Shire Protectors Battle Company Battle Report 2

While down in the goblin infested caves, Hedging Bets (the Shire Protectors battle company) hear a forlorn howl in the distance. Hedger scouts on ahead and finds an enormous black wolf held at bay by a swarming crowd of goblins. Never one to let an animal suffer, Hedger convinces the group to move forward and attack the goblins!

About 120 points worth of goblins (and one goblin riding a warg) versus about 120 points worth of good guys!

Fortunately, even though the goblins are many, they are a bit spread out, so as long as the rocks and arrows hit their marks, the goblins shouldn't be too tough, though if they can get into a lot of melee combats against hobbits there'll be trouble! Goblins have spears, so can get their two against one bonus - and against a combat weak hobbit that's a problem! Turn one starts off really well, Cookie throws a stone and knocks a goblin out on the first turn!

No way! While Skodi faces off a goblin, a goblin arrow from further afield thwacks into Loki, taking him out! That's a massive blow to the good force, as they only had three proper fighters, now suddenly down to two!

Skodi takes out his goblin just in time to join in the melee against the warg rider, who charged in to battle and was swarmed by as many as could pile in! Hedger and his squad rolled nothing higher than a four! Fortunately the goblin rolled a one and a two!

The two archer hobbits, Tom and Harry, take aim at long range and take out a goblin archer! The archery so far has been dreadful for the Shire force, there were turns where everybody missed (all 1s and 2s) and many other turns where even the hits didn't manage to get any wounds, so this was a good feeling!

And the archery continues! Hedger and Harry take out two goblins! Skodi and Cookie smack down another goblin - Cookie smacks his frying pan right into the goblin's chittering face, sending it to the gravel. Jolly, Hugo and Rory similarly gang up on a goblin, only winning because the Shirrifs have a massive fight value of 3 while the goblin only has 2! I think this turn turned the whole battle around, as the goblins were getting close to swarming us! Thank goodness that sometimes the archery works!

Pushing forward, Hedger and the team manage to gang up on some more goblins, Skodi taking out another in close combat while Harry takes aim and shoots another hill-top goblin!

Skodi takes on two goblins and loses the fight, but the spear thrust is turned aside by his shield. Hedger pushes back a goblin but can't get a damaging strike in. Cookie, however, frying pans another goblin!

There are fewer goblins now, but Hedger and Skodi continue to take on as many goblins as they can to spare the Hobbits. Skodi pushes a goblin away from the Hobbits. Hedger slips on something and the goblin lunges forward and takes him out! Hedger got one bow kill this game and did nothing else except distract goblins from Hobbits! Meanwhile, Hugo clonks another goblin in the head and knocks him out!

Vengeance is theirs as the Dwarf, Skodi, and all the remaining Hobbits pile in to thwack the final goblins down! They hear a cheerful barking and snarling sound in the distance and see the massive black wolf claw down two goblins as it howls in the direction of the Hobbits as it bounds away into the distance. Mission accomplished! But at what cost?!

Post game rolls - Loki rolls snake eyes - DEATH!?!? But then as we're making a fuss about what rotten luck we realise that the whole way through the game we had Hedger's stats wrong (I thought he only had 3 defence) so that he shouldn't have even been knocked out! So we fudged the results by one and had Loki roll a three instead. So our next mission will be trying to rescue him as he wasn't found after the battle - the goblins have dragged him off somewhere!

In better post-game rolls I got double sixes (thanks to the horn bonus) and got a Wood Elf Sentinel, Geleth, and another hobbit, Farmer Maddock. Also, Cookie rolled and got a six, promoting him to a Hero! A hero Hobbit with a frying pan! Skodi and Hedger also qualified for promotions. Skodi has decided that the Hobbits need protecting and so he is now a Khazad Guard, ready to lay down his axes for the little folk. Hedger has donned better protective armour and is now a fully fledged Ranger of the North. Here's hoping that will help him in future battles!

Shire Protectors Battle Company Battle Report

What happens when a hobbit who is fond of his grog is abducted by a group of goblins to force him to provide them with booze?

Why, the Shire Protectors leap into action (though some of them only at 4" a turn)! We thought it would be fun to have another good company to do some team missions later on with my son's elves. I really like hobbits, so we decided to put together a battle company that represents what may happen if something happened to a hobbit. We know that the Dunedain are always out there keeping an eye on the Shire, that dwarves trade and travel through the Shire and that every now and then there'll be an elf around. So we put together a company that is mostly Hobbits, but with a few extras that may appear from time to time. At it's core you always have to have more Hobbits than anything else, so it'll always look more like a Hobbit company than anything else. It's probably not that competitive, but should be fun =)

Hedger the Dunedain (so called because he always seems to be lurking in foliage) calls up Skodi and Loki the Dwarves to help mount a rescue of Jolly Wilcom who has been abducted by goblins. He is joined by several brave Hobbits, Cookie (with the frying pan), Tolman (Tom) and Halfred (Harry) the archers and Hugo and Roriamac (Rory) the Shirrifs.

The goblins don't suspect a thing, as if Hobbits would attack them down in their caves?!

The goblins are half sozzled (and therefore use random patrol rules) so the company sneaks up slowly and takes out one with a hail of arrows and stones!

Here's how we do our random patrols, roll a scatter die and a D6 for each goblin, they move the indicated direction by D6" (for goblins it maxes out at 5). It's a much quicker version than normal sentry rules, though loses some of the "back and forth" of swapping who moves them.

Slinking forward, another goblin is taken down in a hail of hobbit pelted rocks!

And there goes another one! At this stage Oscar is bored (he's controlling the goblins) and keeps taunting me to just go for it and don't worry about the alarm being raised. I keep reminding him that Hobbits are even worse than Goblins at fighting!

And then the fateful turn where I miss with all my ranged attacks thanks to some in-the-way rolls due to the high hill!

The goblins begin charging towards the company, the alarm having been raised! A lucky stone from Cookie takes out one of them!

Hedger nocks an arrow and shoots another incoming goblin - they're coming from all directions now!

Fortunately my shooting is pretty good, Harry takes out another incoming goblin.

Loki climbs up the hill and is attacked by a goblin! Skodi is forced back by another goblin (and saves a wound with his fate) and Rory falls to an arrow from the archer on the top of the hill!

Cookie and Hugo charge in to fight a goblin, who shoves them back but fails to wound them.

Three archers manage to take out the goblin on top of the hill! The goblin with a spear shoves Loki back down the hill, he falls but manages to land unhurt!

Meanwhile Skodi manages to take out another goblin in the archway!

The goblin archers shoot into the combat between Cookie, Hugo and another goblin - they hit! Unfortunately (for the goblins), they hit the goblin and kill it!

Skodi pushes a goblin forward, away from the Hobbit archers and Loki and Hedger double team and use some might to take out another goblin

Cookie, Hugo and Skodi surround a goblin, ready to take it out... but another goblin arrow flashes into the melee and thunks into the goblin, slaying it! This was soooo funny! We were like, what are the odds of that happening again?! Hedger and Loki come up towards the goblin on the hill from two sides this time.

They take him out together, freeing Jolly Wilcom from the clutches of the goblins.

And the rest of the team overwhelm the remaining drunken goblin archers.

Jolly has been helping himself to the beer and is a bit surprised that there's a crowd of people around him. He's had a great time and doesn't quite get what the fuss is all about!

With the points from the mission success I buy Harry a Horn so that I'm more able to get good reinforcements! Let's face it, rolling for reinforcements and getting a Hobbit Militia worth 4 points is not quite as good as getting... anything else from any other battle company! On the plus side, Hobbits are cool =)

Stay tuned for further adventures! The plan is to level this team up so that between the elves and the shire protectors we can do one of the missions like the warg attack one, where we play with one another rather than against one another. Oscar's not a fan of us actually attacking each other, but has no qualms taking out random baddies =)

Battle Companies: Karna vs Wanderers in the Wild

We had a public holiday today, so found time to squeeze in another game! This was super evenly matched points-wise. The Karna list at 149 points, the Wanderers in the Wild with 150 points!

We set up a super terrain dense map so that my Wanderers couldn't just shoot everything to death!

With a river down the middle of the map, trees everywhere, some rocks, some ruins, couple of hills...

The Karna list has a Mirkwood Spider AND a spectral warrior in their midst!

The first few turns went really well for me, my shooting took out two of his commanders and another couple of troops! But then we hit some close combat! The spider took out my snipers, one of his commanders took out my leader and the spectral warrior slashed a dwarven ranger!

Then, just to be mean, one of his warriors won the fight against my other ranger and hobbit... and chose to take out the hobbit! Nooooo! My mission every game is to try and keep him alive and I thought he was pretty safe out of the way!

We were down to 3 guys each, the game would be over when either of us went down to two remaining!

In the very last turn, my elf sniped out his bowman, but then his spearman took out my hero! Two guys each - a tie!!!

This was a super fun match, so even the whole time, it kept swinging one way or the other! However, the post-game really sucked! 

My brother's team rolled terribly, one warrior dead, one hero with an arm wound and half his team are to miss the next match - giving them a rating of only 79!!!

I rolled much better and my rating is now up with an extra dwarven ranger joining the company!

If you've not played a game with tons of scenery, you really should try sometime, it's really fun having to break up groups of guys, really work to get archery shots in, jump tests etc. very different from battle lines and marching in formation!

Dwarf Battle Company Stuff

Today is just some battle company shot of dwarves =)

Here is my starting battle company for my "normal" dwarves. Boggle with his massive shield is the leader, Brynmor with his shovel is second in command and Bluey (the archer with red hair) is the third in command. Joining them are Rocky (two handed standing on a rock), Hornstriker (with the radioactive shield) and Loki Longshot with the bow.

These dwarves are great for a battle company, especially near the start as they have good defence and strength 3 bows. However, they are slow and miss out on cavalry, so some missions are harder than others.

Here's the battle company I made for my son, it's Thorin Oakenshield (the old Balin model, but I've added a piece of wood from the garden to his non-axe arm for a shield) and they're all wearing the colours that are indicated in the book (including Dwalin's blue beard!). It's not a proper out of the book battle company because they're rangers, but Thorin is a warrior and, of course, they have a hobbit =) My son likes the brighter colours and boy, the throwing axes are just nuts in battle companies! All of the heroes are given throwing axes and against some low defence armies in particular they can just be devastating given the low model count of battle companies.

I haven't unlocked any Iron Guard yet, but I've got the models ready to go! I plan on using the King's Champion model for any Iron Guard that become heroes in the making. Strength 4 with 2 attacks, defence 6 and throwing axes! Yes please! 

I've unlocked one Vault Warden team, we decided that they counted as two individuals, the spear guy worth 10 points and the shield guy worth 15 points (to keep the 25 total points). Defence 9 in battle companies is just nuts, and getting a spear in a dwarven battle company can be really useful. I'm not convinced of their use in battle companies yet, it's a lot of points for slow moving, low attack models, but they're strength 4 and high defence, so we'll wait and see how they go. 

The other guys I haven't got any of yet are the Khazad Guard. Automatically passing courage tests while the hero they're bodyguarding is alive when that hero is a dwarf hero with a shield is pretty fun, I reckon! Strength 4, defence 7 looks good too (particularly against pesky armies with strength 2 bows). Also, I love the models =) 

So those are some of the miniatures I'm hoping will hit the table with a bit more levelling up of my companies! Would love to hear any comments from more experienced players as to which options tend to work out better in the long run!

Battle company Shire vs Dwarves vs Troll

Next on our list was the dreaded Cave Troll mission which, last time, saw most of my Harad battle company destroyed. 

Again, I got the idea for the slightly harder difficulty from the awesome guys in Ontario: OSGBL Cave Troll

I didn't take many photos, but at one point it looked like this:

And from the other side...

The hobbits lost a single model to a thrown boulder from the cave troll, meanwhile, they stood their distance and killed the troll with arrows and stones! Yes, the piddly little strength 1 stones. My son was in charge of the hobbits and he thought the troll was too scary to attack directly, so he just threw stone after stone!

Meanwhile, my dwarves took forever to break through the goblins, Brynmor was a casualty and although I killed the goblin captain and more than half of the goblins, it took me so long that the troll was dead before I even got to it! 

So not sure how it happened, but the Hobbits took the win! Four archers and ten stone-throwers a turn really adds up with a 3+ to hit. I guess with stones it was 3+ to hit, then a 6 followed by a 4+ to wound which is... I think... 1 in 18 chance to wound? And the archers 3+ then a 6, so 1 in 9 chance to wound. With three points of might among his troops to tip a few 5s into 6s. And given it took me five or six rounds to run up and kill the goblins that probably makes sense. Don't underestimate large numbers of hobbits with lots of stones!

Another good fun game with a very happy little boy bragging about killing a cave troll with a thrown stone!

Fortunately in the post game there were no permanent wounds taken, so all in all it was easy xp and influence =)

Dwarf Army - Warband Edition

As has been noted, the new rules (actually, even the not so new rules, but waaaaaay back when there wasn't a warband structure so I'm slow to change!) are based on leaders with warbands of varying sizes.

So my son chose warbands for the leaders and we realised that I'm short a few captains for this type of army.

I may be missing something, but there doesn't appear to be a dwarf leader for rangers or archers so there are a few mixed bands there.

Feel free NOT to click to see larger pics this time, the close range shots aren't always pretty! You can see (hopefully) which dwarves I spent more time painting than others, also a skill level increase, oh, and just the ones that are better since washes were introduced!

Here's the dwarves in their warbands (you may need to click to see this at proper size as it's quite wide).

Durin with a lot of Khazad Guard, a banner, some Iron Guard and some Vault Wardens. As High King he has a powerhouse of a warband!

Etako is my special character/king so he gets a big warband too, though not as impressive as Durin's, of course. My son decided that all of the important dwarves should have at least two Khazad Guard accompanying them, so you'll notice behind each main leader there will be some Khazads. I think it's a nice touch.

The King's Champion band is smaller, with a mix of melee troops. I kept all my archers to two warbands rather than scattering them.

Boggle, the shieldbearer, has a squad of throwing axe rangers as they'll probably be rushing around to protect leaders.

One King/Captain has his two Khazad Guards and ten archers. I actually did a bit of fairly intricate work on painting this guy, there's some freehand on the bottom of his cloak etc. I don't think I have the eyesight to do that anymore!

Another King/Captain has the same set of troops.

And finally, Brynmor has a squad of two Khazads, a Vault Warden team, some shields and some 2-Handed guys. A multi-purpose squad. As long as the purposes involve closing with the enemy and chopping at them.

So there you go, I need another couple captains to get all my dwarf minis on the table. Not sure what to do about that at the moment. Not that we're likely to ever get them all on at once anyway! Still. Have to think about what to do. GW prices are a bit nuts, so might have to hit eBay and hope for a cheap dwarf miniature!