Dwarves and Elves in the First Age of Middle Earth

[TWD]

James came over with his soldiers for a socially distanced but face to face game of soldiers.
We played a simple attack (elves) and defend (dwarves) game using James' own WiP Midgard rules.








More words and pictures here:
http://tomstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2020/07/middle-earth-midgard.html

Good to be finally back playing face to face.
The rules are working well (though combat push back and follow ups continue to give headaches) and it gives a good game with a decent number of models in units in a reasonable amount of time.

[wjhupp]

Great to see those lovely figures with their awesome shields in action!

Question: in the last photo, the Dwarven Infantry are in contact with the Elvan Cavalry at a somewhat odd angle.  Does that mean anything in the rules?  Was infantry charging Cavalry?

Bill

[James Morris]

Cheers for the report, Tom!

The premise for the game was an imagined disagreement between an elf lord and the dwarves of Mount Dolmed; the elf prince had ridden up to the dwarf stronghold with his army and issued a challenge.  Nundir of Mount Dolmed had taken him up on it and a pitched battle ensued.

Following a combat of champions with honours even (both Noin the dwarf champion and his counterpart Belcharion retired with a wound apiece), my elves advanced towards the dwarves, trying to disrupt either flank enough to weight the attack one way or the other.

Despite a single round of impressive shooting by the horse archers, the dwarves stood firm and began to apply pressure in the centre.  One of my heavy cavalry units got bogged down in, er, a bog and the dwarves gradually broke through the centre after a bloody fight. 

The elf lord ended up at the gates of Mount Dolmed, but all his commanders had been killed or captured, and the rest of his troops were on the ropes if not slain or fled.  A convincing victory to the dwarves!

[James Morris]

Great to see those lovely figures with their awesome shields in action!

Question: in the last photo, the Dwarven Infantry are in contact with the Elvan Cavalry at a somewhat odd angle.  Does that mean anything in the rules?  Was infantry charging Cavalry?

Bill

Hi Bill, in the shot you’re talking about, the dwarf unit had been fighting two elf cavalry units off in the bog. The right hand cavalry unit had just been driven off, leaving the dwarves fighting to the left. Hence the slightly unusual photo.

[wjhupp]

Thanks James.  In the meantime I read the blog report (more lovely photos) and that gave me a good feel of the flow of the battle.

I've finally got the 'hang' of this part of the Silmarillion and a bunch of ideas for these types of fights and combat scenarios are swarming around in my head.  All types of combinations of men, elves, dwarves, orcs, wolves, balrogs, etc.

I'm gonna need dragons, werewolves and balrogs.  I did find a big werewolf that should make an awesome Sauron.

Bill

[Brandlin]

Hi Bill, in the shot you’re talking about, the dwarf unit had been fighting two elf cavalry units off in the bog. The right hand cavalry unit had just been driven off, leaving the dwarves fighting to the left. Hence the slightly unusual photo.

I read this as "The unit of humble stoic Dwarf militia had just given the poncy pointy-eared elite horse-botherers a good slapping and was about to turn its attention to the next unit of prancing pixie fiddlers."

:-)

[Grimmnar]

James came over with his soldiers for a socially distanced but face to face game of soldiers.
We played a simple attack (elves) and defend (dwarves) game

Well of course you did. This is always how it is. The aggressive elves always attacking. In this encounter, the vicious elves attacking the peace loving dwarves who were just out for a walk. Bad bad elves. ;-)

Anyway, the pics looked great. Lovely models and even better paint execution.

Grimm

[James Morris]

The fact that the elves were attacking was mostly down to the fact that Tom had a fine dwarven fortress sat there on the shelf, nothing to do with their egocentric nature! Honest.

[Brandlin]

The fact that the elves were attacking was mostly down to the fact that Tom had a fine dwarven fortress sat there on the shelf, nothing to do with their egocentric nature! Honest.

Nonsense we all know elves are just hate-mongers.