wargamesdiary   A diary of war games and board games

Battle Beneath the Trees

Both sides deployed as instructed. Elves as a shield wall with rangers to the side. Evil as a block broken with spiders in the centre and archers and wargs to the flanks.

For the early moves the elves generally held their ground or made just half moves in the hope of causing hits from archery. The evil side advanced with the faster troops such as beasts taking the lead.

Archery was very poor. In one round no hits were scored and the evil force generally moved forwards as with elven cloaks the rangers were hidden.

Eventually the lines clashed. The rangers on the left were decimated but Tauriel and her rangers fought well and survived the whole battle.

The spiders advanced ahead of the Orcs and fared poorly but did a good job of draining the elven captains of their fate with their spider webs that can cause paralysis. They were weak in battle though and the Spider Queen herself was dispatched by Thranduil.

At this point though the orc shaman with just one will point left having cast channeled fury already rolled a six on transfix on Thranduil. With three will he failed to resist. Then the orc leader closed and attacked him . He used heroic strike to aid achieving maximum in the fight. Razgush beat Thranduil and with hatred of elves and his mighty blows was able to kill Thranduil.

From this point the battle appeared lost as the flanks closed in.

So another victory for evil in this campaign. The Hatred Elf rule for all evil models in this fight really hurt the elves. Also being outnumbered made it difficult to know what to do other than try shooting at the oncoming horde but that proved less effective. Being able to re roll ones was not so effective and elves mainly have strength 3 so find it hard to wound and orcs are very easily replaced any way . The spiders and fell beasts died easily but when they managed to win could be deadly.

Perhaps if Thranduil had not suffered the Transfix he could have held off Razgush for another turn but it does seem quite a one sided scenario. Maybe he needed better tactics.!