LotR: The Unfellowship of the Dwarves, part 1

We had a go at some Lord of the Rings mini game from Games Workshop the other night.

I made up the scenario and umpired.  Nate took the Evil goblins and Howard and Dan played leaders of a dwarf family each seeking the throne in their homeland by returning from the Mines of Moria with the most treasure.

Each dwarf family consisted of the Dwarf King, his son (a slightly better fighter), 2 hearthguard,  and 7 regular warriors with mixed weapons.  They have to make their way through the mines and collect Dwarven relics on the way.  Whomever makes it home with the most will be elected the High King.

I won't divulge the Goblin forces since we have another game to play.

Turn 1: Dan rolled to go first and he heads towards the Throne room.  Howard goes towards the prison.

The goblins have turned the prison into a warg kennel.  Howard does not rile the beast and continues towards the armoury.

Here he makes first contact with a goblin ambush squad.

He easily defeats them and clears the armory.

Dan splits his company, sending the Son to collect 2 treasures.  They also discover a secret passage.

Dan's King goes into Balin's tomb and loots a powerful artifact from Balin's crypt.

Nate decides to reveal one of his cave trolls from the throne room.

It heads down the hall with some goblins, heading for Balin's tomb.

Cut off, Dan's dwarf prince decides to use the secret passage to escape the troll.

Dan's king heads out the tombs side door just as Howard's group enters Balin's tomb.

Howard forms a battle formation to recieve the troll and friends.

On the way out of the tomb, Dan falls into a pit trap and goblin ambush.

Howard engages the cave troll in a cinematic battle (really, they should film something like this sometime).  He defeats the troll, but at the cost of his Dwarf Princes life.

Meanwhile,  Dan's Prince stumbles into an amush in the Workshop.

With the king coming in behind, they clear the Workshop with light casualties. Nate reveals another cave troll and heads for the workshop.

A tough fight lies ahead.

In the last turn Dan figures out how to activate the Dwarven stone golem. 

We had to stop here due to time but decided to continue next week.  Stay tuned for part 2!

I haven't played LotR SBG in a long time.  I gave it a quick read through the day before but still messed up a bunch of stuff.  Since it was equal to both sides i don't think it affected the outcome but i will try to correct it next time.

Saga Age of the Wolf campaign: end of Season 3

Season 3 the Normans are defending,  trying to recover some loses by recruiting at home.
The pesky Vikings,  led by Halvar wil not let us rest, however,  and choose to raid us this season.
   Dan (Halvar) came by and we rolled up the scenario: Escort!  Third time!  Those greedy Vikings/Saxons  can't keep their hands off my caravans!  Must be the wine.
We rolled out our terrain and ended up with woods and a house in the middle and a rough rocky ground on my right flank.

I set up the Normans very similar to last time, 2 wagons far left with hearthguard and warlord,  1 wagon far right with crossbow warriors.   Mounted warriors in middle.  They were faced by (left to right) viking warriors, warlord and hearthguard center, warriors and hearthguard on right.

With only 1 unit of warriors in the way i figured it would be easy to steamroll my way passed, so the hearthguard went forward.

Of course, luck was not there and i lost the first combat and had to fall back.

I had to go in a second time, this time taling the viking warriors down to a single figure.   The wagons then pushed forward and one made it off the board.  The second came a single activation from reaching the board edge.

It was a long way to go, but Dan put everything into his hearthguard to move them 18" and catch up to the last wagon.  They were heavily fatigued so they actually lost the fight...

2 hearthguard remain (of 4) after the melee.   But Dan had 1 activation die left...

So in they went and this time they destroyed the wagon, with only 1 hearthguard remaining.

With an easy win snatched from my grasp, we were now in for a bloody slog as i had to get the other wagon off the board and it was blocked by a formidable 2 viking units.

I started moving the wagon to the left, screened by crossbows.

The viking warriors charged out to the crossbows.  A pretty even match but i rolled lucky and sent them back minus 6 men.

Next round i put all activations into getting my warlord and heartguard across the table.  On the way they ran over and killed poor Halvar.  I had nothing against him personally,  he was just generating too many saga dice for the vikings.  They reached the battle and dispatched the last 3 viking warriors.

Now the viking hearthguard was all that remained, and Dan sent them against my tired horsemen.

They won the combat 3 to 2 and my hearthguard fell back.
Although it was not the most honorable move, my crossbowmen then shot them down.  Ending the viking resistance.
In the post battle phase, Halvar was rolled a "dead" result.

A Gentleman's War: Rock the casbah

We played a 4 player game of a Gentleman's War using Howard and Dan's collection of 42mm toy soldiers.

Somewhere in Northwest Africa around the turn of the 19th/20th century...
Howard and I were the Moroccans. Nate and Dan were the French.  We had a casbah.  The French wanted it.  The usual mayhem ensued.

A more verbose report can be found on Dan's blog:
 http://laststandatcairngorm.blogspot.com/2017/06/attack-on-fort.html?
m=1
http://laststandatcairngorm.blogspot.com/2017/06/attack-on-fort.html?m=1

New Jersey Con: Fire in the East 2017

I played in the "Road Warrior" game put on by the Metropolitan Wargamers.  A great game with lots of fun details.

 I had the postal truck.  Needless to say it was the slowest!😉

 The tanker truck "Got away" at the last turn when one of the wasteland raiders dropped an oil slick that ended up skidding thr tanker across the "finish line" instead of crashing it.

Also played in a great old west game put on by the HAWKs using Buck Surdu's new WW2 skirmish rules.

Other games at the convention I took some pictures of.  Sorry I don't have the names to give credit.

 15mm

 Another shot of Road Warriors

 Giant seige game

 54mm

 Metropolitan  Wargamers Ft. Necessity

 AWI

 Frostgrave?

A friend of mine did the artwork for these games.