Mordor vs Galadhrim, Battle Report

The title of this post should be "I am the worst general Mordor has ever seen".

Last night 2 friends came over for a game of LOTR. We use the Strategy Battle Game. Not all, but most of my group love the way it plays. I had recently painted up 6 Fell Wargs and The Warg Chieftain so I wanted to give them spin on the table.  So we did Orcs vs Elves at 700 points.

The Elves were 24 Galadhrim, 3 captains, a Storm Caller and maybe 12 or so Wood Elves as we ran out of Galadhrim.

The Orcs were 6 Wild Wargs, Warg Chieftain, 4 Warg riding Orc Captains and a Shaman, leading about 40+ Orcs. All spears and swords, no bows.

Establishing shot. Orcs in foreground, tree huggers on the farside of the table. set up 2 feet apart. The Elf General set up the table. Note the lack of cover.......

Closer shot of the Elf battle line. Wood Elves on the far end of the line. Galadhrim Archers Center, Spear and Sword in the ruins on the hill.

Back of Elf line looking towards the Orcs.

 Orc Left side of line. Front Rank, Shield and Sword, back rank Spears.

Orc right flank. Morannon Orcs in center, then more spear and shield guys. On the far right are my newly untried Wargs.

The terrain was wide open, he had bows, I didn't. My only choice was to go straight at him as quick as I could. I think I spent 3 turns marching under bow fire. Lost 9 or 10 orcs closing the gap.

Getting close now.

 Wargs rounding the hill.

 And we finally clash.

Not many Morannon Orcs left. At this point the combat got pretty hot, so I forgot to take pictures. I took a lot of losses  crossing the field but now I had some good numbers in contact.

I cleared the ruins and broke up his center section. On the far side it was back and forth with the wood elves. I did very well in the melee combats but I could not make up the damage done crossing the field. I broke at 29 dead and he was 3 away from breaking. It was a good fight and we had fun.

I'm not sure what I could have done differently. The ground was too open. I suppose I could have gone up the right side in the woods, but then he would have had all the time in the world to wheel his line to compensate.

The wargs were not the killing machines I had envisioned. Either I needed more or they would be better with riders. They were weak. I would have rather had a troll or something. They did help out flank the Elves in the ruins, but one on one, Elves were much better.

The one thing I think I did right was put all my Captains on Wargs. That made them very useful for smashing into the battle at critical moments. It might have helped if I rememberd the extra attack for charging cav.

Anyway, good fight, lessons learned and fun was had. I also got to put out my Scenic backdrops on the side of the battle table.

Xin