So my gaming group are a fan of huge battles and one we've always wanted to do is the battle of the five armies, but obviously there is the issue of points and evening the sides. To coincide with the hugely anticipated "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" we will probably follow the films take on the battle so obviously any special rules and stuff will need to be decided later and perhaps even some characters. But how would you work a battle like this. Maybe add up heroes points separately from the main army? One issue i can see is Thorins company adding up to 700pts odd points and taking up a large point chunk which prevents us from fielding more dwarves and so on. Any contributions are welcome

I think you would need to split the game.
One match of Dale/Laketown/Mirkwood vrs. Dwarves in a siege scenario.
Then a match of the Elves/Laketown vrs Orcs
Then a match of dwarves Iron hills and whomever survived the first match of thorins co./elves/laketown/eagles vrs orcs


It was not a simple war of these armies vrs. this army. It was a chaotic mess. And if anyone else shows up (necromancer, High elves, dragon) in the film battle.

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Are there five of you? In that case, simple- three good, two evil!

If you /really/ love long battles, and are willing to spend all weekend fighting it, I would suggest something like 2000 or 3000 points per side- so 3 armies of 1000 points on the side of good (Glad I don't have to paint that much lake-town!) and two forces of 1500 points on the evil side (which is a LOT of goblins!).

The problem, as you say, is that Thorin's Company already takes up most of the dwarf allowance. My solution would be to simply leave most of them out. Take Thorin, Balin, Dwalin and perhaps Gloin, all leading troops.
Have Gandalf leading the Laketown contingent, and obviously Thrandabulous Leggy and Smurfette leading the elves.

After all, you're not going to try to field all 15,000 of the goblins who were actually there, so why all of Thorin's Company?

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Re: Sithious - I do like the idea of splitting the matches up actually, that way Thorin's company wouldn't all have to be in each game which links to Mertaal's idea of leaving most of them out. Do you guys think it would be possible to do like a what if style to it, so say have multiple battles and the surviving characters are the ones present in the final battle, it may not be true to the lore of either film or the book but i'd imagine it to be a very entertaining battle?

Re: Mertaal - Coincidentally yes there are five of us haha and actually 3000pts and be played comfortably in a day with us and yeah on the subject of lake town, which models would you consider to be suitable proxies, £15 a blister is going to be far too much money for battles this size :'(

Proxy dale troops or rohan, both would fit with a small town of lake town long after the fall of Dale.

As for campaign style there are several methods. Some people want all the heroes from battle to battle, so if they die in one battle they were really just wounded and could no longer fight that battle but before the next battle they get either full recovery or a partial depending on the situation you create.
The other way is to remove them and then replacement heroes have to be made (like a captain stepping up to lead a force after a named hero falls).

I would do 1500 points mirkwood/laketown alliance (allows you to fill in the gaps you need) and 1500 points dwarves (iron hills and Thorins Co.) and you can still split the battle and have the iron hills group show later in the match. Then 4000 points all the evil stuff. If you decide to use eagles, then in story they would show last along with Beorne and could possible be counted separately as a force that shows up later.

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You could, for a feeling of epicness (and something I suspect GW themselves will do considering their prior history) split the battle up into smaller scenarios, cumulating in a big one. Game one features a large number of points of Mirkwood, Gandalf and Bilbo vs one evil army, Game Two is Dwarves versus A mixture of Evil Armies One and Two, Game Three is Men versus evil army two. Then put all the armies together for an epic bash to the death, with reinforcements showing up as the game goes on (eagles and beorn). The last game would see Thorins company added to the mix, remember they only show up part way through the battle, as Thorin is being stubborn, which should let you just pile on LOADS of bad guys to even out the points. If you wanted, you could always stall Beorns arrival for a potential fith, tie breaker game, which would just feature Thorin, Fili, Kili, Azog/Bolg and Captains/Trolls where Beorn shows up at a certain point to give the good side some hipe. Objective to wipe the enemy heroes. Scaling things down for a nice finale full of heroics sounds quite fun, and gives you a good odd number of scenarios to make it easy to say who has won or lost the battle overall.

One thing you could try is to keep track of suriving heroes might, wounds, etc and keep that consistent over the course of the five games. It'd add a tactical spin as to whether you want to use your hero quickly, or conserve him for the final all heroes vs all heroes showdown, and also open up the cunning option of tryin to rob your enemy of their heroes so they're at a disadvantage during the finale.

One thing I do for large battles(1000+ points) that I run at conventions is lower everyone's Defense by 1.

It helps the battle resolve faster and the game move along.

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Loving the ideas guys keep them coming!!!

I would split it up into smaller scenarios. GW has done this in the past with Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields.

So this is the way I'd split up starting forces:

Elven Heroes: Thranduil - Legolas - Tauriel About 300pts in Heroes
Add 500pts of Warriors

Men Heroes: Bard - Gandalf About 300pts in Heroes
Add 400pts of Warriors

Dwarf Heroes: Dain - Thrain son of Dain - Bilbo About 300pts of Heroes
(use Thrain profile) Add 400pts of Warriors

(In the books the elves had way more warriors than dwarves and men so these starting forces show it)

Azog Army: Azog About 200pts in Heroes
Add 1300pts in Warriors

Bolg Army: Bolg About 200pts in Heroes
Add 1300pts in Warriors

(At this point Bolg and Azog have a huge advantage in numbers but the good forces had reinforcements during the battle.)

Dwarven Reinforcements: Thorin has his usual profile. Dwalin and Balin have the Profile 6/4 5,7,2,2,6 2M,2W,2F and the rest of the Dwarves have the Profiles 5/4 4,6,1,1,5 1M, 1W, 1F. None of the Dwarves but Thorin use there special powers on their typical profiles. However this way you get a way to use all of Thorin's Company at a much cheaper cost.

Elven Reinforcements: Beorn

Men Reinforcements: Gwaihir and Two Great Eagles.

At the beginning of the third round you may roll to add Thorins company to the battle as reinforcements for Dwarves. At the beginning of the fourth round you may roll to add Beorn the the battle as reinforcements for Elves. At the beginning of the fifth round roll to add the Eagles to the battle as reinforcements for Men.


Haven't really looked at the logistics of if this would work but this is a much more accurate way in which to play the battle showing who was there in the beginning of the battle and how reinforcements of the battle changed the outcome.

Sorry for the late reply but that's actually a really cool way of doing it Cheers!!!