This week my son and I conducted our most awesome battle to date, and I wanted to share it with you folks.
After doing a lengthy Memoir '44 campaign (the campaign book is great!), we decided to switch back to BattleLore -- and I figured, why not do it on a grand scale? So I set up two boards in the Epic configuration and proceeded to create a large-scale Battle of Pelennor Fields (Lord of the Rings). Getting Minas Tirith set up aside, the most interesting part of putting this together were the special rules we created for it.
First, the good guys had timed reinforcements from the Riders of Rohan and later by Aragorn and his forces. The Minas Tirith player had to hold out for 10 turns until the Riders arrived, then another 3 before Aragorn arrived, each from their respective corners of the map. They had about 12 or 14 units or so defending the city before that - though they did have the advantage of having every landmark except the Rogue's Den inside the city. Meanwhile, the Mordor forces had every single goblin piece from the main game and all expansions on the board at once (!), PLUS the hill giant and troll, and a few units representing Haradrim.
And more.
I pillaged my War of the Ring sets (also by Fantasy Flight) for more pieces and created rules for trebuchet units , seige towers, and Nazgul. These were a LOT of fun to bring into the game. All units were taken from the Battles of Middle Earth expansion. Here's how they worked:
Trebuchet - Two figures per unit. Moves 1. They get hit only on a sword & shield. Range is 6. They roll 2 dice. Colored flags are hits, and sword & shield is a hit on manmade structures (landmarks, ramparts, etc.). When a structure is hit, place a token on it. When it accumulates 3 tokens, the structure is destroyed.
Seige Tower - Place a single piece with an existing unit, similar to the horn blowers or drum figures of BattleLore. Units with Seige towers can move only one space per turn, but when they battle they ignore all terrain and landmark battle restrictions. In addition, they CAN battle the turn they enter a rampart or landmark. This makes them very slow, but effective seige units. When the Seige Tower is removed, the benefits are also removed.
Nazgul - Four figures, moves 4, ignores all terrain movement restrictions (but battle restrictions still apply). ALL units adjacent to Nazgul, whether friend or enemy, are considered Frightened. Nothing may change this! Battles at 3 dice, swords&shields hit. They are hit similar to monsters, i.e. by critical hits. Yes, that means it takes 4 crits to finish off the unit. (We did only one Nazgul unit on the field.) Nazgul may pass through hexes that contain other units, but may not stop on hexes with other units. Nazgul passing over enemy units are vulnerable to a free 1-die strike by each unit they pass over.
The reinforcements worked like this: Riders of Rohan came in AFTER the 10th turn and entered in the upper right corner of the board, same place they enter in the story. We had two red knights, two red mounted, two blue mounted, and two green mounted, for eight units total. Four units enter the field on one turn (no order required), the last four on the next turn. The good guy player has a free Mounted Charge card given to them at the start of the game. It does NOT count towards their total command cards, and MAY be used alongside their normal move when the Riders enter the field. This is to simulate their sudden charge into the fray.
Aragorn follows three turns later, in the opposite corner of the field, along the river. I think his army was made up of some assorted human units of various types, plus one Dwarven axe unit. I don't recall the specifics, but it was about eight units. In this case, for the sake of fun, we went with the movie over the book and gave him the Earth Elemental, allowing it to take the place of the ghosts.
Naturally we played with a full war council. Morder: commander, 3, wizard, 2, rogue, 1. Minas Tirith: Commander, 2, wizard, 3, warrior, 1, cleric, 1.
Easy to lay out the city again. Used all structure tiles, the cliffs from Call to Arms, hills and other stuff. It looks good. Almost used some towns from Memoir '44 or BattleCry for the city interior, but decided against it. If I ever decided to type the setup out in a more formal way for people, I'll post the map.
All in all, it turned out to be well-balanced. I (Mordor) won 12-10.
So, THE BATTLE.
My first few turns were spent getting units around the city and lobbing stuff at the walls with the trebuchet, trying to wear them down. Never could break down any of those walls, though. When I first engaged the defending units, it was TOUGH. Minas Tirith was equipped with all sorts of great units from the Hundred Years War set and they defended hard. I assaulted with my two monsters, but the Hill Giant was taken down early. Those monsters are far less effective when they're crashing against a well defended fortress.
Decided to push in with my mounted Southrons on the other side, sweeping around the flank and pounding the defenders on the walls. What a fight! Meanwhile, my troll finally broke through and started wreaking havoc in the city. That's what I wanted. A hole in that defense.
But then the Riders of Rohan showed up. They cut right into my lines and cut my forces in two. The guys I had assaulting the city up close were between the riders and those nasty defenders, all my other guys were still making their way up to the city. ****! very hard to coordinate an attack that way, and with my support broken in many cases, goblins were going down due to being frightened and fleeing.
Then Aragorn showed up and started cutting at my rear. Tough stuff.
With my troll inside I was spending a lot of lore to order him out of section. He was helping me a lot by distracting defenders and letting a few units get onto the walls. A few well-placed spells helped me break two red swords over the walls alongside the troll I got in there, so while the Riders ran rampant in the fields, slaughtering my fleeing goblins, those three units started killing inside the city walls. Total bloodshed on both sides in just a few turns.
And I just edged it out.
Took us two days to play it, and it was AWESOME.
