Continuing their travel North, the Elves of Fingaerion’s Spear stop for the night in the hills of Evendim. Their presence has not gone unnoticed and a large pack of Wargs have decided to hunt.

The hills echo with the howls of Wargs and an eerie mist settles around the Elven camp as the sun sets. Fingaerion has a campfire built but before bedrolls can be laid out for the night shapes can be seen moving about in the mist. The Elves turn their backs to the fire, draw their weapons and prepare for the attack they sense is coming…

The Warg chieftain howls and his pack charges. As the Wargs run forward the Galadhrim Knight Alion rides off to East hoping to either draw off some of the Wargs or to get behind them as they attack his companions. The Elven archers loose but none of their arrows find their mark.

The Wargs try to seize the initiative but Fingaerion uses Foresight of the Eldar to keep the initiative. As the Wargs charge home, lead by their chieftain, a melee ensues but not all the Wargs have the courage to approach the fire.

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The Warg chieftain has bitten off more than he can chew, with both Faeril and Cailon wounding him. But other Wargs in the pack incapacitate Anduniel and Iareth.

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The Elves maintain the initiative. Fingaerion strikes a Warg a mighty blow and fate fails to save the Warg chieftain from Faeril’s spear. The terrible beast is slain! The rest of the pack flees in terror….. victory for the Elves!

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Iareth recovers fully and Anduniel has “but a scratch”, meaning she will need to rest during the next scenario.

Randil was leveled and rolled +1 Might.

Faeril leveled and rolled Heroic Strike.

Gaewen leveled and was promoted to a Galadhrim Knight!

My wife unfortunately rolled a 1 on the victory reward table, meaning her reward was one Influence point. A bit underwhelming compared to the other possibilities. Given she had one Influence stored, got four Influence for winning and the one reward, she is still at -2 Influence due to our (I really had to work hard her to convince her to accept it) decision to backdate the 5 point recruitment cost for Elves and Dwarves we added to our house rules.

A very quick game. Three turns to be precise. We were both surprised by this but Faeril is quite the hero. Once the Warg chieftain is killed the Wargs become broken and the game ends with a 1 or 2 on a D6 and my wife rolled a 2.

We did have a pause in the game as we checked the pike rules and discussed them. I have tried to house rule the pike for the Galadhrim Court Guard (ie Fingaerion) to be a decent weapon for a single character since the Elves are not going to get massed pikes. So we have made it a two handed weapon with +1 Strength, which the Court Guards are trained to use for shielding as well as not having the usual -1 duel roll for two handed weapons. What I overlooked was pikes can only support a second pike not a spear. Fairly useless in absence of massed pikes… so we now have a house rule for pikes to be able to be a second support for a spear supported combatant.

I also realized we have been making a mistake with how we have been promoting warriors to heroes. Once they roll to become a hero we have been letting them choose their path and roll on that path chart rather than waiting for them to level again, which is how I think it is supposed to work. We decided that since we have been doing it for everyone it is balanced and there is no reason to try to backtrack and correct the heroes in the making skills. And we will continue doing it the way we started. It may lead to a little skill inflation but we do not think it will break the game, especially with our house rule experience system.

Next blog entry should be about how the Dwarves handle the same scenario.