My Road to Middle-Earth SBG Tournament

 New edition of this classic game spurs activity in the Finnish gaming community. 

This is part 1. of two blog posts - covering my preparations. You can read the battle reports in the second post.

Read on to find out how I prepared and what went down in the tournament!

My project

I got me an inspiration to build an army with “ Battle of five Armies” theme. And of course I wanted to have a gaming board with the Laketown theme. So quite a bit to paint and build... luckily other players from the Nopat Club also chipped in with GW’s Laketown buildings.

Dain and Iron Hill Goat Riders

Iron Hill infantry

Bard and the Ladies of Lake Towm

Town on an icy lake

Alfrid

My army

Having watched extended versions of Hobbit movies I got inspired to build an army with the theme "Battle of Five Armies". As you can see from the images above I converted most of my dwarves from plastic Grimhammers and Warriors of Erebor and combined them with rams and part from Unreleased Miniatures. Forge World makes very nice miniatures of course, IMHO their pricing is simply appalling and even if I could afford them, I won't buy them.

I had played one test game with 800p., but now I needed to squeeze my down to 500p. To keep the feeling I had, I needed to keep my two key heroes - Dain and Bard. So the list came up like this:

500 Pts - Erebor Reclaimed Roster

Total Roster Cost: 500

Squad (12#, 312 pts)

1 Warband, 0 pts

   1 Dáin Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills, 160 pts = (base cost 140 + War Boar 20)

   3 Iron Hills Goat Rider, 60 pts = 3 * 20

   4 Iron Hills Dwarf, 48 pts = 4 * 12 (base cost 11 + Crossbow 1)

   4 Iron Hills Dwarf, 44 pts = 4 * 11

Squad (8#, 188 pts)

1 Warband [sl], 0 pts

   1 Bard the Bowman [sl], 140 pts

   1 Laketown Militia [sl], 6 pts = (base cost 5 + Shield 1)

   6 Laketown Militia [sl], 42 pts = 6 * 7 (base cost 5 + Spear 1 + Shield 1)

Roster satisfies all enforced validation rules

The Evil ones

I also needed to put up a another warband, in this case an evil one. It was easy to choose Isengard, because I knew I had all I needed already painted.

500 Pts - Isengard Roster

Total Roster Cost: 498

Squad (15#, 265 pts)

1 Warband, 0 pts

   1 Lurtz, 90 pts

   5 Uruk-hai Warrior, 55 pts = 5 * 11 (base cost 9 + Crossbow 2)

   1 Uruk-hai Drummer, 40 pts

   4 Uruk-hai Warrior, 40 pts = 4 * 10 (base cost 9 + Shield 1)

   4 Uruk-hai Warrior, 40 pts = 4 * 10 (base cost 9 + Pike 1)

Squad (7#, 233 pts)

1 Warband, 0 pts

   1 Sharku, 60 pts = (base cost 50 + Warg 10)

   1 Uruk-hai Berserker, 15 pts

   1 Isengard Troll, 110 pts

   2 Warg Rider, 24 pts = 2 * 12 (base cost 11 + Shield 1)

   2 Warg Rider, 24 pts = 2 * 12 (base cost 11 + Shield 1)

Roster satisfies all enforced validation rules

I didn't consciously plan this, but if you look at the army dynamics, they are actually quite a like... both have

• A shooty hero
• An all smashing model
• Crossbows behind a shieldwall
• Fast cavalry to outflank