within three inches of Dain.  Only once did he get into a combat that involved Dain.

(Cirion's last moments.  You can see the shield bearer off stage left, in all his mithril glory.)

My rangers moved forward to engage hand to hand, Faramir's company finally broke out of the street and the Dwarfs were steadily pushed in to a smaller and smaller corner of the square.  When Keith finally broke, the shield bearer kept all but one Dwarf in the fight with their re-rolls of failed courage tests within 12 inches.  By the time the shield bearer failed there were not enough dwarfs left to really affect him much.

(Faramir leads the breakthrough.)

Keith finally broke me but with Farmair's stand fast and the horn blower I only lost five models to failed courage tests.  (Actually that seems like a lot, looking back on it.)  We called it when Keith got to ten models.

(The final moments of Dain's warhost.)

I really enjoyed both the scenario and the table layout.  As always, Keith was a great opponent.  We made some changes to the rules and clarified some issues.  We were going to play it out to total annihilation, thinking that with the two armies starting so close together this would not be a difficult threshold to reach.  It turns out that it just takes too long to wipe out an army so we changed that to 25%.  We also decided that throwing weapons would not benefit from the additional strength, since they were unaffected by the range restrictions.

My trap worked as I hoped.  If Keith had pushed everything against the sunken road, as he started to, it might have been different, and he had me very worried until he split his force.  He underestimated the advantage that a defended obstacle gives.  Faramir was a star, killing dwarfs right and left.  I manged to limit Dain to only three kills, but I just couldn't kill him.  I put one wound on him, even when I had him trapped by three models with support.  He is a tank.

This is probably the most enjoyable game of LotR I have played, which is saying something.  I think both the table layout and the scenario will be good to go for the tournament.

Slow hobby time

I have not been doing much with the hobby this month.  I am currently looking for a new job and that is taking most of my free time and what's left of my energy at the end of the day.

I have been following the rumors about Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition.  I have to admit, I'm very excited.  It sounds to me like the changes will be very interesting.

I have been happy with 7th Edition, by and large.  There are a couple of things I hate, the terrain rules first and foremost.  I hate the fact that, for most units, touching terrain is the end of the game.  Ranked units just come to a complete standstill when they get in to terrain.  Most of the other things people don't like don't bother me all that much.

Having said that, I am looking forward to the changes.  A percentage cap on characters would be great.  Even if, as rumored it is 25%.  I like this a lot better than the number cap.  Four vampire counts characters are not equal to four goblin characters.  The points cost doesn't make up for the fact that you only have those four slots to get whatever you need for your army.  I also don't like hero-hammer so this works for me on many levels.

This cap will also lead to more troops on the table.  I hate 16 model armies.  An army should look like an army.  Some people don't agree, but that's ok.  They're playing a different game than I am and not with me.

Random charges seems to be getting a lot of internet ink right now.  I'm ok with this too.  It makes things a little bit less certain, which is good.  There are plenty of "realistic" reasons why this rule works and it will not be nearly as critical if the rumored rules for casualties are true.

The new casualty rules are rumored to be that the first two ranks get to fight.  This is regardless of how many models get killed.  Casualties are taken off of the back and if you have two full ranks when this is done they all get to fight.  This means that getting the charge loses some of the importance that it used to have.  It also means that normal infantry might actually be of some use in the game for something other than supporting a character.

There are others, too many to recount here.  Warseer has pages and pages  of threads about this.  All in all, I think the summer is going to be a great time for Warhammer and I couldn't be more excited.

Tournament

Tournaments.  They are a lot of fun.  They are a lot of work.  There are not very many LotR tournaments, and certainly not many in our neck of the woods.

Three of us are talking about setting one up in the Denver area.  We are discussing dates, locations, scenarios and terrain.  I think we can make it happen but there are a lot of things we need to get sorted quickly if we are going to pull it off.

The first issue we are discussing is whether or not we want to do it as part of Tacticon, the big Labor day convention here in Denver.  The first thought was to hold the tournament there.  We are now leaning away from that for several reasons.

1.  There is a $30 convention fee.  We would have to charge on top of that for prizes and food.  We are looking at a two day tournament, so there would not be a lot of time for people to use their passes to see/game the rest of the con.
2.  Labor day is not going to work for me.  Not a reason not to do it that weekend if that makes the most sense, but definitely a reason for me not to be all that thrilled about putting in all the work to make this thing go.
3.  The convention organizers have not bothered to get back to Keith regarding his request for ten tables.

Reasons to do it somewhere else.
1.  We run it at Tim's store, Collectormania, and it won't cost us anything.   We can fit in ten tables, and he might be able to get a bigger space if we need more.
2.  We can charge a reasonable amount and use all of the money for prizes and food.
3.  We are not locked in to a particular weekend.
4.  We only have to deal with ourselves, not the convention organizers.

We are going to have a meeting next Friday to discuss this.  If we are serious the biggest issue will be coming up with the terrain.  LotR is best with a lot of terrain on the tables.  I have enough for two tables.  I don't know about Keith.  Tim has a few hills but nothing else that really fits.  We will need to build a lot of terrain.

We also need to come up with the scenarios that will be played.  We have, realistically, all but one or two figured out, so that should not be bad.  It also gives us an excuse to play a lot of games to play test them.  We will also have to decide if we are going to announce the scenario's before the event, or let people show up blind to them.

I think we can pull it off and make it a great event.  Our goal is to have twenty players.  I think we can hit that easily, but partly that will depend on when we decide to run it.

I am excited about this.

Warhammer 40,000

I finally did it.  I played my first game of 40k.  Warhammer is my first love.  LOTR was second.  I'm not sure how I feel about 40k.

Tim has been offering to teach me for months now.  I just never had the time.  I like the fluff.  I like the models and have collected most of an Imperial Guard army.  It is much easier to get a game of 40k at the shop.  I have just avoided it up to now.  I finally took the plunge.

I made up a 500 point list.  It had a little bit of everything, just to see how things work.  A platoon of Guardsmen with two squads.  Special and heavy weapons.  Company HQ.  Veterans, who I played with normal guardsmen stats the whole game because I'm not very SMRT.  A squadron of scout Sentinels, just to see how a sqdn works.

Tim had to tactical squads and a captain.  We rolled kill teams.  Bad for me.  The game was fun but there were just so many rules that I didn't like.  I'll play a few more games but at this point it is not high on my list.

1.  I hated no armor saves.  Marines shoot at guardsmen, all the guardsmen die.  Yeah, fun game.
2.  The assault rules.  No real tactics there at all.  Pile in and you get to kill as many models as you want.  Dumb.
3.  What do you mean my missile launcher scatters 2d6 - BS?  What the hell is the point of that?  Minus BS?  No.  That is total BS.
4.  Small table.  Oh yeah.  Turn three we are in assault.  That's exactly how battles with firearms work.  Everyone tries to get into hand to hand combat because that is actually more effective than using a rifle. 

I suppose I'll give it a few more chances but I was not impressed.  The more I think about it the more I didn't like it.

Cannons

I played a 2000 point game of Warhammer this weekend.  My empire against my friend Rob's High Elves.  It was a great game, very tactical, lots of back and forth and lots of cinematic moments.  I forgot to take pictures of course.

What struck me was how great my cannons were.  I was using a list that I had tooled up to fight a HE Dragon lord list.  Two canons, Arch Lector, Warrior Priest and Battle Wizard.  Lots of dispels.  Rob plays a, mostly, infantry list.  he had one unit of eight Silver Helms with his general in it.  The point being, finally, that my list was not really a list I would normally play with.

The two cannons were the stars of the battle.  They killed a bolt thrower, his level 1 mage, his general and the hero of the Silver Helms and a chariot.  They also absorbed turn after turn of fire from two units of ten archers and two bolt throwers.  The only hero they didn't kill was his level 4 mage, who was killed by one turn of fire by eighteen of my archers, (three detachments of seven, one of which had taken some casualties).

The other thing that struck me was just how well his spearmen stood up.  These are a much maligned unit on the web.  Everyone hates them.  I found them to be pretty bad ass.  Once they got stuck in they just stayed there.  It helped that they were in the flank of my swordsmen, and that they were fighting empire swordsmen, but all the same, they did their job.  If Rob could have gotten his cavalry into that unit as well it would have been all over.

It was a great game and it reminded me that cannons work best in pairs.