Battle Record - Middle Earth Hill Tribes Vs Rohan #MESBG 08/10/26

Afternoon #Warhammer Community we've been playing MESBG and it was great for us all to be there together again.

We were continuing with the War of the Rohirrim scenarios. This one being the end where Hera [in her bridal gear] rides forth to battle Wulf.

Hera and Wulf start the battle in the top right. All the Hillmen are congregated around the siege tower ramp, with Olwyn at the top of it stopping those already on the ramp. Meanwhile Frealaf and the riders of Rohan come in from the bottom. The Hillmen score a point each by killing Frealaf, a Rohan Captain, getting 3 Hillmen off the end of the siege ramp, having more warriors in the bottom right quadrant and 2 points for killing Hera. Rohan score one point each for killing General Targ, a Hillman Captain, stopping any Hillmen from escaping the siege ramp and having more Rohirrim in the bottom right camp. There is also 2 points for killing Wulf. I was with Otty who was already doom-mongering because there were 20 Hillman Archers and Hera was only able to get an 'in the way' by hiding next to a rocky step in the hill. We're also having to cope with a lot of terror-inducing flaming brands.

But, once again my dice were on fire 🎲🔥 We managed to make a lot of charges and if we won the duel there were often 2 cavalry against one Hillman - 4 wound rolls and only needing a 4 on the dice to kill. So a lot of Hillman fell under the hooves. In return if a Hillman won they also were sometimes killing on 4's - +1 for hatred of Rohan and there were a lot of 2-handed weapons for another +1.

Having won the priority on a few turns General Targ was able to call a heroic move to blunt the cavalry and hold us back. Olwyn had done work on the ramp, killing 2 Hillmen, and about to take out 2 more. A Rohan Captain had joined Hera but was getting bogged down by numbers.

The dice continued to work in our favour. Even if it was just a lot of 4's rolled that always seemed to be just enough to win a duel or take priority. It was almost comical. We went from believing the game was a foregone conclusion before we tarted to utterly dominating.

By about 10:30 Liam and Ben were ready for going home.

Their dice were just so poor. They'd gone from swapping them at ever opportunity to even considering using our Rohan dice! 🤣 This was the Hillman chief's morale check as they were broken, and he fled the board! Ben had even shot into combat, wounded General Targ and killed an archer on the ramp! But then Olwyn fell and the ramp was clear, except for the NPC crone.

But we played on and with the Hillmen heading for the end of the ramp we used our own bows to stop all but one of them, but that was enough, they needed 3 to exit. But elsewhere there was some success and Hera, Frealaf and the Rohan Captain all fell with just Wulf and Targ the only heroes left.

My dice continued to swing wildly - a mix of success and failure.

We tried to get to Wulf and hold the village quadrant.

Targ was still a threat but his sole wound was his downfall. Having been hit by friendly fire he succumbed and we surrounded Wulf bu were beaten back.

More units abandoned the field.

and we reformed the line to take down Wulf and the last Hillman archer.

We surrounded them

Absolute scenes as Wulf rolls his 3D6 duel dice!

Taking the field completely with a final score of 6:4 to Rohan

This was the dead pile.

And those who's luck just wouldn't rise to the occasion.

A really good game but so much was dictated by dice rolls that they just couldn't reconcile in the end. If they'd got the Hillmen off the ramp that would have been 5:5, but that failed morale check by the chief and getting shot on the ramp lost them the game.

Battle Record - Middle Earth Hill Tribes and Harad Vs Rohan #MESBG 01/10/26

Afternoon #Warhammer Community after a week away from the shed I'm back, but it's just Otty and I. Ben was on shifts and Liam has been back in hospital again [get well soon bud], but hopefully he'll out next week. So it was just the 'elite' of the hobby shed crew 😎 We spent an hour just chatting, Otty has quite the stressful job and was somewhat apologetic about having to vent. But he created this space for us, to reset and support our mental health. I'd have spent the entire evening just chatting if he needed it. Gaming is just an excuse to gather, it's really just about spending time together.

But we did have a game in the end. One of the War of the Rohirrim scenarios where a Mumak smashes into Edoras trying to destroy the city. The Rohirrim stand in the centre and I've got 36 Hill Tribesman, Wulf, General Targ, Tribe captain and Harad chief on the Mumak. Having faced one at Warhammer World I wanted to see what it was like to play. 

While I was getting it to the middle of the board I went aggressive with Wulf. I pushed deep, heroic combatted a spearman to get to Otty's Leader, who did Heroic Strike, won the duel with ease and cut Wulf's horse out from underneath him. I was careful not to get in with Hera behind as well.

I lost priority, but the Harad chief heroic moved the Mumak in the centre [not it is pointing the wrong direction because the trunk and tusks make it almost impossible to play. It just trampled through more than half of the Rohan force, squishing everything to paste. I think it ended in combat at Otty's hero managed to put two wounds on it as he has Hatred: Mumak and Mumakbane for this mission. It passed the courage test so it didn't go bereserk.

Next round and the Mumak still facing the wrong direction trampled further, killed a few of my men but failed to kill Otty's leader [Haleth or Hama I forget which]. So stuck in combat, which stops the rest of my guys being squished, who then bundle into [let's say] Haleth and Hera who was attacked by General Targ who cut her down.

With the final turn I tabled Otty. If I recall Haleth was killed not by the Mumak, but by a lowly spear support filthy tribesman! For me the forces were ridiculously unbalanced. But Otty said if the Mumak gets wounded and fails its courage the opposing player can move it and that can make all the difference. 

Once again Otty had some shockingly bad dice but that initial trample did so much damage, prevented his own Heroic move and completely shifted the game balance. I'm not sure he's going to want to play that scenario again, but it was entertaining if a little saddening how one-sided it became.

Meanwhile, Shed 1.0 is properly becoming an organised workspace for his hobby projects. He used part of the Shed of the Year prize money to get an FDM printer, you can just see 2 out of 3 ruined Rohan houses at the bottom of the image. So there will be a lot of exciting new things coming to the shed.

Battle Record - Middle Earth Orc Scouts Vs Eagles and Dwarves #MESBG 17/09/26

Afternoon #Warhammer Community we've been playing MESBG again. We're hoping to go to a doubles tournament at Warhammer World next year so we decided to try out some lists and what it's like to pair up. Otty and I had a load of Orc Scouts [I think] while Ben and Liam had a mix of Eagles, Beorn and Dain Ironfoot on a Boar, with three mountain goat riders and a load of dwarves. 

The mission was a weird one where both players in each team secretly chose a character to kill but if you got your targeted character to within the central objective you scored additional points. Otty already predicted it would not end well for us as Dain and Beorn are practically unstoppable.

But, it was night fighting and that meant our archers were getting +1 to wound. Which meant my initial setup on the cliff ruin took out Liam's 2 crossbow dwarves. Which seemed like a bit of an alpha strike at the time. Otty did a lot of the movement and there was some lively debate about where he'd put them, versus what the intention was.

But I think we started to lose priority and heroics weren't going our way. 50:50s either went almost exclusively to us or to Ben and Liam, I forget which but again there was a lot of debate about it.

I think we started to do some damage, but it was too spread around. Dain's Boar took a wound. 

Then at some point Dain himself took 3 wounds but he passed all three Fate rolls. We then couldn't get back into combat to do actual damage.

Some impressive dice rolling did not help any of us.

With Orcs dropping all over the place we were losing ground.

Outnumbering the big beasts and trapping them became harder to achieve, with that being our only hope of killing anyone off. 

It was getting late an I think the forces of good had managed to kill most of what they needed while we'd failed to take out Dain or Beorn.

Lots still to learn, definitely the game felt more competitive than usual which meant a lot of quibbling about rules. Not to mention I think we're all going deaf. The amount of times someone says something and then immediately someone else will say the exact some point! I've been doing it for months to much amusement, but we're all doing it now.

We had a lot of fun, but I think we need to prioritise smoother gameplay over accuracy. Whenever we go to Warhammer World that's usually how we play. Even if we think there is a rules contention you compromise because you don't want to be seen as 'that guy'. Quibbling over things just breaks the flow of the game. We'll get there.

Battle Record - Middle Earth Goblin Town Vs Easterlings, Game 3 #MESBG

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing MESBG again at Warhammer World! We had signed up for a midweek event again, just 500pts, 3 games. But this time we went down the day before, had a game and stayed overnight, so we were fresh the next day to do battle. But the 

Here's my 500 point warband with the 'might bank' from the captain's to buff the King with the Scribe.

• The Goblin King with 10 Goblins and Gollum
• Grinnah with 10 Goblins
• Goblin captain with 8 Goblins
• Goblin captain with 8 Goblins

Last game and I was up against Bryn Soane, he'd faced Ben in round one and lost 9:2. I assume he'd lost his second game and dropped to the bottom with me, still on table 19 [I couldn't go any lower]

• Amdur, Lord of the Blades
• 9 Easterling warriors, halberd and shield
• 6 Black dragon warriors, halberd
• Easterling Dragon Knight
• Easterling Captain
• 6 Easterling warriors, halberd and shield
• 2 Easterling warriors, bow

As you can see To The Death and we're both already on 2 VPs, because neither of us have banners. But the next victory condition makes it even worse. If you have a banner and I don't your scoring another 2 VPs at the end of the game. That means I have to take out the banner, else I allow you the score AND, there's no way I can score that because I can't take them! Luckily neither could Bryn, and I don't usually swear on the blog, but it's bull💩! 

Anyway, we faced off and I discover a couple of the Easterling Heroes have Elven blades, because of course they would. With the Goblin King once again at risk I will have to tread carefully.

We eventually managed to meet in the middle and the Lord of Blades issued an Heroic Challenge to the King, which he promptly dismissed. If they faced each other he'd be at a disadvantage but someone called the Lord of Blades with and Elf weapon was not a challenge I fancied. He did face the Captain though and managed to kill him, stuffing him into a sack as a prisoner for a VP.

Grinnah tried his best too, but wasn't able to double up on prisoners. I think it was a pretty even battle at this point. The Easterlings were hard to kill and with Halberds Bryn could often get 2 spear supports to my one. But every loss he took was a bigger deal, because I had Goblins just waiting in the wings to join combat.

As more of my Goblins died I was able to spread out and start tri-point trapping units. This gave me lots more to wound rolls, which started to turn the tide. But Grinnah was killed and Gollum put on the ring walked through everyone and tried to kill the Lord of Blades who'd got into combat with the Goblin King. Unfortunately he couldn't separate him out and would subsequently succumb to the Ring and wander off. But it didn't matter as the King wone the duel, bashed Amdur silly and took him prisoner instead of the Captain.

With more traps happening I was able to whittle down the Easterlings to quarter and the Goblin King kill the last remaining Hero, but he wasn't as fancy as the Lord of Blades and we definitely wanted to remove that Elven blade to protect our Goblins.

So the end result, with prisoners was 19:4. Unbelievable how this went. I can't quite work out if it was good dice. Maybe it was having all the Goblins together? I think if I go again I'll not take Gollum. He didn't seem to do very much. Although his chance to peel off Amdur had my heart racing for a moment.  Another 8 Goblins feel like they'd be more useful and even easier to manage - no extra rules to contend with.

With that result we ended up with Otty 32nd, me 22nd, and Ben 15th out of 38. I think that's my best ever result. It was only the massive score at the end that allowed me to jump from the bottom to the mid-league. Once again though I never felt like they didn't have a chance. OK, maybe just a bot with Otty as I knew the Wargs were more mobile to secure the objectives and cavalry charges would be my downfall. But, I did much better with them than the objectively more competitive Army of the Dead. So it just goes to show. I think with more practice I'd be stronger with Goblins, so that's what I'm going to do.

Battle Record - Middle Earth Goblin Town Vs Sharku and Wargs, Game 2 #MESBG

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing MESBG again at Warhammer World! We had signed up for a midweek event again, just 500pts, 3 games. But this time we went down the day before, had a game and stayed overnight, so we were fresh the next day to do battle. But the 

Here's my 500 point warband.

• The Goblin King with 10 Goblins and Gollum
• Grinnah with 10 Goblins
• Goblin captain with 8 Goblins
• Goblin captain with 8 Goblins

Second game and just look who I was drawn against! Can't get away from this guy! However, I had been curious to see how Goblin Town would fare against his army after the trouncing I had with the Army of the Dead the previous week.

• Sharku
• 5 Warg riders, shields and throwing spears
• 2 Warg riders, shields
• 2 Warg rides, bows
• 2 Wargs
• Orc captain with warg
• 4 Warg riders, shields and throwing spears
• 1 Warg rider, throwing spears
• 2 Warg riders, shields
• 2 Warg rides, bows
• 2 Wargs
• Orc shaman with warg
• 6 Wargs

Alternating warband setup and Otty had positioned to capture the drum on my left. I had half a mind to setup opposite and just bash him. Or I could set up on the right which was empty. Instead I did neither and sat on my home objective. So inevitably he took the right objective so I just threw all three remaining warbands at the right side trusting that inexplicable palisade would cause him more problems than me. 

And it did, he had to send a party back and round to come at my extreme right flank. I kept my home objective secure but had every intention of abandoning it

I think I managed to do quite well in the middle but my board control was shot to pieces. That palisade became my MVP keeping cavalry at bay.

I was totally convinced the Wargs had an 8" move, didn't move my goblins far enough away and they got charged afterall and I had to fight for my home objective. I think I may have killed Sharku with the Goblin King

So with Otty sat on most of the objectives he took the win 9:5