The GREAT BATTLE of our time

With a mat.

It all began just when, six months ago, I bought a beautiful mat from PLAYMATS.EU

https://playmats.eu/battle-mats/playmat-size/72-x-48-183cm-x-122cm/5-sandy-desert-72-x-48

I wanted to have a desert themed mat, simply because in my gaming group we use to play Dune Imperium and wanted to play, in a possible future, that beautiful and engaging Dune Role playing game, that I already own. And there was an idea floating in the air about expanding my Bolt Action range with some desert rats and som DAK (I swear I didn’t know that Warlord Games was going to release such a GOOD boxed set, -gentleman’s war- in the near future…)

But after choosing my beloved desert mat, it occurred to me that I could buy one of those double mats, with some generic grass for my Star Wars Legion games…

And then something happened. Something Called…

After watching the first episodes of the show, I really got engaged again with my beloved middle earth. I began to recall the old times when, after every lord of the rings movie (2001, 2002 and 2003), we eagerly awaited for the corresponding Games Workshop box set… I remembered the excitement when the cavalry appeared in the second box, the two towers, or how the siege rules were offered on the third one, the return of the king box set.

That battles I had with my cousin, when we were just a couple of young adults (now we are both over 50 years old) had always been great… Yes, great but… somewhat careless…

None of them were played in the kind of table or environment we saw in White Dwarf photographs. I tried to paint well, but the space and the possibilities were not the same as today.

And so, in our hearts STILL we had the need for the battle of our times…

Back to 2022

After buying the mat, I wanted to dust off my old Minas Tirith set, but it really wasn’t impressive enough compared to the 3 feet mat… I then began to look for more Minas Tirith-like material on the internet.

The answer came from our trusty Renedra products. I saw this:

https://www.renedra.co.uk/product/renedra-tower/

But I needed to match the exact same colours of my old Minas Tirith walls.

So I went to my local game store with my piece of wall and began to compare it with the paints there… I found that citadel’s Wraithbone was an exact match.

I painted and built the tower. I’m planning on offer you a project about it. 🙂

Then I needed one of those nice siege towers, and after sailing the internet again, I found prices were really impressive, and I thought I’d better give a try to do the tower my self. I did it with popsicle sticks, wooden sticks, toothpicks and some cardboard and foamboard.

I also have in mind to dedicate a project to the making of the siege tower

And now for the main purpose of the project.

I wanted to finish ALL my old miniatures, there were still dozens of them languishing in boxes. Their scent of old and wet cardboard was intoxicating…

The first problem you encounter when you resume an old army is how to match the exact same colours of the minis you painted 15 years ago…

Luckily in these years I have painted a lot, so my experience has given me new skills that allow me to have a keen eye for paints and the tones they offer so 

That is, actually, that I had to try and repeat and repaint miniatures like crazy until some of them resembled each other.

And that meant sometimes that I had to walk again to the local store to grab more paint… with minis on my bag… it is frightening how many brands and possibilities you got today compared to 20 years ago…

I began to look for suitable scenarios that suited the Minas Tirith siege theme, with the idea in mind to use ABSOLUTELY EVERY MINIATURE I had available…

Of course none of the published scenarios fit exactly what I needed, but I found in a couple of Lotr books some clues:

• EVERY siege scenario had, at least, a defender with HALF the points of the attacker.
• EVERY siege scenario had, at most, an attacker with THREE TIMES the points of the defender.

So I went for something in between. I wanted to use my whole light side army, and planned to use like two-three times my dark side army. I used the old rules from the books I had so there was no real rules about companies or something like that… we just used points, that’s all. So the points for my light side were about 3,800 and so I needed between 7,000 and 9,000 dark side points. I had not enough miniatures for such a number of points so I chose a different approach.

I found a couple of scenarios that threw the dark side miniatures in “waves”, one after another, and so i thought it was a good idea to include that rules in our game.

Finally, the result was (combining the ideas of several scenarios) that the dark side, to obtain a victory, had the mission to place, over the wall or inside the fortress, at least 10 miniatures. Meanwhile, the light side mission was to prevent this, forcing the attackers to flee.

To allow the dark side to have the amounts of points needed, three waves of the miniatures were going to appear I planned that only orcish troops were going to be included in second and third wave. To give some emotion to the game, I wanted some light side minis to be on the floor of the battlefield, not behind the walls, so I decided that, when at least 45 dark side minis were killed, a fat group of rohirrim accompanied by some dwarf rangers would appear from a random side of the battlefield. If the light side was able to kill at least 140 miniatures (roughly half the total of dark side minis), the game was finished, and the glorious luminous elves and humans would declare their superiority over orcs and monsters…

It was simple. Everything…

Well, not THAT simple. I didn’t want to ruin the game for the dark side, and having a Great Eagle and an Ent was really on the bad side of things for the orcs. So I decided to keep them apart for now.

After removing the bird and the tree, there were still about 3,500 points of light side miniatures.

Finally the dark side had about 5,500 points in the form of three waves.

Calembel Guardians army list:

1- Rangers (6 Gondor rangers and 2 Arnor Dunedain) – 96

2- Arnor Warriors (one captain of Arnor and 7 Arnor warriors) – 136

3- Feud Warriors (Nûmenor figures proxy, two captains and 18 warriors) – 257

4-  6 x Guards of the fountain Court – 60

5- Minas Tirith Warriors (2 captains, 29 warriors) – 401

6- Knights of Minas Tirith (one captain on horse, 6 knights of Minas Tirith) – 163

7- Gondor Avenger Bolt Thrower (with Minas Tirith engineer captain, additional crew and swift reload) – 172

8- Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet (with Minas Tirith engineer captain) – 185

9- Dwarf warriors (one Dwarf King, one Dwarf Captain, 8 Khazâd Guards and 9 dwarf warriors) – 343

10- 16 x Dwarf Rangers – 152

11- Hobbits (5 x archers) – 40

12- Rohirrim Detachment (2 Rohan captains, 14 Rohan riders, 25 warriors of Rohan and 6 Rohan royal guards) – 606

13- Wood Elves (one wood elf captain on horse, 3 wood elves sentinels, 14 wood elves warriors) – 343

14- Galadhrim Warriors (2 captains and 10 galadhrim elves) – 264

15- High Elves (1 captain and 28 elf warriors) – 394

TOTAL: 3,822 points

Tortured Souls army list:

1 – Nazgül with Fell Beast – 160

2 – 2 x Castellans of Dol Guldur – 90

3-  2 x Barrow-wights – 100

4- Shade – 100

5- Uruk-hai group (4 uruk-hai captains, 9 uruk-hai scouts, 25 uruk-hai warriors and 3 berserkers) – 650

6- Dunlending warriors (7 dunlendings, one chieftain) – 140

7- Orc group (40 orcs, 3 orc captains) – 386

8- Warg riders (9 riders, 2 orc captains on warg) – 223

9- Mordor War Catapult (with orc engineer captain and Mordor troll) – 240

10- Kandish King in Chariot – 125

11- Easterlings (one captain, 13 easterling warriors, 5 kataphracts) – 252

12- Moria Goblins (3 captains, 60 goblin warriors, one Moria war drum) – 515

13- 2 x Cave trolls – 166

14- Mordor Troll – 100

15- Mordor Troll Chieftain – 140

16 – War Mûmak of Harad (with 12 warriors of harad, one haradrim chieftain and one Mahud beastmaster chieftain) – 430

TOTAL: 3,824 points

We decided that my cousin had to command the Calembel guardians. Just because I always pretend to be a bad guy… I always play imperials in Star wars games, Harkonnens in Dune, black pieces in chess, DM in role playing games, orcs in Lord of the rings…

He distributed most of the Gondor soldiers of his army along the walls, to be used as the main defense against the dark waves of orcs. At ground level, outside the fortress, he placed a lot of troops to be sure that my tortured souls would not have an easy access to the walls. Almost every elf and dwarf was put in the zone in front of the front door, protected by the lower stone barriers. He also grouped a host of 12 human archers in the upper side of the main tower, so that they would have a good perspective to throw volleys at the enemy. The trebuchet was deployed over the left section of the wall, and the bolt thrower was asigned to cover the right side of the fortification.

The most funny gambit my cousin did  was to place the main group of dwarves just in the middle of the gap between both outside barriers, exactly on the way to the gate of the fortress. Sure he though they would be hard as rocks… a good way to prevent anyone to enter the aperture between barriers using the stone road… the only way my siege tower could approach the walls of the castle…

Another small group, just four dwarf rangers, was deployed on the right small tower of the fortification, while on the left small tower, five small hobbits were ready to use their small bows to deal small damage.

The rohirrim and the dwarf rangers were set outside the gaming table, as they would enter just when the first group of dark side miniatures had to deploy, that is, when the first 45 dark side miniatures had been slain.

The dark side (me) simply deployed alongside the south edge, placing the mumak and the wargs on the right, the whole goblins army with siege ladders, ready for the big escalade to the left, and the center was filled with uruk-hai and orcs. The siege tower was also at the center, following the road. Being moved by no less than four trolls, I wanted to ensure that some orcs could travel on the upper floor of the tower, with the front gate safely closed, ready to attack the walls…

First turn – The first cut is the deepest

It all began well for my dark tides of beasts.

I had the priority token, the battle began with a quick move forward of the fell beast with the Nazgûl, a swift march of the cavalry and the Mûmak, a not so swift approach of the orcs… and the leisurely stroll of the goblins.  There was a good length between my units and their prey, and I was in haste to reach close combat, because my enemy had the most powerful bows, and in large numbers.

My oponent used his movement just to go forward with his dwarves… that thoughtless sons of Durin rushed out of the defences, and were looking for trouble on open field. My cousin also moved to his left flank his Minas Tirith knights, accompanied by the wood elf captain on horse. He surely was planning to place them in an advantageous position to intercept the cavalry I had advanced.

And then the shooting phase began… and I destroyed his trebuchet. As easy as it sounds. The explanation is simple… I used my catapult to throw a 70 pounds boulder at 60 miles per hour, and it landed exactly over the trebuchet…

Well, translated to gaming terms, it happened that I obtained a 4 with one of my shots, it landed correctly over the trebuchet, and I obtained a 4 in the damage roll. I used then the 2 might points that my orc engineer captain granted me to improve the result to six… that meant the battlecry trebuchet received 4 batter points of damage… destroyed!!!!

I know that it wouldn’t have happened with the newest version of the rules, but we don’t have any new book… so we decided to play with our old ruleset, from 2005!

We removed the model for the trebuchet, we didn’t want it to bother the possible movement and fighting over the wall… such an advantage gave me good vibes!

Turns 2 to 4 – We dwarves are natural sprinters! Very dangerous over short distances…

Turns 2 and 3, we realized how big is a 3×6 feet mat. It was a slow advance of the dark army, and the real fight was battled in the shooting phase. I have to admit that having lost the trebuchet while keping the catapult myself gave me an edge. The elven and human bows, equated in characteristics with the orcs and goblins due to the needed use of volleys (everyone needed sixs to hit) was not able to inflict great loses on my army, while my catapult did. By the beginning of the fourth turn, my cousin had slain one orc, one uruk and one easterling on foot… while I had killed 8 warriors! including two gondor rangers and two guards of the found and scort.

On the left flank, the Nâzgul quickly faced strong resistance: the rest of gondor rangers, accommpanied by two dúnedain from the north, began to shoot at the delicate wings of the fell beast, and the dark creature suffered some wounds. The answer that followed was a magical attack by the ringwraith, some black darts were repeatedly used against one of the dúnadan… but even wasting six precious Will points in two turns, the black rider was unable to harm the courageous man of the west. The result was that the Castellan, the Nâzgul with his fell beast, and the whole goblin escalade was trapped  between six brave warriors and some ruins!

Meanwhile, on the right flank, Elly the Mûmak was steadily going forward. Following in her footsteps, the group of wargs moved slow, waiting behind the oliphaunt. The kataphracts and the chariot with the khandian king, instead, moved very quickly to the rightmost flank, facing the fences of the small village in front of Calembel. On the third turn, the kataphracts made an unexpected move: they jumped across the fences to try to outflank the Minas Tirith knights, followed by the slowest but dangerous barrow-wights. The knights, knowing that they had to desperately slow down the monstruous Mûmak, tried to charge her. A couple of knights lost bravery in the last moment, remaining on rearguard, while the elf captain, the gondor captain on horse and three minas tirith knights managed to attack!

The mûmak stopped suddenly, and even got hurt three times!

Luckily for those who traveled in the castle, the Mahud chieftain was able to control the monstruous animal!

At the center of the armies, that completely unhinged dwarves kept on running like crebain out of hell… the uruks and even a castellan of Dol Guldur approached from their left and center, ready to confront the Khazad-dum guards and their king, while the wargs and the chariot began to menace their right flank, where the rest of dwarf warriors and a dwarf captain were… but they didn’t seem to care at all… they simply moved forward… dwarves are natural sprinters!!!!

After six hours, that was the end of our first session… and we didn’t get into close combat!

I will make a recap when the battle report is finished, but allow me to say at this stage that the map was TOO BIG…