Tell Me A Tale Grand Tournament...A Few Highlights

So with three games going on and no person who volunteered (or would have if I asked) to chronicle the nine games that took place, we thought we would only have a few pictures from the games. I was surprised to hear on the morning of the tournament, that we were going to have an observer who could take pictures for us... SCORE! This post will provide some of the bare details of the data we collected during the tournament, along with a few notes about the games that were played. Here were the participants who played:

The Raiders of Isengard (Army of Evil - Glenstorm): fielded by our contributor, Glenstorm, this army was composed of Uruk-Hai Scouts, an Uruk-Hai Captain with heavy armor and shield (played in this game by the Ugluk model), and a large contingent of Orc warriors, carrying a banner, shields and hand weapons, shields and spears, two-handed weapons, and Orc bows. The army is standard D5, with a few D4 and one D7 unit. With 48 total units, this army was the second largest in the tournament.

The Vanguard of Rivendell (Army of Good - El Zorro): fielded by my other fellow contributor, Zorro, this army united the prince of Mirkwood (Legolas with armor) and a strong contingent of High Elf warriors under the command of an Elven captain. The army sported two F6 heroes, 20 D6 Elves with shields and hand weapons/spears, 10 Elves with Elf bows (D5), and of course, a very high courage rating. With 32 total units, this army had the least units of the teams in the tournament, but had the potential to reduce other forces to size with its archery and later melee prowess.

The Mountain Alliance (Army of Evil - Tavros): This army featured 40 Goblin warriors (20 shields, 14 spears, and 6 Orc bows), supported by 4 Goblin prowlers, 3 Wild Wargs, Durburz, a Cave Troll, and Burdhur the hill troll chieftain. As can be expected, this was an army of two Trolls and a bunch of Goblins - and a BOAT load of Goblins too. With an average defensive profile, Goblins are as hard to kill as your typical unit...except that they max out their unit count in most games.

The Host of Erebor (Army of Good - Tiberius): This is my army, featuring 38 Dwarves of various kinds. If you look at some of the informative and project posts, you can see what the elements of this army are. 10 Dwarf Warriors carry bows and comprise my volley team. 8 Dwarf Warriors with shield and 6 Khazad Guards make up the powerful anvil of my army, presenting 14 D7 units to absorb archery and stop Uruk-Hai from rampaging through my ranks. These units are joined by the Unexpected Company from the Hobbit, which contains 4 Dwarf Rangers with two-handed axes, 3 Dwarf Rangers with 2h axes and throwing axes, 3 Dwarf Rangers with thrown axes only, and 2 Dwarf Rangers with longbow (and a partridge in a pear tree). These tough warriors are led by Gimli and Balin, who are solid heroes without any upgrades. All together, this force fears little from enemy archery and welcomes all challengers.

Isengard Unleashed (Army of Evil - Sir Percy Blakeney): This army is a mixture of my Uruk-Hai pikemen and Zorro's army of Isengard. It sports a large array of Uruks with shields, crossbows, and pikes along with 2 heroes (a captain with shield and Vrasku) and 4 Uruk Beserkers. This army is bred for a single purpose...to destroy any armies they fight. With Fight 4 and Strength 4 baselines, this army can rip through many foes and takes away the advantages of the armies that "just try to get up to Defense 6." At the same time, the army also sports a large company of Uruk crossbows (7 units including Vrasku) who can deal mega-damage against units who dare to approach the lines too quickly.

The Free People of Middle-Earth (Army of Good - Capt. Glot): I looked for a shorter name than this, but I couldn't. This list is mostly composed of Warriors from Rohan led by Theoden their king. To assist the list (and really add some combat prowess), the list includes Haldir, Defender of Helm's Deep (passes all courage tests when within 12" of Theoden) and Boromir of Gondor (a strong but one-dimensional hero). The warriors of Rohan give some size to this army, but it remains one of the smaller armies in the tournament. This list relies on its heroes doing a great job at killing units and the rest of its warriors staying alive and adding kills when they get into a mismatched fight.

I'll be publishing posts when I get all the data from the players, but this should entice the readers for now. On a technical note, the players arrived for the tournament at around 9:30am and we all left merry at around 3:30pm, so within 6 hours we shared a lunch and three close games. We also had a visitor show up during the tournament who graciously accompanied us to lunch and later took pictures of us while we played games. I will probably not be putting up many pictures of the actual players in this blog (anonymity is huge on this blog), but the pictures from the board are fair game. To provide a bit of a teaser, I've provided a few shots below:

One of the games we played was a "high ground" scenario. Zorro made a great hill for us to play on, but it got a little complicated to scale during some parts of the game.

You can see from this picture that the Goblins had two trolls in their army (one was a hero) and a few wargs...not the best foes for Dwarves to be fighting.

Blurry shot overall, but you can see some of the details on the hill that was made. I was on adrenaline, so my hands weren't very steady.

To make up for my shaky hands, I used a table. :-P Here you see two Orcs during a Domination game who managed to jump over this river on the roll of a 6, allowing them to move after jumping it.

The Unexpected Company (minus a few Dwarves and with a Khazad Guard and shield-bearing Dwarf Warrior) charge towards a continent of Uruk Scouts and Orc Warriors with spears and shields.

And so begins the first of several posts on the tournament, fought on March 10, 2012. We hope that the TMAT tournaments will come more frequently than once a year, but we hope to at least make them annual. If you are a LOTR-SBG player in the Northern Virginia area (or are interested in learning the game), please drop a line in comments!