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.
Arwen starts on the western edge closely pursued by 5 Nazgul including the Witch King. The Nazgul are weak, just 3 will or 4 for the King. Asfaloth, Arwen’s horse can move 12 per turn!
Good start with priority and Asfaloth races off and Aragorn and the Hobbits move swiftly around the Nazgul to assist but cannot charge the first turn.
Second turn the Nazgul get priority and 3 of the 4 remaining arrive. However several lose their exhausted mounts. Two at least could close to fight Arwen. So far she has resisted their spells. So they could potentially hit Frodo so she calls a heroic move. Aragorn calls a heroic move too and catches up with one Nazgul with his hobbits. They are brave.
Thanks to the heroic move Arwen is safe and she keeps racing away getting closer to the ford but the Northern Nazgul now just close. One loses its mount with a six rolled and then a 6 for thrown so can cast a spell. All are now on the map and really attack hard with Black Darts. Asfaloth is slain and Arwen wounded. Am not entirely sure how this could happen because the scenario seems to propose that Asfaloth needs to cross the ford as a given. So I change the rule to include Arwen.
Any way Aragorn takes out another rider closely pursued by the hobbits whilst Frodo races across the ford and Arwen moves to defend the crossing. Nazgul charge her one being mounted. Her sacrifice is enough though to help Frodo across safely.
Some Nazgul cross safely but three are in the river when Elrond is ready to cast Wrath of Bruinen and bring down the flood to wash them away whilst Aragorn and the Hobbits look on.
The remaining Nazgul are low on will and magic has little effect so close to Rivendell. Frodo resists. However Nazgul do not lose will when attacking Frodo. He survives with a heroic defence.
Finally with more heroic marches Aragorn can rush across. He is beset but this costs Nazgul will and again Frodo gets away losing some Fate. Finally the Hobbits are across and Aragorn hits back. The Nazgul are soon destroyed through loss of will as Frodo races to safety.
Well done Good. A very close game. Evil thought he had it when Asfaloth fell but Elrond arrived on the first turn he could and took out three Nazgul in the nick of time.
Painted some new Uruk hai scouts including a command group and Lurtz with bow and team from box set. This includes the Merry and Pippin being captured I have wanted for awhile.
I wanted them to be unified in appearance so I painted them together in a large batch before basing. I also wanted them to match my existing scouts. I think I now have about 50. I still wanted to use contrast paints.
I used wraithbone undercoat then red brown fur for the skin which was darkened for Lurtz. Then a mix of colours for the leather. Cyborg brown, snakebite leather and black Templar. Metal first black Templar then chain mail then nuln oil gloss. Some tin bits added in under or over the silver. Highlights with new dark flesh. A mix of yellow and earth brown or rhinox hide or dark grey to the leather. Devlan mud to the Captain leather recesses. Munitorium varnish but the paint is still quite weak and thin on exposed parts.
For the white hand I used white scar plus a thinner medium to aid flow. I used a reverse G pattern and watched a you tube video by Brush and Boltgun plus read the guide written by shadow and flame.
Painted my 7th Nazgul on a horse. Hopefully this should be enough for the next scenario. painted with contrast paints almost exclusively. Black Templar for the cloak, cyborg brown for the horse. Chain mail for the armour and then the new nuln oil gloss applied. Snake bite leather for straps and agarose dunes for hooves.
Link had painted up some space marines. Also some space orks.
In our scenario the marines are responding to a rescue beacon on an old hulk lost in space. They find some orks attempting to break in the first door and drive them off.
Next they open the door by hacking the terminal. They find gene stealers have made a nest and taken out a previous patrol.
Assisted by a mini robot they open another door to discover a nest! And a queen! They use heavy weapons to defeat an attack from the rear and fight their way forwards.
Finally they defeat wave after wave of alien attacks and with just the command group remaining our marines are victorious!
wargamesdiary 