Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 6b

Good morning gamers,

We're closing in on the end of our Fantasy Fellowship campaign and today we have Bofur's second-to-last mission (the Charge of the Rohirrim). Fell deeds awake - let's get going!

Charge of the Rohirrim

So I'll be honest, this mission felt a lot like deja vu for me after the Eomer's Return scenario - I have a bunch of skirmish cavalry, there's no shooting on the other side, job's done. However, there IS a way that Evil can force a draw if we break them before killing Gothmog (Gothmog can walk off the back edge of the map), so we're going to do some whittling down, but then we're going to charge in and "do what the Riders of Theoden Legion does." Let's see how this all worked out . . .

Centaur deployed just shy of 12" forward and I deployed as far up as I could:

Turn 1: Priority Good

I moved my guys up 5" and prepared to shoot, while Centaur prepared to receive my shooting. In a stunning turn of events, I aimed, I shot, I killed nothing. Turn two . . .

Turn 2: Priority Good

In case you're wondering, the "priority" thing is a bit moot, since there's a scenario rule that Good always counts as winning priority . . . so I stood where I was and fired again, with Centaur standing to receive the shots.

In the Shoot Phase, we actually got some hits this time and killed two Orcs!

Turn 3: Priority Good

I advanced 5" forward again on Turn 3 and Centaur reshaped his line a bit.

In the Shoot Phase, I managed to kill 1 Orc - really gotta start closing, as we're not hitting nearly as much as we did when fighting the Uruk-Hai a few scenarios ago!

Turn 4: Priority Good

I advanced 5" but only had shots with 23 of my Riders this time because of how Centaur adjusted his right flank.

In the Shoot Phase, we did as well as we did standing still on Turn 2 and got 2 kills - five down, thirty-five to go!

Turn 5: Priority Good

I stood, he adjusted a little. I shot, I killed nothing. Here's a picture . . .

Turn 6: Priority Good

I moved up a little and shot again - Centaur didn't come out to fight me . . .

This round, I killed 1 Orc with one of my bows and I also plucked a wound off Gothmog (who I had just remembered didn't have a shield in this mission and so was wounded on 6s just like everyone else). He attempted a Fate Save, got a 3, and so spent a point of Might to boost it to a 4. Three more wounds and he's gone!

Turn 7: Priority Good

I had a few guys who were within 10" this turn and so they had to charge - most notably, however, I didn't have any heroes in charge range (this was out of my control, as I keep "winning" priority)! Gothmog and his enforcer (along with a bunch of grunts) decided to wrap around my guys and we measured and found that Gothmog and his Enforcer were going to be able to charge Deorwine. Nothing of interest happened in the Shoot Phase.

In the Fight Phase, both of the Morannon Orc Captains called Heroic Combats (1/2M, 1/2M), Gothmog's Enforcer called a Heroic Combat (1/1M), and Gothmog called a Heroic Strike (we made a mistake here and used one of the Enforcer's Will points - 1/3W - but it's fine, as you'll see later). Because Deorwine was within charge range, I called a Heroic Strike with him as well (worst case scenario, I don't get charged and live . . . I'm good with that).

The combats went pretty well for Centaur and he got into Deorwine with Gothmog. Deorwine (base F5) got up to . . . Fight 7 (not great), while Gothmog (base F5) got up to . . . Fight 6. :) Both got a 5-high, so Gothmog escalated (2/3M) and Deorwine escalated (2/3M) and Gothmog walked away unwounded.

Turn 8: Priority Good

Centaur called a Heroic Move with one of the Captains (2/2M) and I passed. Because of how long our potential battle line was, Gothmog needed to call a Heroic Move too (Enforcer: 2/3W - we did do this one right), at which point I called a Heroic Move with Bofur (who could actually shut down both Moves if he went first, 1/2M). I rolled to see who got to move first, and low and behold, the Valar were with us and Good got to move first. The charges went off as you see above - pretty good start to the "big charge" round, I think. Elfhelm killed an Orc on the charge with his throwing spear (1/3M).

The rest of the board looked like this - lots of my guys got charged, but I got a few Riders in position to shoot spearmen.

The rest of my boys went around the flanks and prepared for next round. The Fight Phase was chaos - the other Orc Captain declared a Heroic Combat (2/2M), I declared a free Heroic Combat with Deorwine (because he's "near" Theoden), and then declared Combats with Bofur (2/2M), Elfhelm (2/3M), Gamling (1/3M), and Theoden (1/3M). Gothmog didn't use Master of Battle to copy any of these because he's fighting Eomer - and so when Eomer declared a Heroic Strike (1/3M), Gothmog copied it for free.

Centaur got to go with his combat first and the Morannon Orc Captain did his job and killed his man. He then went to go make someone else's life difficult. As you can see, however, the combats went incredibly well for me - Theoden and Dernhelm had to burn Might to win their fights/kill their foes (2/3M and 1/2M respectively), but the death toll piled up.

As we turned to the normal Fight Phase sequence, the battle continued to turn in my favor - Gothmog got to F10 while Eomer only got to F6, Gothmog Feinted down, got a 3-high to the 6-high that Eomer/Theoden got together (because, you know, why not have both models that need to live in this scenario in the same fight as the biggest bad guy around), and he got run over in a single go. Centaur did a good job of using his spearmen to limit how many people could have been in that fight (Deorwine tried to get in but couldn't) and did some bashing to get my Riders to fall off their horses. All told, what he was able to get was probably a little too late - the Orcs were broken and Mightless. On to Turn Nine . . .

Turn 9: Priority Good

I won't belabor how this turn went - Heroic Combats were called by Deorwine (free), Eomer (2/3M), and Dernhelm (2/2M) and they all succeeded. Deorwine had to burn a Might point to kill his foe (3/3M) and later in the Fight Phase, Gamling had to burn a Might point to win his fight (2/3M), but the game ended with basically everyone having Might left on them and the Orcs were quartered. Victory to the Eorlingas!

The carnage was real and complete . . .

Post game

I'm not sure that this is the best scenario for Fantasy Fellowships, considering that it's basically Eomer's Return, Part 2. Since your Fellowship Member (Merry) is sitting behind Eowyn, he doesn't really do anything here. I think it might be better to swap out this scenario for The Death of Gothmog, but that would mean that your Merry character doesn't get to do anything at the Pelennor. Alternatively, you could do the War Beasts from the South scenario that require 3 Mumaks . . . but Good force construction is basically the same and I think we'd all agree it would FEEL different from how the Eomer's Return scenario plays . . . something to think about. 

Hopefully you enjoyed this post - we'll be back in two weeks with the Docks of Harlond and the final mission for Nori, Dwalin, and Gloin before the big event! Until next time, happy hobbying!