Pursued by Goblins the Fellowship flee down the mountain side desperate for refuge. They hear the howls of the wargs come to join the hunt!
The Silverlode is in flood and impassable. They find an old elven bridge, still in good repair that crosses over into a glade. Traders and travellers once gathered here on the edge of the Forest in better times. Now all lies in ruin.
Only the elven bridge is crossable and the Goblins and Wargs must catch the Fellowship before they can reach the safety of Lothlorien. However help unlooked for may yet arrive as Haldir and his elves patrol these borders and hate the evil creatures with a passion.
Good raced the fellowship across the board using heroic marches. Gandalf cast a channeled blinding light to make it very hard for the goblin archers to hit anything. The Balrog took a long while to emerge. Legolas had been hanging back in order to keep up a hail of arrows against the goblin archers.
Legolas fired at the Balrog as it raced towards him, just outside of the range of its fiery lash. His arrows bounced off its armour, one just narrowly failing to wound the Demon.
With Gandalf casting sorcerous blasts from the bridge Boromir and Gimli attacked the goblins who were attempting to block off access for the hobbits. Aragorn shepherded the halflings safely across the bridge through the gap.
Gimli and Boromir forced the goblin captains and their minions back but failed to kill any even with Gandalf helping by knocking some prone.
Legolas used heroic move to keep away from the pursuing Balrog and deftly dodged its fiery lash. However he was soon forced to enter combat to save Pippin which allowed the Balrog to catch him. Legolas though increased his fight to ten with a heroic strike and won the dice off thus driving back the mighty Balrog in single combat before racing off again towards the bridge.
Pippin raced ahead too and made it to the bridge thanks to Boromir and Gimli having dealt with the goblins who had thought to block his way.
All this time Aragorn had concentrated on protecting Gandalf and the halflings which explained why his archery had been so ineffective. Finally he was able to kill one of the archers harassing Gandalf from afar.
With Legolas holding the Balrog up the others rush onto the bridge and Aragorn heroically marches them towards the exit. Good had mainly won the initiative rolls so far.
Gandalf takes the chance of destroying the bridge with Legolas still on it and successfully manages to damage it without completely collapsing it as he had hoped. Next turn Legolas was able to call a heroic move allowing himself to jump off the bridge to safety and Gandalf to attempt to destroy the bridge as the Balrog bore down on him with a plus one for damaging it last turn. However the bridge held and the Balrog inflicted heavy wounds on the wizard in the ensuing melee. Gandalf managed to survive thanks to his fate and ability to re roll failures. That wound he took from a lucky goblin archer earlier bringing him close to disaster!
With all the heroes other than Gandalf now safe it all rested on the next turn. Good won priority once again so Gandalf was able to cast his spell before the Balrog could close and either kill him or drive him off the bridge. He successfully cast and then rolled with just a plus two needing a total of 6! Five ! and so the bridge collapsed taking Gandalf, the Balrog and two hapless goblins into the chasm. Well done good player.
Red armour. Highlighted Blood Red, edged with gold. Nuln Oil gloss wash to armour and weapons.
Veni Vedi Vici transfers to the banners. No suns but Mongolian culture is famous for it’s Gold Eagle Hunters and other birds of prey so I felt this was quite fitting. I can see the Variags coming from the Eastern Steppes riding their chariots into battle.
This one took longer to set up than planned. Creating a flat 4×4 battle field using just DF pieces was harder than expected. This is because it is mainly to be used for dungeon/ cavern corridors or castles. Any way with the edition of lava and pool it was completed. Maybe next time will use DF stuff just for elevated terrain areas and use a mat underneath for the main sections.
Pursued by yet more foes our tired heroes race across the crumbling chasms towards the bridge and safety.
The Fellowship use Heroic Marches to move faster and Immobilize spells on the racing Cave Troll to keep it out of reach. Legolas peppers it with arrows.
Eventualy they crash into the Goblins and their captains. The Goblin archery is not so effective due to Gandalf’s Blinding Light. Having finished off the Troll Legolas keeps taking out the archers on the walkways. Gimli and Strider carve a path but Strider is wounded and falls back allowing Boromir to take his place. Soon the Captains are trapped against a chasm and taken out. The heroes make it all over the gap and safety having killed all 24 warriors and their leaders in short order. Next will be the hall and the bridge of Khazad Dum itself- with the Balrog!
Good chose to set up with the Heroes charging the doorway, Legolas on the tomb (a defendable barrier) and Gandalf steering the hobbits to safety.
At least 8 goblin’s dead in one turn!
Strider pushes ever onwards with a heroic combat and traps the goblin captain againsat the board edge- actually charging through the door. Several goblins attack Legolas but he defends the tomb easily (a defendable barrier).
Strider is then trapped by a cave troll and the second captain and the press of goblins. Each combat the Troll rolls a six but Strider wins the dice off the first two times, reducing it to one wound left.
Meanwhile through use of channelled Blinding Light and Terror Gandalf is able to keep the Hobbits safe. Sadly a Goblin gets through the trapdoor before it can be blocked and Merry is knocked out. The Hobbits are able to maintain this safe area awhile, with Gandalf casting sorcerous blast at any groups of goblins who attempt to approach.
The Troll finally wins a dice off against Strider who has run out of might. He is trapped and gets nastily Rended. Next turn he pulls back allowing Gimli to finish off the Troll after defeating the Captain, supported by Boromir. These two suffer no scratches and deal heavy damage to the Goblins. Unfortunately two cowardly Goblin archers are able to sneak past and fire an arrow in Strider’s back taking out his last wound as he rushes towards the goblin archer on the heights ( the one who spent the whole game killing only his allies as they tried to fight Legolas)!
So with the loss of just Merry and Strider the Good player was victorious and survived until Turn 10. Fortunately Strider was able to recover as did Merry. Since Strider had single handedly held off the Troll for so long and charged heroically into the fray he was able to recover his wounds before the next scenario.
Another quite odd scenario. Any way we played it and it was fun because it was fun, but I think two competitive opponents looking for a match would not like it. We thought it was great. Maybe the rules needed a little tweak. Technically the pool needed to be a bigger which I realised at last minute- hence the badly placed blue cloth.
Frodo looks into dark the pool and is caught by surprise!
Meanwile the others are busy looking at the dwarven door to Moria.
Six tentacles lash out and grab Frodo. Fortunately he survives with the loss of 2 fate but is dragged towards it into close combat!
Our heroes rush to his aid.
Six melee attacks follow but Frodo survives through use of Heroic Defence.
Frodo puts on the ring and escapes! He cannot be targeted by ranged attacks or tentacles now. This was crucial. Plus I got to use Invisible Frodo at last.
Gandalf unleashes a sorcerous blast and Legolas strikes it with arrows. Wounds cause it to be pushed back as do Gandalf’s sorcerous blasts. Soon it is heavily wounded and Aragorn joins in too – using his bow as he advances. The creature tries to close but is constantly pushed back.
Frodo reaches the exit as the Fellowship withdraws keeping out of the long reach of its tentacles with Aragorn and Gandalf and Legolas continuing to inflict wounds until it reaches one and continually pushing it out of range of its tentacles attack. The stronger heroes wait until the hobbits escape and then join them in the Long Dark of Moria. Sadly Bill the Pony gets left behind!
The quest of the ring bearer continued with the Pass. Good did very well with the pass getting all the heroes on just one hp left but then mostly evading by pulling back or moving sideways before making a final push. With only three losses the heroes made it to the pass.
Next it was the wild wargs in the woods en route to Moria.
Another strange scenario.
Possibly there to help the good player learn his new abilities with the full fellowship. That was a lot of rules to remember. Lots of wargs too so I drafted in some hyenas and a hound from Conan.
Good started off by keeping his heroes in the centre around bill the pony. Legolas concentrated fire on the wild warg chieftain using his special power to shoot past any cover he tried to use. Then Gandalf hit him with a sorcerous blast.
Good used lots of heroic combats to keep the heroes moving and fighting whilst Legolas held back to use his bow and Frodo kept out of trouble.
Finally Even bill the pony moved forward to be used successfully as bait and to shield Frodo. Unfortunately Pippin was taken out as a casualty whilst Boromir was dealing with the chieftain.
After that as the numbers thinned and they had survived the initial waves the fellowship began to control the situation. Though there were technically more turns to go it was time for the hobbits dinner so we called it as a good victory as it was clearly going to be such.
Was fun and definitely challenging at times such as when the hobbits and the weaker melee heroes were pushed into a tight knot whilst the strongest were drawn out .
The last four figures from the set completed. Contrast paints , mainly Templar black and brown cybor. Gulliman flesh . Then over painted with citadel colours.
Aragorn and Gimli rhinox brown then mixed with graveyard earth or dark flesh as layers gradually lighter. For Legolas camo green base then mix of catechan green and camo for highlights. Blue for tunic and grey for trousers. For cloaks grey then highlights with lighter stages of grey. Washes such as nuln oil especially to armour and sparing use of Devlan mud in the creases. Varnish then corrections and touch ups before final varnish.
Edit: don’t forget to add Strider’s beard (cygor brown) like I did before taking this photo.
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