25 years of minis and counting: LOTR (Hobbit) SBG Tournament @ Nopat Club

Rough Going for Elves of Loth Lorien

Players from around Finland gathered to play a 400p. LOTR SBG tournament at Nopat Club. I decided early on to play with Elves. As the deadline for delivering lists arrived, I only had started to draft my list, but had to send the first draft... Well I wasn't going to be playing that die hard anyway...

Fine tuned some Galahdrims for the tournament

My Warband

My Warband was voted as best in the tournament... but the position was tied with Marko's beautiful (ly painted) Dwarves. Roll of a dice gave the "Best Army " prize for Marko.

Set up

Marko and tournament organizer Adrian had been setting up some excellent gaming tables the night before, especially cool was this gangway construction above water. It was built from several Goblin town sets.

This table presented the mighty Anduin

Game 1. Adrian's Dwarves

Scenario was "High Ground", where points are awarded for models on the in the central hill in the end of the game as well as for wounding / killing the enemy commander and breaking the enemy army (as in every scenario). I deployed my elves on the shore, while Adrian's dwarves were mostly on the island already. His bows only had the range of 18" while elven bows are 24", I planned to exploit this advantage. I was a bit worried about his ballista with S9 and range of 48"...

Most of the game was pretty much about small manouvers to get a shooting LOS and also

about avoiding enemy fire (ballista especial)

Legolas leading a careful approach, BEFORE the final moves

The only charge in the game

In a desperate gambit to win the game Legolas lead what

remained of my cavalry to charge, 1 warrior fell from both sides

By forces had lured some of the dwarves away from the hill, then my Galadhrim warriors jumped to the hill from the gangways.

Result: Adrian won 10-6. I just couldn't kill those well armoured dwarves fast enough by shooting...

Game 2. Civil War!

In my second game I faced Toni with his Legolas + Galadhrim + Rohan army. Even Legolas'

long lost twin brother was there riding his white horse... this usurper will not steal my right to the throne of Mirkwood!

Quickly my wood elves took cover in the woods and took aim at the approaching Rohan cavalry

But my elves seemed to be confused about this civil war: 1 hit from 7 shots!

Legolas rolled 3 X 1!

This continued for several rounds, I barely managed to hit them - let alone to kill!

While my wood elves were shooting their rubber arrows my Galadhrim on the other flank prepared a trap...

Which was soon sprung! My Captain swiftly dispatched a Rohan warrior and moved to engage Eowyn with heroic combat...

I fought Eowyn with 5 dice against 1, but again my forces seemed to have

issues with their conscience...

Next round they finally finished the job

The evil twin was fool enough to wander alone into the woods...

In two rounds he was chopped to bits, earning me 3 VP's!

I had killed plenty of Rohans and my cavalry had even moved back to finish couple of fleeing traitor Galadhrims. I thought I would have time to move my force off the table, once the enemy were killed

But that was not the case! As I took out the last 3 traitor Galadhrims the game ended due to time being used up! I had killed 13 out of 24 enemies Breaking them), but 10 of them had escaped. Toni won the game 10-6. Damn!

3rd. Game Easterlings and Orcs

To be honest, this game was lost already in the deployment; Easterlings only had 3 archers, so I had a significant upper hand in shooting, yet I made the error of deploying my infantry close to the central line and hence allowed the Orc infantry so close in their deployment.

Soon the orcs were upon me! My cavalry made a charge against the easterlings and had some early success

My spearmen aided by the banner held the orcs at bay

for several rounds (shielding mainly)

But as my Wood elves were also forced to melee

my hope started to fade...

At least Legolas proved his worth once again by taking

out Khamul the Easterling!

I was plagued by constantly losing initiative and this lead to me not getting advantage of cavalry charges and my Galadhrim not being able to escape from the Orc horde.