2 Lord of the Rings games from Club Night

[Dr. Kevin Moon III esq.]

Tonight at the Oxford Wargames Society we had a couple of games of GW's Lord of the Rings strategy battle game. It was the first time I've played the system so we picked a couple of scenarios from the Fellowship of the Ring journey book and got stuck in.

 Game 1 saw Aragorn and Frodo escaping from a horde of Uruk-Hai, with Legolas and Gimli appearing at a random turn.




 The Good side found themselves using up their might and fate early on waiting for reinforcements, only for them to arrive and not have much effect!



Frodo ended up popping on the ring to escape being swamped, only for Aragorn to die after a losing a combat to 4 Uruk-Hai. Game 1 to the Evil players!




Game 2 saw Boromir defending Merry and Pippin against a similar number of Uruk-Hai






Unfortunately, the Hobbits appeared to be better at killing Uruk-Hai than he was! Merry was captured around turn 8 or 9, with Boromir falling shortly after, Pippin valiantly fought off the Uruk-Hai for a couple of turns until he was also captured on turn 11. This meant the Evil side had to avoid a drawn priority roll for 2 turns while they ran off the board before the rest of the fellowship arrived. Sadly (for me!) turn 13 saw a 3-3 roll and the Good side just pinched it!

 I was very impressed by the rules, they appear to have more depth than at first read. I shall definitely be playing them again

[Doomhippie]

I like those rules. And of course your scenario report. The reasons I don't like playing with named characters is that the outcome of these scenarios are in the books, so there's no need to replay them. After all, how can Aragorn now be king of Gondor after having been killed by the Uruks? That's why I generally prefer to play scenarios that are not in the book.

Nvertheless, the rules are really good for recreating the action of Middle-Earth.

[Plynkes]

When we played a similar "Breaking of the Fellowship" scenario years ago using Warhammer Skirmish the orcs made off with but one hobbit (Pippin carried off to Mordor by orcs of the Red Eye as no Uruk-hai survived the fight), while Merry escaped, Boromir survived and Aragorn and Legolas were killed.

Unlike the Doomster, we thought it was excellent fun that we had wrecked Tolkien's epic, and spent ages afterwards trying to figure out how all this would change the story. 


Great show. Makes me want to get my old Lord of the Rings toys out again.

[Caputo]

good report and nice to see some LotR stuff on here