(SBG) Battle of Pelennor Fields.

Draugluin · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 3:54 pm

http://lostpict.6sided.net/2011/09/30/b ... tr-lunacy/

I participated in this a few months back. As the title says, it was lunacy. Near a thousand minis, using SBG rules? Anyways, it was fun and the set up looked awesome. Wouldn't have had it any other way. The setup was chaotic. After the third turn, the 4 individual scenarios became combined. So me and the Haradrim had to kill 100+ Rohirrim in 3 turns, or the 100 strong Army of the Dead (with the Three Hunters) would smash us. On the bright side, one of the Mumaks trampled around 8 ghosts, 4 Haradrim, 1 orc and 1 orc Captain.
Anyhow, a very fun battle that took 5 hours to get to the 5th turn. Next year (this was at a yearly gaming convention) we're going to have a WotR BoPF battle, which I really look forward to.

PS. None of those minis are mine, nor did I write the post, so I can't take any of the credit.

CaptainOfTheWhiteTower · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 4:11 pm

Draugluin wrote:

http://lostpict.6sided.net/2011/09/30/battle-of-pelennor-fields-lotr-lunacy/

I participated in this a few months back. As the title says, it was lunacy. Near a thousand minis, using SBG rules? Anyways, it was fun and the set up looked awesome. Wouldn't have had it any other way. The setup was chaotic. After the third turn, the 4 individual scenarios became combined. So me and the Haradrim had to kill 100+ Rohirrim in 3 turns, or the 100 strong Army of the Dead (with the Three Hunters) would smash us. On the bright side, one of the Mumaks trampled around 8 ghosts, 4 Haradrim, 1 orc and 1 orc Captain.
Anyhow, a very fun battle that took 5 hours to get to the 5th turn. Next year (this was at a yearly gaming convention) we're going to have a WotR BoPF battle, which I really look forward to.

I found that blog from google somehow and put the link up on the other page. I had no idea a member of this site took part though! Looks like it was good fun anyhow.

Draugluin · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 5:52 pm

Huh, that's wierd. Even though some of the guys hadn't played before and some only knew the older versions of the rules, so we had to spend a little bit of time pulling out the rule books to show them that, yes I can target your banner bearer out from the other 100 Rohirrim, it was very fun and definitely worth playing.

king elessar 2615 · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 6:20 pm

wow tis must have been an awesome game!! always have preferred SBG seems a bit more personal, the narrative of the battle is superb i love it. It really captures the amount of effort you need to make things like this possible

Draugluin · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:47 pm

Ya, it was epic. The only reason why I would have prefered WotR is that it wouldn't have taken anywhere near as long to move the minis.

king elessar 2615 · **Posted:** Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:50 pm

WOTR feels a bit too organised and i really enjoy the hectic feeling off SBG it is very detailed and whole games can turn on their heads with a single kill or a move

Hilbert · **Joined:** Mon Jun 06, 2011 7:07 am **Posts:** 2088

Awesome pictures and battle

lostpict · **Posted:** Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:34 am

Lost Pict here,

Anyway, I ran the the largish SBG Pellenor Fields game at Southern Front in back in September referenced a couple of posts back. (I saw my blog back-referenced and thought I would see who was gawking at the lads.) I intentionally left out Gandalf since he was busy with Denethor and dying Faramir. Pretty much everyone was in the game including little Pippin trying to burn down the Siege engines with a torch. The rules were straight SBG with the priority fixed for the first 3 turns and the character profiles out of the big blue rulebook.

Pretty much a hoot to run.

Most pictures taken by other folks. 60% of the minis are mine and the rest from the boys in Raleigh. We had about 1500 minis show up to battle, but limited it to 960 to keep it simple.

Good gaming,

Lost Pict :sauron:

P.S. If you are interested in SBG scenario gaming in southern Maryland, I am your man.

GothmogtheWerewolf · **Posted:** Wed Dec 07, 2011 11:50 pm

It's been a long time since I've seen a Pelennor Fields SBG, or any SBG at such a scale tbh, they dio look nice, although fell beasts are little weird when you mix metals and plastics.

lostpict · **Posted:** Thu Dec 08, 2011 12:46 am

One of the Fell Beasts is a hybrid made from the neck of a plastic and the body of a metal. (The one looking up and to the left).

Lost Pict :sauron:

Wah Wing · **Posted:** Sat Dec 10, 2011 7:10 pm

One thing you could use to speed up movement is use the WotR movement trays for the first few turns, then take them off as the ranks of troops engage in combat. Someone else suggested this in another place so it's not my idea.

lostpict · **Posted:** Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:56 am

We used movement trays (GW and otherwise) for that purpose. Some of the pictures show the trays. The troops hopped off to engage. Definitely speads play.

We played this game straight up, but I usually do the following for big games:

1) Disallow Shielding (except for Heroes)
2) Remove entire Cavalry model if mount killed (except for Heroes)
3) Ignore banner rules (just pretty to look at)
4) Shooters shot at closest target (heroes get to choose) - exception for Terrorifying monsters
5) Start at one end of the Melees and progressively work to the end (i.e. no hopping around except for Heroic combats)
6) Mostly use grunts versus lots of named heroes
7) Check Courage for sub-group grouping (Gothmog's Morannons, Sharkies Wargs, and Shagrats Uruks each check as individual units as the take casualties)

I have a number of 300 miniature battles with these constraints and all goes well. The biggest part is collecting the bodies as the come of the board so that it is easy to put up after.

Lost Pict :sauron:

WayUnderTheMountain · **Posted:** Sun Dec 11, 2011 7:57 pm

lostpict wrote:

1) Disallow Shielding (except for Heroes)
2) Remove entire Cavalry model if mount killed (except for Heroes)
3) Ignore banner rules (just pretty to look at)
4) Shooters shot at closest target (heroes get to choose) - exception for Terrorifying monsters
5) Start at one end of the Melees and progressively work to the end (i.e. no hopping around except for Heroic combats)

1)I could see why disallowing shielding allows large battles to move faster, though to be honest out of my gaming group I'm the only one regularly using the shielding rules.
2)Not a fan of this particular house rule, makes cavalry far too easy to neutralize as most mounts are only defense 4 while the riders themselves may be defense 6. Might as well just field infantry then.
3) Do you not count the points costs for the banners as well?
4) I like this rule, thought I would consider tweaking it so you take a courage test to shoot more distant targets (unless the target has the terror rule).
5) People don't play like this already? Odd, that's how we've always done it.

Just my opinion on these houserules.

whafrog · **Posted:** Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:16 pm

WayUnderTheMountain wrote:

lostpict wrote:

5) Start at one end of the Melees and progressively work to the end (i.e. no hopping around except for Heroic combats)

5) People don't play like this already? Odd, that's how we've always done it.

No, because if you have priority you get to decide order of fights, and that could have a tactical impact (who is trapped, who isn't). I think it's a good rule for big engagements (tactically it probably averages out), but for anything less than 1000 points I think it might steal something from the game experience.

lostpict wrote:

4) Shooters shot at closest target (heroes get to choose) - exception for Terrorifying monsters

I like the 4th rule too, because IMHO the in-the-way rule gets abused too much. If you really want to shoot the Uruk pikes behind the Uruk shields, that's the tactical challenge you have to maneuver to achieve. I'd allow it for monsters though, as written.

Not really a fan of the rest. Cavalry would need to be drastically reduced in price, and lack of banners put some armies, like dwarves, at a disadvantage.

CaptainOfTheWhiteTower · **Posted:** Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:11 pm

lostpict wrote:

Anyway, I ran the the largish SBG Pellenor Fields game at Southern Front in back in September referenced a couple of posts back. (I saw my blog back-referenced and thought I would see who was gawking at the lads.) I intentionally left out Gandalf since he was busy with Denethor and dying Faramir. Pretty much everyone was in the game including little Pippin trying to burn down the Siege engines with a torch. The rules were straight SBG with the priority fixed for the first 3 turns and the character profiles out of the big blue rulebook.

When I said characters were missing I was mainly thinking of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. But a fantastic looking game with some great pictures nevertheless.

WayUnderTheMountain · **Posted:** Mon Dec 12, 2011 1:29 am

whafrog wrote:

No, because if you have priority you get to decide order of fights, and that could have a tactical impact (who is trapped, who isn't). I think it's a good rule for big engagements (tactically it probably averages out), but for anything less than 1000 points I think it might steal something from the game experience.

That is true and it is something I have capitalized on in the past, but like the shielding rule I have never seen other players use the rule as it was intended beyond deciding whether to resolve the fights on their left flank first or their right flank first.

Draugluin · **Posted:** Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:05 am

CaptainOfTheWhiteTower wrote:

lostpict wrote:

Anyway, I ran the the largish SBG Pellenor Fields game at Southern Front in back in September referenced a couple of posts back. (I saw my blog back-referenced and thought I would see who was gawking at the lads.) I intentionally left out Gandalf since he was busy with Denethor and dying Faramir. Pretty much everyone was in the game including little Pippin trying to burn down the Siege engines with a torch. The rules were straight SBG with the priority fixed for the first 3 turns and the character profiles out of the big blue rulebook.

When I said characters were missing I was mainly thinking of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. But a fantastic looking game with some great pictures nevertheless.

They were there, they led the 100 or so Dead army.

lostpict · **Posted:** Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:57 am

For the house rules, they are aimed at speeding play - especially at conventions.

Rule 2) reflects that in a battle with over 100 cavalry mounts on each side, the dishorsed grunts get left behind when the cavalry charges. Putting dismounts on the ground mostly just results in the need to move a bunch of minis each turn that have little relevance to the cavalry that is still in the fight. This battle had 137 good and 113 evil cavalry mounts.

Rule 3) basically prevents lots of re-rolling. Since banners mostly cost all equally, it pretty much evens out assuming both sides had fielded roughly equal numbers of banners.

Having done this a lot, I have never missed either of these rules for large games. In both cases, the house rules were designed to speed play by simplify a skirmish rule-set into something manageable for 1000 models. I usually use these anytime total model count passes 100. I also use them with the Age of Trebuchet variant for Dark Age games.

Lost Pict :sauron:

Draugluin · **Posted:** Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:44 am

lostpict wrote:

For the house rules, they are aimed at speeding play - especially at conventions.

Rule 2) reflects that in a battle with over 100 cavalry mounts on each side, the dishorsed grunts get left behind when the cavalry charges. Putting dismounts on the ground mostly just results in the need to move a bunch of minis each turn that have little relevance to the cavalry that is still in the fight. This battle had 137 good and 113 evil cavalry mounts.

Rule 3) basically prevents lots of re-rolling. Since banners mostly cost all equally, it pretty much evens out assuming both sides had fielded roughly equal numbers of banners.

Having done this a lot, I have never missed either of these rules for large games. In both cases, the house rules were designed to speed play by simplify a skirmish rule-set into something manageable for 1000 models. I usually use these anytime total model count passes 100. I also use them with the Age of Trebuchet variant for Dark Age games.

Lost Pict :sauron:

It did simplify things for an already long game, I glad that we used them. The only banner that we actually used the rules for was Gamling and the Royal Banner.

CaptainOfTheWhiteTower · **Posted:** Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:52 am

Draugluin wrote:

They were there, they led the 100 or so Dead army.

It didn't say they were there on the blog, hence the confusion. In that case I think all characters were present and correct.

(SBG) Battle of Pelennor Fields.

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