It occured to me while I was talking about LoTR that in the books the Fellowship is set at nine, to counter the Nazgul. but nowhere in the books or films is there ever a battle of Nine v Nine

Has anyone seen a scenario like this?

I was thinking that the fellowships only objective would be to get Frodo off the board, so I might put some effort into writing one at some point. Of course, if someone else wants to do it, feel free

Well if it did happen, I cant see any of the fellowship (mainly boromir) standing up to a magical assualt from the wraiths.

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Not even Gandalf and Aragorn? And if the Wraiths ended up in combat with Boromir or Aragorn (as they must, because magic won't kill someone like that unless you are VERY lucky with Black Dart), they'll be mincemeat if they don't watch out.

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

Unless the rules have changed dramatically, I've seen Aragorns slay 3 or more nazgul in 1 battle. Add to that the other members and I would assume the nine of the fellowship should come out victorious.

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Are these 9 generic or the 9 named? If its the named then the fellowship will get destroyed. Generic they may have a chance as there aren't any beardy special rules to contend with.

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12th GBHL 2013.
13th GBHL 2014
9th GBHL 2015


Mid Sussex Wargamers

I was thinking the named ones, mainly to give myself an excuse to collect them. I can see how it'd be fairer with the unnamed ones, because then you could adjust thier points values to get a balance. But for the purposes of this discussion, let's assumed the named ones.

I think the Nazgul would have the advantage, being mounted, having magical powers and only having to kill one model. But we could tip the advantage to the fellowship in a few ways, giving Aragorn Anduril, putting lots of terrain to hide in, toying with deployment a little....

I ran through this today (I'll post pictures in a few days when I get round to it) but the short answer is the Fellowship gets stomped into the ground. I did the Witch King and 8 generic Wraiths with full heroic stats and horses against the Fellowship equipped as they were when they left Rivendell in the book (i.e. no elven cloaks, no extra armor, but Anduril, Sting, and the Mithril Coat).

The Nine together are *way* more than the sum of their parts. Think for a second about Drain Courage cast (successfully) *nine* times in one round. Aragorn and Gimli got dropped to 0 Courage in a heartbeat and almost never charged again. Boromir took a pair of immobilizes and a Morgul blade to the heart (3 wounds and no fate makes the Witch King a happy guy). The lesser hobbits tied up some wraiths and burned through a little will before they died, and Gandalf got hammered with Sap Will until he was no more than a mediocre fighter. It was ugly.

If you want to run a more balanced version, I'd suggest trying the generic wraiths with ~10 will each and only 1 might and maybe no fate. Defense 8 is hard for the even the Fellowship to get through as their Might goes fast helping to shrug off spells. Fate just adds insult to injury as when someone *finally* gets a wound in, the wraith just shrugs it off.

I would also change Sap Will to just reducing by half or something, It's WAY too overpowered for a Nazgul to have, especially when compared to Gandalf.

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Agreed, sap will can really ruin your day.
I think giving the fellowship cloaks and extra armour would help a lot. Also a lot of terrain on the board, I imagine that would level the playing field a bit, if not significantly.

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Considering that the Fellowship were equipped as they were upon leaving Rivendell the Wraiths shouldn't really have had their full complement of stats.

Especially considering that the way they were set up, the Nazgul have substantially more points than the Fellowship. I think the Fellowship all together + Anduril is around 800-850 points whereas fully powered Nazgul with horses are over 1000 pts.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

The reason I avoided elven cloaks is that there isn't any point when all nine members of the Fellowship have them (they would make a big difference though). Armor doesn't make much difference though, only Frodo, Aragorn, and Legolas can have armor upgrades. Frodo had his, moving Aragorn from D5 to D6 doesn't make any difference to a S4 wraith, and while Legolas gets a shade better, when he died it was to a mob of four, an extra pip of armor wasn't going to save him.

The main issue (IMHO) is Drain Courage rather than Sap Will, with seven or eight of them going off a turn the Fellowship is losing a big hitter every round. Take Aragorn, suppose 7 come at him (8 or 9 is entirely possible too) suppose he even resists 3 of them he still loses 4 courage and another one to Harbinger of Evil. He's sitting at Courage 1 in the best case scenario and Courage 0 in more probable scenarios. He's done for the game. He can call Heroic Moves, he can take pot shots with a bow, but he's probably never going to charge a wraith again. Boromir is a goner with 1 will, Gandalf can drain will from wraiths but he's not getting any spells through, which leaves Legolas and Gimli with way more heavy lifting than they can manage.

Ringwraiths are dedicated hero nerfers, they'll rock all over any comparable point value of scissors Heroes. I'd be interested to see other playtests with different variables though.

+1

its very risky using named ones I would say... of course if we go for lore... gandalf despite hardly pressed, he can corner the nazguls quite nicely

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Here is one battle report posted on this site viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24093

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