The scene was set and the stakes soared as a perfect prologue to a sequel batrep climaxed with a surprise victory for my Eomer led mounted Eored against Jamie's (AKA The Newbie) tournament triumphing Wood Elven army. Call winds, nature's wrath, shoot value 2+ strength 3 bows, fight value 5 and spears were not enough to undo the heroics of a posthumously awarded MOTM Erkenbrand, the Sons of Eorl and the Legolas and Thranduil father and son slayer that was Knight of the Pelennor.
To see the above battle, check out the following link! And be sure to subscribe to the channel for future video SBG battle reports!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aR5F-X_4NI&feature=youtu.be
Both of us reeling from the shock of the result (just watch the intro to the first batrep to see how confident Jamie was of smashing my efforts) we plunged ourselves into a second game.
Running low on battery and storage, we didn't film this one, although we both wished we did, as it was equally high on drama, twists and turns!
Seeking revenge for their Wood Elven friends, Dain and Gimli took to the field against the victorious Rohirrim. Gimli, supported by a warband of Khazad Guards whilst Dain led a mainly Iron Guard warband that also contained a banner and three Khazad Guards.
The Rohirrim were as before, Knight of the Pelennor leading a warband of two Sons of Eorl, two mounted Rohan Royal Guard, three Westfold Redshields and two mounted Outriders, with Erkenbrand's warband mirroring this exactly.
We rolled for scenario... and Lords of Battle showed up, with points scored for killing enemy units and causing wounds to enemy heroes etc.
Both our forces were relatively low model count, both containing two heroes... it would be interesting to see who would gain the upper hand in this one.
In deployment, Dain and his predominately Iron Guard warband took the centre of the battleground, with Gimli and the Khazad Guard further left on the left flank.
The Rohirrim also deployed quite central, but quickly within the first turns, Eomer and many Sons of Eorl formed an arc out of dwarven range on our right, whilst Royal Guards throwing spears and Outrider and Westfold Redshield bows peppered and picked off Khazad and Iron Guard respectively from Dain's war band.
The dwarves took the bait and moved up in the centre as we sort to encircle and counter.
The Rohirrim hit hard, dwarves caught out on their own shielding for a better chance to win the fight were often cracked open by the piercing strikes of Sons of Eorl axes and the fight 4 Westfold Redshields holding their own too. Soon the banner fell as Dwarven resistance also fell away whilst Gimli and Eomer duelled and Dain was kept tied up until finally overwhelmed.
A son of Eorl joined Eomer to strike the killing blow with a piercing strike and it wasn't long until Erkenbrand and Eomer could join together to end the resistance of defence 9 Dain.
No dwarf was left standing. Quite a crushing victory for the Rohirrim, buoyed by their victory over Thranduil's Wood Elves!
Forgive the lack of detail in the above, it's been a few days and have watched the first battle report so much I've forgotten the exact events of the second game.
But one thing that was very important in this contest were the heroics, counter heroics and combat roll offs.
In the first four key heroic move calls, Jamie failed in the roll off each time. Not statistical! By the time he started to win some of these, the cavalry were already gaining the upperhand.
It was another battle of heroic contests and would have been great on film. It was my first ever timed game, in prep for the tournament, and surprisingly, this one took not much more than an hour I think.
Jamie was quite surprised at how quickly his dwarves were dying. I was able to use the Sons of Eorl 3 attacks to tie up 2 to 3 at a time whilst ganging up on lone dwarves and then moving through his force.
I had the range advantage in this one which forced him to come onto me, especially after losing 3 models in the first round of shooting I think (easy to point to rolling in any game, but we both agreed, the dice gods were with me in this game, with the roll offs and lot's of 6's once my shooting had hit)
His banner didn't get a chance to contribute to the fights and died pretty quickly and that pretty much summed up the efforts of the dwarves in this contest. The number of dice against them was overwhelming.
Good to see the all cavalry holding it's own in two different scenarios against two different armies run by a tournament level player. [EDIT - Checking the photos above, looks like Rohan lost two Royal Guard, one Westfold Redshield and a Son of Eorl in return for tabling the dwarves]
Jamie is a top bloke, knew the game inside out (which sped things up) and helped correct me and keep me on the straight and narrow when I got mixed up or got things wrong (I'm still a big novice!) I'm looking forward to filming many more battle reports with this dude and hopefully keeping everyone entertained and getting their fill of bat rep action on the youtube channel! Make sure you subscribe to see who comes out on top next time!
