Totengräber's Workpläce

Bill and I set up another game of War of the Ring over at Games To Die For. My excitement for this game is pretty high right now. It seems a l lot simpler and much quicker than Warhammer Fantasy. The only real downside being the lack of variety in races for the game. A lot of the evil armies have Orcs, but they are all pretty much the same. Within each army, I guess there is some variety since you have the monsters and such. Maybe it just seems like there’s a lack of variety? I mean in the Mordor army you have Orcs, Uruk-Hai, evil humans, Trolls, etc. but in Warhammer it’s a little more segregated (i.e., Orcs and Goblins have Squigs and Giants, but that’s about it besides the Orcs and Goblins themselves).

Anyway…we played 750 points so that we might actually complete more than just a couple of turns. We restricted our lists such that there was only the possibility for one Epic Hero and one Legendary formation for each of us.

My army:

• Haldir
• Wood Elves w/logbows x2
• High Elf Archers x2
• High Elf Regiment x3
• High Elf Cohort x2 + Captain
• Ent

Bill’s army:

• Lurtz
• Ugluk’s Raiders x3
• Uruk-Hai w/shields x3
• Uruk-Hai w/crossbows x2
• Wargs w/bows x4
• Isengard Troll

I learned my lesson from last time Bill and I played: don’t spend too many points on Epic Heroes! I chose Haldir for his Epic Shot and his 75-point cost. This allowed me to have more infantry to counter his army’s ability to seriously outnumber me. Again, we just played “Kill Em’ All!” as I think we still feel like we’re getting used to the rules.

I won priority for deployment, so I decided to go first and deploy first. I chose the side of the table where Bill had placed some forests so that I could use them as defensible terrain. I deployed pretty standard where I arrayed my units pretty evenly across the table. I’m thinking in the future, I may mix this up a bit to try and get flank charges.

He moved close enough with Ugluk’s Raiders and the Wargs where the HE Archers and Wood Elves could fire on them. The Wood Elves took out one Warg and the HE Archers took out maybe 2 Uruks. He had to move the crossbows, so they didn’t fire and the Wargs took down a Wood Elf or two (Dammit! I think I forgot their Enchanted Cloaks again!).

Next turn I won priority again and decided to go first. One thing I know would have changed the game would have been to get the Ent out there and into combat. I hid him behind the Wood Elves for a while because I was afraid of the crossbowmen. Per the usual, the HE Regiment and HE Cohort moved right up the middle to face his Uruks and his units did the same. In shooting, I managed to score 5 hits and used a Might point to make it 6 so I could get rid of 3 Wargs instead of two, allowing me to roll 2D3 for push back; a total of 4 inches. The HE Archers fired into the Raiders again, killing maybe 1 Uruk. His crossbowmen fired at the Wood Elves, killing a couple thanks to the defensible terrain. I don’t believe the Wargs did any shooting that killed anything.

As always, here’s where things get a bit fuzzy. The next turn the Wood Elves left the safety of the woods to try and get close enough for Epic Shot on the crossbowmen. His Wargs went into hiding for fear of the Wood Elves shooting. The ent remained hidden behind the Wood Elves (to the dismay of Bill, who feels like monsters should not be able to be screened by infantry; sorry, dude, them’s the rules). The HE Cohort managed to charge the Troll. Lurtz’s unit failed its Terror test, preventing it from charging the HE Regiment. Ugluk’s Raiders also failed their Terror test, but used Ugluk’s ability to pass the test, but lose 4 guys. Haldir was finally able to pull off Epic shot into the crossbowmen, and with the help of the Wood Elf shooting, drove them back a few inches after killing several. In all the hand-to-hand combats, the Elves lost and ended up Disordered. One turn one of the units actually remained Disordered for the whole turn. I then found out how much it sucks to be disordered. The Ent finally came out and charged the Troll and the two of them inflicted no damage on the other.

In the end, I lost every unit except the Ent. It seems I need to work on my tactics a bit more. From what I’ve read on places like Warseer, the Elves should be using their superior movement to get flank charges. I think one of my problems is that I just trudge my soldiers across the field head-on into the enemy. Next time I will try to work on that. I also have the Galadhrim Knights, so next time I might have the speed to pull that off a bit better. Oh, and I won’t hide the Ent either!! Turns out Bill’s army total came to 790 points, but I don’t think 40 points would have made a difference in the outcome.

The awesome thing about this particular battle is that we only had to look up very situational rules, which made the game go much quicker and was a lot more fun. We both agree, though, that Games Workshop needs to put out an FAQ for this game to clear up some ambiguities.

Bill, if you’re reading this, thanks for another great game!