The Second Slaying of Elf by Elf
Last night’s Dragon Rampant game was very loosely based on the battle between Dior and Celegorm in the caves of Menegroth, from Tolkien’s Silmarillion. This was a great opportunity to use both the Elf forces that I’d painted in the last 18 months. We played over Zoom on a table that was slightly bigger than 3x4’ with standard DR 24-point forces.
Dior and his wife Nimroth were both present (2 x Elite Foot) along with some spear-elves (2 x Light Foot) and three lots of Scouts for support. They were pitted against Celegorm and Curufin (2 x Heavy Riders with bows), armoured spear-elves (1 x Heavy Foot), archers (2 x Light Missiles) and a unit of Scouts for sentry duty.
I chucked together some terrain using my old Moria bits and pieces with an inside/ outside area, three entrances and a guard tower. We decided that the halls would have been massive so didn’t impose any terrain penalties; the only tweak was to ignore the 3” rule due to the close quarters nature of the game.
Although the game swung both ways, it ended up as a bit of a bloodbath. Early on, it looked like Celegorm had the upper hand, mounting a flank charge on Dior’s guard; but within a couple of turns, Celegorm had been slain and Curufin was in trouble. Dior’s bodyguard was killed to an Elf, but he went for the heroic option and was felled while taking on an archer unit single-handed. Both sides were then reduced below half strength and the resulting Courage tests forced the survivors of Celegorm’s force into
retreat. Nimroth and her guard were pretty much the sole survivors, but it was a Pyrrhic victory.
Good fun as usual. I certainly honed my ability to roll double ones for Courage tests and the end result was suitably tragic for both sides in true Silmarillion tradition!