The Elves of Fingaerion’s Spear and the Dwarves of the Company of the Golden Boar have finally met face to face. The tense but not openly hostile meeting has been interrupted however….
Yet again the Wargs of the Evendim Hills stalk the heroes, yet this time without the leadership of a chieftain. An unspoken challenge has arisen between the Elves and Dwarves, the product of the many years of frosty relations between the two.
As the numerous Wargs charge the two Battle Companies archers ready and loose arrows. Both Onar the Dwarf and Cailon the Elf each Fell a Warg with their arrows, then the melee ensues.
The Dwarves Brimir, Finnbar and Rori all cut down a Warg each. Gaewen the Elf is also successful in cutting down a Warg. But there are many more…
The Dwarves Onar, Bili, Brimir, and Gundin each fell a Warg. Fingaerion the Elf dispatches a Warg with his pike but the Wargs pull down Gaewen’s mount! The Elf deftly survives the fall as Faeril is also bitten, although a mighty intervention of fate keeps the Elf champion on his feet.
The melee continues, with new Wargs replacing their fallen pack mates. The axes of Rori, Bili, Brimir, Hanar and Snorri all take a terrible toll on the Wargs, each of them dropping a Warg. The Elves Alion and Randil cut down a Warg each. Then with a mighty blow Fingaerion cuts down a Warg. However, Gaewen is savagely bitten by a Warg and is out of the fight.
Not many of the Wargs remain but still they fight on. Fingaerion cuts down a Warg, as does Orcondil and Faeril. Randil wins his fight with a mighty effort but fails to wound the Warg. Brimir and Gundin finish off the last two remaining Wargs.
As the corpses are checked and the wounded tended to a count is taken. The Elves have accounted for nine of the Wargs, the Dwarves…. fifteen. The smugness of the Dwarves is quiet but obvious.
A fun game. The Elves started off heavily disadvantaged in points values. The Dwarves have been remarkably lucky in reinforcement rolls and promotion rolls, making them a very expensive company in points value.
My wife started with a disadvantage of 125 points, resulting in 8 rerolls and 8 additional influence. Her rerolls went very poorly but the extra influence has been quite the boon.
Gaewen and her horse had full recoveries.
Orcandil leveled and was promoted to a Galadhrim Knight with shield. Quite the promotion, an armored horse, a shield and the ability for the horse to treat wooded terrain as normal. That in particular can be very powerful. Five influence points of value for “free”. It is moments like this that the power of the Lothlorien Battle Company becomes evident.
For the Dwarves, four of them leveled. The heroes Rori, Bili and Snorri. Onar the warrior also leveled but yet again failed to be recognized. That is the sixth time! There is a 50% chance to be promoted or become a hero, yet time after time he fails.
One of the interesting displays of dice rolling was Rori winning a fight but rolling two 1’s to wound. We have a house rule giving battle companies their SBG army bonus where applicable and that means the Dwarves reroll 1’s to wound. I then proceeded to roll a second set of snake eyes!
My wife was pleased with the bonus influenced but irritated that almost all of her rerolls failed to improve on her original roll.
It was nice to play cooperatively together against the Wargs but my wife in particular missed the greater challenge of a “live” adversarial opponent with tactical freedom rather than a somewhat one dimensional AI enemy, ie charges the nearest model.
What was nice was that we both felt like we walked away from this game with something, that there was no overt winner or loser.
Home of the Grumpy Gnome 
An excellent report as always and I thought the elves might deal with the wargs a bit better than they ended up. It is interesting that your wife actually preferred the more adversarial game as I would have thought a more cooperative approach would appeal to her based on previous reports. I think having a game where both players walk away feeling pretty good about the results is really the ideal and so it was well worth mixing it up from the typical games you’ve been playing.
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I was very surprised when she told me she really preferred the tactical challenge of a live opponent. She also said she preferred seeing NPCs do well against my Minas Morgul company compared to my Dwarven company because she did not feel as bad seeing Evil get defeated. I think ideally my wife wants us to fight together against other live opponents. Which is something of a problem even without the current health crisis as we do not have a thriving MESBG community in our area. 40K and AOS from our local GW shop but no MESBG and my wife does not like 40K and AOS.
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That is very interesting. It is hard to find opponents for MESBG outside of tournament play. I live in the 3rd largest city in the US and there are probably ten people who are serious about playing it that I know of and only a couple play narrative scenarios much at all. I think this is a byproduct of GW not carrying the game in their stores. A lot of players don’t think the game is worthwhile because it isn’t being actively supported in their eyes. Regardless of that, I typically hear people say their wives/girlfriends are more cooperative gamers and I tend to be that way myself. I get competitive with painting but I know I’m not a tactical genius and can’t win tournaments so I’d rather play something that has a great narrative and looks good but I suppose you could have guessed that 🙂
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There certainly is a problem with GW’s marketing of MESBG. I know Middle Earth should sell itself but it would not seem it is that easy. Before the current health crisis I thought GW was just waiting for the Amazon tv series to kick off a new marketing campaign. Of course everything is on hold indefinitely now.
Companies really need to react to the demand for solo and cooperative play in these challenging times.
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I think we’ve talked about it before but GW’s approach with MESBG in all facets is “What is the bare minimum we can get away with and keep making money from this game?” Or at least that is my feeling and it is a shame.
I couldn’t agree more with you about solo and cooperative play in wargaming. Fallout is one of the only games in this genre that actively supports and advertises solo play and while I realize it is a fairly new game compared to either Warhammer, I don’t think that should be so uncommon. There is a huge market of people who would be more interested in wargaming if they could play solo/cooperatively only.
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I have a copy of the Fallout game… I really should have a look to see if there are any game mechanics I can retrofit to MESBG & BC’s.
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I had no idea you owned a copy! I hope to see you paint it up one day 🙂 I don’t know a ton about the AI system in Fallout since I haven’t played yet but hopefully in the coming months I will know and be able to share more. I just finished the last mini I needed for my first game so it won’t be long now… 🙂
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I am looking forward to your Fallout battle reports with much eager anticipation!
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Interesting backstory possibility about Onar out of these rolls. Why isn’t Onar trusted by the others for promotion. Personality? Some sort of social difference? Dwarves care about lineage, right? Maybe it’s Onar the Bastard?
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You certainly have a talent for narratives!
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