(Almost) Lord of the Ring

Hi all,

Bit of a twofer today, in that there's some hobby thoughts on the planned 28mm project, and a bit of a report from yesterday's Middle Earth SBG tournament I played in yesterday,

On the project, I've been having some conversations with a number of old gaming buddies, which has clarified some issues, and opened up others.  I had a good long chat with Nick the Lemming the other day, who (perhaps predictably) did his best to convince me to forget 28mm, and do ancients in God's Own Scale, 6mm, instead.  Despite my fondness for 6mm, however, I wasn't convinced.  I've done 6mm ancients before, far back in the day, but they've never quite worked for me in that era, not in the way they do for Black Powder era stuff.

A lot of this has to do with aesthetics, I think.  With 6mm horse and musket, battles looks "right" (you see lines, formations, etc), but also look "good" (colorful, distinguishable units, pretty flags, etc).  I find this isn't the case for me with ancients; it just ends up looking blobby (please note, this is a strictly personal thing, and not to be viewed as a criticism of what you enjoy in your hobby).  It could be as simple as that, in 6mm H&M, I can see flags, but I can't see shields (which kind of serve the same purpose as points of key visual interest).

This project is also likely to be primarily about the painting and reading.  I need to enjoy the process of producing the figures, as this is where the bulk of my hobby experience will lie.  I like painting 6mm because I finish units (and thus get the very pleasant experience of playing a fully painted mass battle game), but I like painting 28mm for themselves, if you follow.  A leading contender right now is a Carthaginian army; I've been trolling through scribd looking for resources, and am really looking forward to painting some figs.  The Victrix stuff draws me more every time I look at it.  I think my primary interest here would be the pre-punic era (esp. the conflicts over Sicily), but given my desire to stick to plastic, I might bow to the inevitable.

While pondering such imponderables, I managed to get down to the local GW for a 500 point Middle Earth SBG tournament.  This was a practice run for another to take place at Halcon in the fall (which I'll probably not get to), but I wanted to play in this one if I could.  We had 8 players, played 3 games, and I went 2-1 with Mordor and Rohan, tied for second place.





Game 1 was against Harad.  I used Rohan's skirmishing ability to good effect in this game, (all riders get bows, and don't count towards the usual limit on bows, i.e., I have a lot of bows) to stand off and shoot, provoking my opponent into attacking.  I targeted his missile troops, picked them off, and forced him to advance piecemeal or be cut down.





I ended up sacrificing my left (partly on purpose as a holding action, but also because I underestimated how effective the Harad guard units are), but more or less swept the right.  This let me break through to get at some objectives, and when my opponent broke and failed some key courage tests, I took the game.





Next game I took my Mordor list against the elves of Rivendell, led by Elrond himself.  Elrond is a beast in this game, being both a powerful combat character, and a decent caster.  We had random deployment in this scenario, and my opponent ended up with Elrond and his warband caught between two of mine.  He opted to take a chance, pushing Elrond forward in a charge, hoping to break through, while the rest of his stuff hung back or moved slowly to maximize shooting.






Elrond didn't make it (a combination of control effects from my Nazgul and sheer numbers), and with him off the table, I was able to use my numbers (and Troll) to bully the rest of his army.  I think he maybe played a little conservatively with his Rivendell knights (who also hit like a ton of bricks), and I was able to tie them up enough to take the objective, and win.





Last game was my Rohan vs Easterlings.  I find this match-up often comes down to scenario.  Easterling horse is heavier than my Riders, and their phalanx commands respect.  If I have space to manouver and pull them apart, I can take them piecemeal, but if I fight on their terms, I lose.  In this case, there was one objective, and I had basically one chance to grab it (when you move in contact, you have a 1 in 3 chance to "pick it up"), but flubbed (only dismounted figures can pick it up, I got there first with two guys, but they whiffed, and were overwhelmed the next turn by the phalanx).

This was one of those games where it's not that I had bad luck, exactly, but I didn't have good luck when I needed it.  I also made some mistakes where I didn't really have a margin of error, and my opponent played a very tight game.  In retrospect, I might have had a better chance with my Mordor vs. his Numenor, but it was a very solid game, and I kept slugging it out to the end.

Overall, it was a great day.  One of the things I like about tournaments is you get to play against armies you otherwise don't see.  There were a couple of Dwarf armies on the tables, one from the Fiefdoms, and even the Witch King made an appearance.  I also fielded two fully-painted 500 point armies, and was feeling quite smug about it too! ;)

Packing continues apace.  Content might drop off a bit over the next few weeks as we get ready for the move, but hopefully by September we'll be settled enough I have something to report.  In the meantime, I'll keep pondering what to do for the project.  It's a little odd dealing with my Magpie tendencies before I start a project (rather than while working on it), but I guess it's better to resolve this now than in three years ;)

FMB