Lord of The Rings

 

I haven't managed to get my 25mm LOTR collection on the table in the game for quite a while.  The gamer I used to play with at Guildford Wargames Club hasn't returned after Covid and so the figures have sat in their boxes.

A chance conversation with a new member Pat revealed that he had some LOTR figures (in fact, quite a few) and so we decided to play a game using my rules of choice - Kings of Wars.

Several years ago someone developed fan lists for LOTR for use with Kings of War and we used those lists to produce 2000 point armies for both sides.

Pat came up with a Rohan list and I produced a mix of Goblins and Uruk-hai lead by Saruman.

I like the Kings of War rules (from Mantic games) as they are extremely simple.  You only do anything (including rolling dice) in your turn. There are no complicated additional factors and movement is straight forward.

The units stay on the table as a whole unit until they are destroyed, so no figure removal.

Pat came up with a list using Rohan Cavalry Hordes of 16 figures, which I hadn't faced before.  I had a couple of hordes of goblins, but otherwise had regiments of Uruk-Hai.

The game didn't go well for me as a horde of cavalry is hard to beat.  I was unlucky with die rolls.  On three occasions I rolled and destroyed a unit, only for a nearby inspiration character to force a reroll when I rolled lower and the unit ended up merely wavering.

I ended the game with just 1 unit and Saruman left on the table- I did forget a couple of special rules which would have helped the Uruks in combat but generally I rolled badly and Pat's massed troops were more effective.

We enjoyed the game and it has made me realise that I need to get my movement trays properly painted and flocked and to, at the very least, get all the figure bases flocked the same so make them a coherent whole.  So have started on that and reorganising the boxes of figures to take up less space and to be easier to store.

I have around 500-600 figures all together but could do with more Good Forces.

I think Saruman wasn't effective enough for his points value so I'll be tweaking the army list in the future - or maybe just fielding a Balrog!