Totengräber's Workpläce

Bill and I decided to play 1500 points for our first game. I thought I had a lot more assembled than that, but as it turns out, that wasn’t so. In either case, we felt like it’d be best to go through all the rules rather than play a smaller game and only use a portion of them. Bill didn’t have any characters, so I lent him my Saruman and Lurtz figures that I’ve had since way back when the skirmish game first came out. Rather than worry about scenarios for this first game, we decided to just do the classic “pitched battle” game.

There are a bunch of rules disputes on the forums around the ‘Net, one of which is whether models/units with the Terror special ability are immune to Terror from other units. Bill claimed he had seen somewhere that Games Workshop had stated that was true, so we went with that, even though I had never heard any such thing. That’s the only rules issue we cleared up prior to the game.

My list was like this:

• 3x Wood Elf (longbows)
• 3x High Elf Regiment (captain)
• 3x High Elf Archer Regiment (captain)
• 3x High Elf Cohort (captain)
• Glorfindel
• Ent
• Elrohir
• Elladan
• Elrond

His list was something like this:

• 4x Uruk-Hai (pikes, banner, captain)
• 3x Uruk Hai (shields, banner, captain)
• 3x Uruk-Hai (shields, banner, captain)
• 3x Warg (bows)
• 3x Warg (shields, captain)
• 3x Warg
• 1x Uruk-Hai (crossbows)
• 2x Isengard Troll
• Saruman
• Lurtz

When I arrived, Bill was nice enough to have already gotten us a space to play and board with terrain arranged pretty equally.  Bill won the die roll, so he said he wanted me to deploy first. I deployed from left to right: Glorfindel, Wood Elves, HE Cohort (Elrond), Ent, HE Regiment (Elladan), HE Archers (Elrohir). He deployed from left to right: Warg w/shields, Wargs, Uruk Hai w/shields (Saruman), Troll, Uruk-Hai w/crossbows, Uruk-Hai w/pikes, Troll, Uruk-Hai w/shields (Lurtz), Wargs w/bows.

Turn one, we both moved forward in the movement phase. In the shooting phase, the Wood Elves rolled 30 dice against the Wargs w/ bows, killed one company and drove them back 3″. The HE Archers rolled 20 dice vs. the Wargs on the right only killing one model. The Uruk-Hai w/crossbows fired at the Ent, doing nothing. We had no Charges or Fights to work out. We both missed out on Magic since we forgot that magic happens in the movement phase.

Turn two, Bill got Priority and moved the Wargs on the right to flank the HE Archers. ALl of his other units merely moved closer. I moved the HE Archers back and diagonally to the flanking Wargs to try to prevent him from getting flank bonuses in the later Fight. Saruman cast Bolt of Fire into the HE Regiment, killing three followed by Aura of Blinding Light, causing me to have a lower Fight value and Dark Fury allowing him to reroll 1s and 2s in the ensuing combat. Elrond used his Epic Restoration to replace 2 of the 3 HE warriors killed by Saruman. He attempted to cast Call Winds, but rolled a 1 on the effect and a 2 on the Focus roll. In Shooting, the Wargs w/bows shoot at Glorfindel causing no wounds. Again, the crossbows were unable to wound the Ent. The Wood Elves fired into the Uruk-Hai, but caused minimal wounds. The HE Archers fired into the Uruk-Hai and also caused minimal wounds.

This is where I lost track of everything that was going on. Basically, my HE Cohort (thanks to Heroic Charge) charged into his pikemen (dumb) and I forgot to have the Ent charge. His Troll charged the flank of the Cohort. Glorfindel charged into the flank f the Uruk-Hai w/shields (Lurtz) and was killed in the following combat. He caused a few deaths himself, but having him charge ranked infantry was kinda dumb. His pikemen captain called a Heroic Duel, which he subsequently lost by 3. I was able to cause 5 more deaths besides the captain himself. We each caused a lot of wounds in the pikemen vs. cohort fight, but in the end the Elves won. Saruman’s Uruk-Hai were only able to contact one company of HE Archers, but the Archers caused enough wounds to stay in the fight. The HE Regiment went up against a Troll and hung around for a while, though was unable to damage the Troll. In a later turn, his Uruk-Hai (Saruman) and two units of Wargs were able to charge into the HE archers and basically decimate them. The HE Regiment was still unable to kill the Troll. The HE Cohort lost heir combat, but stayed in the fight, though disordered. The Wood Elves were able to cause a few more wounds in the Uruk-Hai (Lurtz) formation, but not enough to drive them back. Elrond was able to drive them back in the Movement phase, but through cunning use of Might, Lurtz got the unit into combat.

We called the game due to time, but I am pretty sure Bill was going to be able to pull off a win.

A few things we messed up:

We didn’t break contact at the end of every fight.

Neither of us really used Might all that much, especially me.

I think we were doing some of the charges and contacts incorrectly.

In my next game, I’ll probably take less unit Captains, except in the Cohort (3 Might rocks!) and use Epic Heroes instead. This should save some points and probably allow me to have more men to fight with as being outnumbered like I was really hurt me. I think I’ll also let the enemy come to me a bit more to allow for more rounds of shooting. Elrond really isn’t that great a character, so I think I’ll be changing him out.

I look forward to my next game of War of the Ring. The rules are really pretty fluid and not as confusing as some might believe.