Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

Lord of the Rings

During the summer I heard that GW were re releasing their Lord of the Rings strategy game and having missed out last time due to travel, finances and, to be honest, a lack of interested friends, I decided to pick up one or two figures.

I asked a friend if I could have one or two figures for my son who had got into the movies and I received some Rohan, Elves and Goblins.  I gave the Elves to the Inseläffchen to paint and I think he did a good job and I worked on the Rohan.

However, as is the way of all things I searched ebay and bought more Rohan and Mordor and thought, 'that'll do for a side project'. 

Then came a Mumakil.

Then came the new box set with the Witch King and Theoden.

Forth Eorlingas!

And finally (no, really) the Fellowship.  I was surprised how easy they were to paint and although i'm no great painter I think they came out really well.  They are due to take on the might of Moria on Thursday.  I hope they survive.

The game itself is quite simple and seems to rely on rolling 6's - the more dice you roll the better your chances.  The mechanic is the one used later on Legends of the Old West so is familiar.  We've had a couple of games recently and its been fun.

Gothmog versus Eomer

Mordor versus Gondor

Meet the gang cos the boys are here...

Dalton's Regulators

The great thing about gaming the Old West is the chance to create and tell our own stories -throughout the scenarios we have developed the back stories of our characters and every time they are wounded I feel a little dread that a poor dice role will see them going to Boot Hill.

Leader of the Cowboy gang is 'Big Joe' Dalton - a former Union Colonel who following service in the Civil War went out west to raise sons and cattle.  A man who has seen the horrors of war and hoped to live out his days on the fringes of the town of Deliverance Falls, Big Joe has, through a combination of pride, misadventure and stubbornness, ended up in conflict with his neighbours and the local law.

Lil' Joe is the son of Big Joe - a more mercurial character, Lil' Joe was wounded in an early encounter with the McGregor Fur Trading Company and walks with a limp, thus acquiring the nickname Stumpy, though as a sure shooter, they had better not use the name anywhere in his presence.

The ‘Buckeroo’ - through a lucky early dice role he was elevated to Hero status.  Captured by the law in one scenario, a rescue attempt was made in the next game.  As it was unsuccessful the Daltons then had to ride in mob handed to stop the hanging.  Fortunately for our red shirted rogue he wasn’t left swinging for long.  A word in the right ear made the charges go away and now he’s free to herd cattle and brawl.

 Not Django - the hired gun of the Dalton gang.  A pretty effective, albeit expensive, character.  His closest brush with death was being temporarily blinded, thus reducing his ability to shoot.  It took a few games to get the cash together to get it fixed and now he's back with his 2 six guns.

The last photos are of the disposable cowpokes who come and go,  I think each one has died at one time in our ongoing campaigns.  Working for Joe Dalton isn't the most secure of careers.

More Old West buildings

The Hotel

This was the most complicated structure I attempted - over 2 floors, balcony and staircase.  I dont tend to plan ahead apart from a quick sketch and a floorplan, and this building was going to feature a lot of windows which requires making individual frames (quite laborious).

Scale wise the rooms here are more representative than realistic - I don't think I would get much work as an architect and it occurred to me that guests would be able to spy on each other quite easily.

 My camera phone here isn't very good  - the wooden coffee stirrers are stained with brown ink.  Older buildings with a thin black ink diluted with alcohol (no suppin' whiskey but normal Isopropyl).

Old West Townscape

Back in 2016 my regular gaming partner and I decided to brush off a set of rules from Warhammer Historical - Legends of the Old West.  We had been talking about Wild West rules and although Dead Mans Hand was reasonably popular in our FLGS, Phill and I have a reputation for playing unconventional rules systems.  I didn't know at the time but they were based on the Lord of the Rings mechanic (which ironically is our current game of choice).

We had some generic terrain, trees and rocks etc but the Old West needs a town to fight over and lots of terrain for the all important In The Way rolls, so figuring if we could each construct 5-6 buildings we'd have a town in no time.

I've pulled together some photos of wips and finished articles.  Construction was coffee stirrers, card and balsa.

The first is the mercantile and dry goods outlet.

Songs of Blades and Heroes - Greek adventure

It's been a long time since I posted anything - but actually blogging has been a distant runner up to gaming, painting and modelling.  In the time I last posted (back in January 2017) I've built half an Old West town, repainted some old 40k marines, a further Napoleonic french regiment and 2 forces for the newly released Middle Earth battle game.  I'll post photos as soon as I can.

 The following photos were from a game I played earlier in April, using Wargames Foundry Greeks and Mythical monsters (Skeletons and Medusa).  We used Song of Blades and Heroes as it's pretty simplistic but still gives a great game.  In this a force of Argonauts and Heroes took on the King of Colchis in the ruins of a temple.

 

The temple was scratch built from wedding cake pillars and foam and although is perhaps a little too big, really added to the atmosphere of the game.