The Scouring of the Shire, Part 6: The Death of Lotho

Good morning gamers,

This is our sixth Scouring scenario and we've taken the same four Hobbit smials from the last scenario and rearranged them a bit for the Death of Lotho. The participants are similar to what we had last time, but we've scaled down the number of warriors (nine Ruffians, three have whips; eight Hobbit Militia) and really downgraded the heroes (Lotho Sackville Baggins and Worm). There's no way to fix botched rolls (especially if Lotho uses his Might point to call a heroic action instead of boosting a roll), so every roll matters - let's see if the Ruffians can catch and kill Lotho!

The Death of Lotho

This scenario starts similarly to the previous one, with Lotho and his Hobbit Militia bodyguards starting within 3" of the center of the board. This time, however, Lotho can try to escape off any board edge instead of one in particular. The Ruffians deploy outside of 6" of a Hobbit model, so once again, I can't charge on the first turn. The Hobbits win if Lotho escapes off any board edge, while the Ruffians win if Worm kills Lotho. If any other Ruffian model kills Lotho, it's a draw.

Worm doesn't start on the board and his official location is unknown at the start. Four objective markers are placed at the center of each map tile (represented here by three sheep and a pig) and each of these can move 6" each turn. When any of these move into base contact with Lotho, a die is rolled and on a 5+, it's Worm! If the first three come up as duds, the fourth one is immediately Lotho. This does mean that the Ruffians begin with one fewer model than the Hobbits and have to guard more overall area - we'll see if they can pull it off!

Turn 1: Priority Good

I totally thought Centaur was going to chuck stones at me this round - instead, he correctly identified that he should just rush one of the avenues, making two of the Worm tokens basically irrelevant if he was fast enough. Because of the board design, the three sheep started on top of the smials and I had them race down their sides as best they could to get into good positions. The pig trotted up near to the action, potentially one turn away from Lotho.

The Fight Phase contained only two fights - a Ruffian killed a Militia and a Militia killed a Ruffian. Cosmically, this was actually quite big, since a small channel is now present for Lotho to race through - all Centaur needs to do is win priority . . .

Kill Count: Ruffians 1/9, Shire 1/9.

Turn 2: Priority Evil

I won priority, but with no Might on the board, Lotho called a Heroic Move (1/1M) and surged forward. The Hobbit Militia have a rule in this scenario that requires them to Charge a Ruffian model if they can, so most of Lotho's bodyguards had to surge backwards to tie up Ruffians (which is fine). You can see in the photo above that two sheep have made it to the road and the pig is very close to Lotho - we'll see how this goes . . .

The fights traded pretty evenly again - two Ruffians and one Hobbit Militia died, which means the Hobbits are increasing their numerical advantage. And yet, if I can get priority next round, I can have the pig charge Lotho and hopefully get a 5+ to have Worm spawn . . .

Kill Count: Ruffians 2/9, Shire 3/9.

Turn 3: Priority Good

. . . alas, priority went back to Good and Lotho got off. For kicks, I had the pig move into base contact with the board edge and rolled to see what he would have gotten. A four. As you can see, the other markers were all 1-2 turns off of that location, so I would have needed to tie up Lotho (ideally "tying him up" with the At 'Em Lads! special rule) in order to have had any chance of getting him. Oh well, let's see if we can kill some Hobbits for fun . . .

There was actually quite a bit of death here - three dead Hobbits and one dead Ruffian ended up bringing the model counts into a close game.

Kill Count: Ruffians 5/9, Shire 4/9.

Another victory for the Shire! In the Brockenborings scenario, Lobelia will have 1 Might point (instead of being Mightless), which is pretty good.

Conclusion

The scenario starts with both forces having 9 models on the board (with the chance that the Ruffians will get a tenth if Worm spawns). With better profiles than the Hobbits, the Ruffians theoretically have a pretty good chance of isolating and paralyzing Lotho. Once he's paralyzed, getting Worm into him and killing him really isn't that hard. If you're smart, though, the Hobbits will just rush to one side, rendering the models you use to guard the opposite board edge useless for the first turn or two. This is basically what happened here - I lost the models who started on the side the Hobbits chose to crash and Lotho popped through since he was the only person with Might. It's a solid strategy, but does require you to roll decently well so you don't lose all of your fights and die.

Tiberius Scenario Rating: 4/5 stars. This scenario felt a bit like deja vu, but it actually plays quite differently than the previous one - with all board edges being scoring edges, no banners for either side, and pretty comparable points levels for both armies (62pts for the Shire and 48pts + Worm for the Ruffians). The fact that Worm doesn't start on the board means there could be an issue with balance, but the unpredictable nature of his arrival is very, very interesting. The only criticism I have is that the heroes . . . aren't actually that useful. Lotho can't help the Militia in any meaningful way (except to dissuade the use of the Whirl or Stab special strikes), while Worm may not even show up. The heroes from the last one were both providing banner boosts, but here . . . they're just important for the narrative.

In two weeks, we'll be tackling the Burning of Woody End - we'll see if the Ruffians can win another game then! Until next time, happy hobbying!