Me and my friend Dave got to play a 750 battle today, and had a ruddy good time of it.
Dave is fairly new to the game with only a couple of games under his belt, so I wrote a couple of lists for us to use that I thought would be fun and fluffy:
Riders of Rohan
- Eomer & 11 Riders
- Eowyn & 10 Riders
- King's Huntsman
- Gandalf the Grey
- Great Eagle
Isenguard
- The Undying on Felbeast
- Shaman, 10 Uruks & Troll
- Mauhur & 8 Marauders
- Vrasku, 8 Crossbowmen & 4 Bow Scouts
Dave chose the evil guys because he's collecting a Mordor army and loves the Fellbeast model. Can't blame him! I was dieing to play with my newly painted horsies so we were both happy.
We rolled a 1 which made objectives easy - death, death, and more death, and the deployment certainly favoured this outcome.
I made the mistake of putting the Eagle up front; he was going to eat some archers, but Dave decided to put a Troll infront of him instead, and then won priority for the first round. D'oh!
Gandalf deployed within 6" hoping to cast a Heroic Move and save his Eagle buddy. But Dave made the bold move of using the Shaman's single Might point to counter, and a roll of 1 saw Troll & Friends bundle into the feathered one.
Gandalf made up for his failure by casting Blinding Light and keeping most of Eomer's Riders safe from the firing squad. Lots of shooting on Turn 1 saw nothing at all dead.
The Shaman fluffed his Fury roll (1 & 2) and ended up being a spearman for the rest of the game. But it was thanks to him that the Eagle was snared, so he did a good job in the end.
Adding insult to injury The Undying moved up and Transfixed the Eagle, which lost combat but got away with only 1 wound.
The next turn saw Eowyn fall prey to the Fellbeast. Short story shorter, things did not go well for her. She won the Heroic Strike-off but then rolled a 3 to the Wraith's 6, and the Beast made short work of her.
As Dave won priority in the second turn the Eagle couldn't get away again, and...
He died a rending-related death at the hands of the Troll. The heroric Rohirrim heroically charged into the breach, but obviously died. They probably should have been less heroic.
Ignoring the rest of the battle and pretending everything was fine, Eomer & Gandalf had a great time on the other side of the board. Blinding Light meant only a few Riders fell to the constant volley of arrows, but it couldn't save Eomer's horse.
The Undying picked the flesh out of its teeth while the Marauders, for once being late to the party, tried to mop up the remaining Riders.
The Beast then swung round to the middle of the table, killing a Rider with a Black Dart on the way and then helped the Troll clean up the last of Eowyn's brave men.
Still oblivious to the battle at large, Eomer and Gandalf made a point of not looking behind them as the screams of men being torn apart by Trolls and Fellbeasts filled the land.
Savvy readers may have noticed the total lack of the Huntsman being mentioned. This is because he was blind drunk on a roof somewhere, missing almost every shot and rolling 1s to wound on the sporadic occasions when his arrow accidentally did hit something.
Finally the Undying got fed up of being ignored and confronted Eomer. Gandalf decided to finally do wizard-like things and Commanded it into Eomer, which also reduced its attack and fight values.
"I have you now, foul beast!" Eomer shouted in defiance,
Just before he got mugged. Oops.
But an Undying Nazghul and 3 Uruk'hai were no match for our hero. Eomer rolled a 6 to win the fight, which ultimately didn't matter because the Fellbeast had more wounds than he had attacks, and the Undying still had 7 points of Will to use as Fate.
The Huntsman suddenly woke up and put a wound on Vrasku, but it was gameover by then. I was broken and Dave wasn't, so we called it a day.
We both had a great time and I even learned quite a bit as many of the models were new to me. I really wanted to use Gandalf's Blinding Light, which was really cool, but they should have been trying to bring the Fellbeast down instead of pointlessly charging archers. Also I shouldn't have put the Eagle right at the front - that really was silly!
The Rohan army was great fun to play but very fragile - only 26 models in a 750 game just isn't enough. The Isenguard army was tough to play against and Dave used it well, letting the Fellbeast roam the battlefield using magic powers and charging vulnerable units.
It was a great game and I look forward to playing Dave again. Hope you enjoyed reading!
I loved the bit about
This was a good read.
. Always lovely to see two fully painted armies face down on a board full of nicely painted scenery.
