In the week leading up to the game, Tim had debated bringing the Mumakil in his army. I am so glad he did. It really is a nice showcase model and had some really fun rules.

Tim & Joel’s Evil army:

• Easterling Archers x3
• Isengard Uruk-Hai x3
• Easterling Cataphracts x4 w/captain
• Mumakil
• Easterlings x3 w/captain
• Easterlings x3 w/captain
• Khamul, the Easterling

Todd and John’s Good Army:

• High Elf Archers x2
• High Elf Regiment x3 w/captain
• Wood Elves w/Longbows x2
• Galadriel
• Dunedain of Arnor x5
• Warriors of Minas Titrith x4 w/captain
• Warriors of Minas Titrith x4
• Faramir

We got started around 6:30pm or so after BSing around and such. I don’t really remember all the details, so I’ll point out some highlights, which mostly feature the Mumak.

For the scenario, we rolled and got the “King of the Hill” scenario with the short edge deployment. This is the first time any of us have played using these. Looking through the book, they all seem pretty balanced. Basically, we needed to have units within 3″ of the objective on the hill at the end of turn 8. No points are awarded until the very end.

First turn, the Mumak moved forward (using 3D6 random movement) and Tim read off his special rules. What it basically comes down to is that you do not want that thing walking in the movement phase anywhere near your companies. John moved his Dunedain down one flank to try and get some arrows into the thing. Just about everything else moved toward the hill. I believe the second turn the Easterling Kataphracts ended up charging into the HE Regiment. Thankfully, shooting reduced their numbers and Gondor and Rivendell were able to use Might to get rid of that unit. The rest of the game saw our infantry crashing into each other and trying to gain some advantage. Through magic, Galadriel was able to mostly neutralize the Mumak, reducing his courage and then making him test to see if he is allowed to move/shoot/charge that turn. In the end, through shooting we were able to reduce the number of men in the howdah enough to make it fail the stampede roll and it crashed into terrain and disappeared, but not before trampling a few company’s worth of Elves and humans. At the end, it was a draw due to each of our teams having an infantry unit within 3″ of the objective at the end of turn 8.

This is the first time any of us got through 8 turns of this game and at the end I was ready to play again! Joel seemed interested in the game and is looking at getting some stuff for the Mist Mountains army.

As always it was a blast and John’s hospitality can’t be beat!!

First game was Rohan vs. Elves.

His Rohan Army:

• Oathsworn Bowmen x2
• Oathsworn Militia x2
• Riders of Rohan Eored x3
• Theoden, King of Rohan

My Elves:

• High Elf Regiment x2
• Wood Elves w/Longbows x2
• Haldir

First turn, Theoden and the Riders of Rohan were in my face and ready to charge (At The Double! is awesome). In the shooting phase I was able to remove a Rider or two through Haldir’s Epic Shot and the shooting from the bows. Because I thought it would be cool to do, Haldir challenged Theoden to a Heroic Duel after the Riders had already charged with Epic Charge. Theoden rolled 4 over Haldir and Haldir spent a Might to make the difference only 3. The three rolls were 2, 3, and 6. So he managed to kill Haldir and all the Wood Elves, no problem. The rest of the game was spent trying to get a flank charge with the HE Regiment, but they ended up getting in another fight where they were going to eventually be wiped out. I conceded the game at that point.

Because we had lots of time left and Jeff wanted to give his (well painted!) Isengard army a go, we played another game. This time his points came to 465, so I was able to add a little to my army.

His Isengard:

• Isengard Uruk-Hai x2 w/shields, captain & banner x2
• Isengard Uruk-Hai Scouts
• Isengard Troll (Captain?)
• Lurtz

My Elves:

• High Elf Regiment x2 w/captain
• High Elf Archers x2
• Wood Elves w/Longbows x2
• Haldir

Jeff didn’t actually own a model for Lurtz, so he used Legolas, thus dubbed Lego-Lurtz. We didn’t rearrange the terrain or anything and he deployed his army mostly to his right side. I deployed about the same way with the High Elf Archers + Haldir facing off against Lurtz’s unit and the Wood elves facing down the Troll. First turn I used At the Double on the HE Regiment to get in the Troll’s face and in the shooting phase I fired both units at him. Haldir and the HE Archers were unable to do any hits on the thing where the Wood Elves got 7 hits on it. The first roll on the Hard To Kill! chart was a 6, so it was slain. The HE Regiment took many hits from shooting and finally from a charge with Lurtz and were wiped out. Haldir and the HE Archers used At the Double! to threaten the rear of Lurtz’s unit while the wood Elves tried to threaten his flank. Through clever movement, he managed to protect himself and keep their Defense 7. Eventually, Lurtz’s unit was brought down to having one company with 7 models and the combination of shooting from the HE Archers and the Wood Elves finished them off. We called the game at this point.

Both of these were good games and we had a lot of talking about what units we’d like to use next. Jeff says he’ll likely be working on his Isengard from here on in since he does have a lot of stuff at home.

I really enjoy WotR, but I enjoy it more at higher point levels. I think it works well at 300 and even 465, but it’s more fun to be able to throw in those expensive Legendary units and Epic Heroes.

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!

Dan’s Gondor/Rohan:

• 2x Minas Tirith Warriors w/shields & Captain
• 2x Minas Tirith Archers
• 3x Riders of Rohan
• 3x Riders of Rohan
• Faramir
• Fortune: Desperate Heroics (I think)

My Elves:

• 2x High Elf Archers
• 3x High Elf Regiment
• 2x Wood Elves w/Longbows & Captain
• Elladan
• Elrohir

Much like my previous games, we decided to play just a ‘Kill ‘em All!’ scenario. I lost priority for deployment, so Dan had me deploy and go first.

In the first turn, I was able to kill off one each Rider of Rohan, while he was unable to kill but maybe one or two Elves with shooting. The second turn I was able to kill of another Rider of Rohan from each formation and drive them back a couple of inches. Still no charges. The third turn I killed off yet another Rider of Rohan from each formation. Charges worked out where only one of them passed the Terror test, which was the Riders of Rohan versus my Wood Elves. In the first combat with the Minas Tirith Warriors and my HE Warriors, Faramir called a Heroic Duel and a subsequent Epic Strike. Elladan called Epic Strike as well, making us even in the Fight department. We both rolled a 6, so he won by 1 for calling the Duel. He then spent 2 might points to roll 3 times on the chart. He killed off Elladan and two other Warriors. In the following normal Fight, we each killed off exactly 7 enemies making it so the Duel caused him to with the Fight. The HE Warriors passed the Courage test and lost no more guys. The next few turns involved my Elves losing close combat fights over and over and being unable to recover. I ended up losing my whole army.

The worst thing about it was that I paid for the Captain in the Wood Elves, but forgot all about him. So, there was 50 points pretty much wasted. Those 2 Might points could have made at least a little bit of difference, perhaps even killing enough Riders of Rohan to make them go POOF!.

One strategy I failed to use was to have my Wood Elf archers and the HE Archers use the woods on the table for defensible terrain. This would have stopped him from being able to get flank charges on me and would have raised the defense from 5 to 7 on the HE and from 3 to 5 on the Wood Elves. Oh well, something to remember for next time.

A very fun game with a very good opponent. It was nice for both of us to play new opponents.

While I was at the store I went ahead and ordered some Galadhrim Knights so I’ll have some cavalry.

I’m working on a trade right now to start a Mordor army. I hope to use this at Games To Die For as a demo force to maybe get some folks to play. It worked for Infinity and it worked for Bryan with Field of Glory, so I’ll give it a try. Besides, I’m trading off the Warmachine stuff I have lying around as I’m really not interested in that game much anymore.

Primered all my assembled War of the Ring minis. (24 High Elf Warriors, 24 High Elf Archers, 24 High Elf Spearmen, 24 Wood Elves, Glorfindel, Ent and a number of characters)

Made bases for my Flames of War Churchill Crocodiles since when I pinned the trailers on, the joint seemed finda flimsy.

Painted two Flames of War British M10C SP (17 pdr) tanks. Man, FoW stuff paints up super-quick!

Painted my two HQ stands for my Flames of War British army. They only need dullcoated now.

Applied a basecoat of Trollblood Highlight on my Ent. My sexy/awesome and honest critic wife commented that she wasn’t sure about the base color, but I think some washes will make it look more like a tree.

Worked some more on Nuke and Hellsmith. The toxic glow effect still needs work according to the amazing critic-wife, “It looks like a bunch of green worms on top of yellow goop”.

All in all, a lot of progress made.

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.

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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.

The rules for War of the Ring (WotR) seem like a simplified Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Rumor has it that the next edition of WHFB will be similar to WotR. I like the rules so far from justthe reading of them. Some highlights:

• Everything can be pre-measured. Charges are a die roll plus a standard modifier based on unit type.
• One roll for hitting and wounding.
• Models are effectively wound counters for the company.
• In close combat, monsters fight first then cavalry and finally infantry.
• Epic Heroes are not tied to specific units and can move around.
• Heroes have Might points and can spend those on heroic actions.
• Spellcasters automatically get their first spell off with no roll needed. Subsequent spells have to succeed with a Focus roll based on the spell previously cast.
• No wheeling like in WHFB. As long as the unit doesn’t move more than their Move value.

Looking around on the ‘Net for army lists and such have shown that the Elves are probably the least represented fo rthe Good armies and it seems lots of people want to play Evil. So far I have nearly 2,000 points thanks to the (awesome) wife “letting” me order some stuff.

I am really looking forward to this game and with a few folks at the store being excited and buying models, I should be getting a game in really soon.