AAR: Lord of the Rings: After Christmas Game.

    As previous post have show, at Hobbytown, we tend to play Lord of the Rings on Thursday nights. I had worked a morning shift and realized I was able to go for the first time in a couple of months. Kalissa usually went on her own while I was working. Most of the time, the people there have been playing Battle Companies. This is not a problem, but sometimes Lord of the Rings feels better in a normal fighting game. In a typically fashion in our wife vs husband games, we can care less about points. I just was pulling stuff out to play with. The orcs did not have to completely outnumber my wife's Rohan. She had more she could have pulled out, but she was fine with what she set up. Besides, I still have another 140 Rohan warriors to make and paint. We might have a lot. This same day, I bought her the new  book War in Rohan book.
   Anyway, this turned in a slaughter for my wife's force. I was actually rolling great for a change! We ended the game in four turns. Otherwise, we spent the rest of the day hanging out with other wargamers. What social butterflies we are!

AAR: Lord Of The Rings: A game is Georgia.

      On a recent weekend, Kalissa and I travelled down to Atlanta, Ga to visit her parents and to go to my brother's wedding. At this point, we were still not 100% on the wedding plans. However, that is besides the point. We mainly were down for the wedding. Everything else was just a bonus. It has been nine years, since Kalissa and I had been in the Atlanta Metro Area, so we figured we would try to play a game between down time of events. We originally start wargaming with Flames of War playing at the Kennesaw, Ga Hobbytown, U.S.A.
    Since we have been gone, there has been a new gaming venue that appeared. So we wanted to check it out. Giga-Bites Cafe is in Marietta, Ga  not far from where I grew up. We went there and decided to play a quick game of Lord of the Rings. In a normal clash of our games, it was a slaughter on my end of the game. I lost all of the Orcs only to kill nine Rohan Warriors. I know that we mentioned playing a short game, but it was all over by turn four. I was okay with this, since it gave some more time to look around the store and buy things! We got away with a fairly light load of terrain and some gangster casualties for Chicago at 50% off. The venue of Giga-Bites Cafe was really nice. It had a nice larger gaming area amongst two rooms, a cafe, and a rather large selection of gaming figures and paints  in a shopping area the size of a small bookstore. I wish they would have more places like this in the country.
    Anyway, it was a good weekend of family and gaming. These are my slaughter pictures with my happy wife. Enjoy!

There was a chance that the Rohan Riders were sent by Darth Vader, but I can't be too sure!

AAR: Lord of the Rings: Battle Companies: The Thrashing of the Wargs

       These are some photos of my ill-fated game challenge Elves with Warg Riders. This was the third game I have fought against Zack in Battle Companies. He started the game worried about my force. He stated this the other two games which lead to the exact opposite to occur. Maybe, this is like telling someone that they are going to "Roll a one!" Game fate says, "Challenge excepted!" So I was challenging elves that either used "Might" for heroic charge or winning initiative making Warg Riders pretty much ineffective. Their bows shot out a whole bunch of Wargs. And every hit against was a kill with except of two. However, I was able to kill one elve! Mini-goal accomplished! That said elve was perimently killed at a cost of 9 points versus my periment loss of my main leader and another at the cost 91 points. Yeah...... that was a fair trade. The theme I seem to have with this game is that it seems to hate more particular than normal. No problem!

AAR: Lord of the Rings: Battle Companies: Bogging Down!

    At our local Hobbytown, USA, it has been scheduled that a vast majority of us gamers play Lord of the Rings: Battle Companies on Thursday nights. The narrative campaign that I had mentioned in an earlier post is still going on. However, my wife, Kalissa has been going more that I have. I have been scheduled to work nearly every Thursday night, so these latest two games are what I played the last Thursday. Though, the narrative campaign was still being played, I decided not to play the Elves that I started with. Instead, I brought one of my other Battle Companies: my Mordor Orcs. At this point, they are nearly all Warg Riders. I like their speed and flexibility. And to boot, I brought my evil swamp board. Afterall, why only use a board once!
      So what I discovered is that my own board did not work well against me. Plus, I have come to an interesting conclusion when it comes to Battle Companies as a whole: I cannot use specialty rules in my forces! As luck would have it, almost everyone I have turned into a Hero with all of these "Bad Ass" rules dies first in a shooting phase. I have one Warg Rider with a bow that can shoot without movement penalties, with a 3+ hit that can reroll hits to kill. I do not know how good any of that is, because he died first in both games! This is a complaint, but that is only because, no one is playing a normal Lord of the Rings game. I think I could do more damage with regular troops that heroes running every where. I, also, would have rather not had a population cap, because I could have had a rather large army to use at this point.
     Anyway, here are some pictures of my demise. The first game, I lost everyone without killing anyone. "Flawless Victory!" from Mortal Combat was what I heard. The second game, I did much better. I killed three people before losing.

Thursday Gaming: Lord of the Rings: Narrative Campaign and such!

  Bring people to the dark side of our hobby can be awesome. With my lovely wife running Demo games, it does not take long to convince people to play games we play. In this case, we found a person who wanted to play 40K Warhammer with no figures who wanted to play said game. We should him how cheap it is to play Battle Companies. It helped that our friend, John, gives away starting a company for free. It is an awesome way to start some into a game. The next best step is to have that said person play a game. It is a firm believe that people learn better while playing a game through. In our case, I think we will see a repeat player.
   However, Thursday Night was suppose to be a Narrative Game Night for our Lord of the Ring campaign. In this case, it was an Ambush Mission with Wargs attacking. In some of these pictures, you will see Warg Riders. Those are mine as a proxy  force. Apparently, after some calculations, I need just a heavy 200 Warg Riders to challenge my wife's Rohan army at this point. No problem! I did not play in this game, since I have been somewhat behind. Honestly, I do not want to give up on this campaign yet. I am stalled for my own behalf, since this last mission is the only one I am interested in. I would have been fine with the further campaign, except for two problems. One, the campaign does not connect well. The second, it does not make sense. Example: the second scenario has us clearing a ruins with a badass Barrow Wight defending it's territory. The story has us camping there and doing this mission. However, if you were given a choice between a Hilton Hotel or a Super 8 Motel in the ghetto after gun shots, where would you stay? And why would you investigate said shots, unless you were a cop paid to do so?
      These are just thoughts. Since there are plenty of people playing along, I guess I cannot completely complain. I just wish that people would be as interested and invested in historical campaigns. Anyway, enjoy our Lord of the Rings games. They are a lot of fun!