TMAT GT12: Game Background

So we have a LOT of pictures from the tournament, though we are conspicuously lacking in pictures from two of the games. But, the tournament has been well-covered and we'll show a bit of the action here.

Army Lists:

Glenstorm's "Raiders of Isengard:" Vrasku, Uruk Captain with heavy armor and shield (surrogate is Ugluk in these pictures), 16 Uruk Scouts with shields, 8 Uruk Scouts with Orc bows, 8 Orc Warriors with shields, 8 Orc Warriors with shields and spears, 1 Orc Warrior with banner, 3 Orc Warriors with two-handed weapons, 2 Orc Warriors with Orc bows.

A closer look at Vrasku and some of his minions, getting ready to tear into an army of blonde-headed men.

Zorro's "Vanguard of Rivendell": Elf Captain with heavy armor and shield, Legolas with armor, 10 Elf Warriors with heavy armor and shields, 10 Elf Warriors with heavy armor, shields and spears, 10 Elf Warriors with heavy armor and Elf bows.

Despite being the smallest army in the tournament, this team is armed to the teeth. You can see Legolas in this shot (as well as a Ranger of Arnor, who populated every game table somewhere...).

Tiberius' "Host of Erebor": Gimli, Balin, 8 Dwarf Warriors with shields, 6 Khazad Guards, 10 Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows, 3 Dwarf Rangers with throwing axes, 3 Dwarf Rangers with throwing axes and two-handed axes, 4 Dwarf Rangers with two-handed axes, 2 Dwarf Rangers with Dwarf Longbows.

Unlike most of the armies in the tournament, the Dwarven mail gleams in the sunlight. These little blokes are also anxious for a fight and prepared to repel any beating they are faced with.

Tavros' "Mountain Alliance": Durburz, Buhrdur, 20 Goblin Warriors with shields, 14 Goblin Warriors with spears, 6 Goblin Warriors with Orc bows, 4 Goblin Prowlers, 3 Wild Wargs, 1 Cave Troll.

The units in this army are varied and include a few neat conversions, like the Goblin you see here with a hat he claimed from a wizard who visited Moria once...

Captain Glot's "Free People of the West": Theoden, Haldir (Defender of Helm's Deep), Boromir of Gondor, 12 Warriors of Rohan with shields and throwing spears, 10 Warriors of Rohan with shields, 11 Warriors of Rohan with bows.

The Warriors of Rohan in this army form a solid number of units to support hte three heroes of this army. Each is well-detailed and solid fighters (though severely lacking in the resist-enemy-spell-casters department...which unfortunately we didn't have in this tournament).

The final army was Sir Percy Blakeney's "Isengard Unleashed": Uruk Captain with shield, Vrasku, 18 Uruk Warriors with shields, 8 Uruk Warriors with pikes, 6 Uruk Warriors with crossbows, 4 Uruk Berserkers.

Blakeney came all the way from Michigan to play with us (well, not really, but sort of) and he fielded an army of Uruk-Hai with smelly breath and eager spirits.

The Three Game Boards: Understanding the Rules and Terrain

Table 1 was an "Urban Meeting Engagement" game. Usually, in Meeting Engagement games, the center of the board is clear of terrain, forcing armies to fight on an even battlefield without gaining an advantage from terrain. What terrain pieces are on table are placed on the periphery and since the game is played until one side is reduced to 25% of its starting size, one army could sit behind terrain for most of the game if they wanted to. In this particular scenario, we have a ruined building in the center, surrounded by a marsh (difficult terrain) and a rocky ground (rocky difficult terrain). Next to these terrain pieces there were a few small walls that could be defended or fought over and a few pieces of terrain around the edges if people wanted to use them.

Here's a close-up of the building, brought by Tavros and Capt. Glot. The marsh you may recognize from a previous post.

Table 2 was a "High Ground" game. Instead of playing with the rule that a tied priority round results in everyone getting knocked to the ground, we instead nullified that rule and focused solely on the rules for getting up this particular high ground terrain piece. I'll be the first to say that there were a lot of rules, but you'll see more about that later.

You can see the level of detail that Zorro put into making this piece of terrain. Up close, it was quite the work of art - major kudos to him for putting this together and really making the games on this table tactically strenuous.

The final game was a "Domination" game. This game featured four objectives that were fought over by both sides, each starting in a corner (and basically claiming one at the start of the game). Splitting the board in half was a river that could be jumped over or crossed via bridges, but the current was too strong to swim across. This made for interesting choke points and daring jumps from bank to bank.

Tavros and Captain Glot brought this piece as well. You can see some of the detail on the water (and you may even recognize some of the Dwarf terrain pieces scattered on both sides of the river).

With this backdrop, the next few posts will be on the rounds of the tournament, with the results posted at the end of each post. Until tomorrow, happy battling!

Uruk-Hai Month: Coming (Again) Soon!

Ok, so...I'll be frank and honest, I've been thinking about putting my Uruk-Hai up on Ebay and seeing what my bidders try to give me. The fact is, as cool as Uruk-Hai are, they're difficult to use in the Strategy Battle Game and other armies can get similar attributes for their units at a lower total price. Espeically since I have an army of Wood Elves, Uruk-Hai just don't cut it, so it can be really depressing when they do poorly.

But, after the TMAT tournament, I've gotten a bit of a push to get things started again (thanks Blakeney). So this time around, we're going to work on converting some pikemen into crossbows and a shaman. I'm hoping that this will add some resiliency to the army and provide an extra punch (and thrill) to the games played.

You can see here the Uruk army as currently prepared: 37 units with a basic paint job and bases prepared. Soon, these bases will be painted with scorching black and the units will receive a protective gloss coating to keep their paint from chipping. I'm hoping that the muted colors of the Uruks, along with the dull shine on their armor will make a striking contrast to my other armies. We'll see how that goes. 

You can see from this shot all of the Uruks sitting in their box. You can see across the middle there a few crossbows in their early stages. Any ideas for what I should do next? 

P.S. If anyone reading this post is interested in this army in its current condition and wishes to buy it for $60, I'll gladly take them up on the offer.

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!

Conversion: Armored Legolas

For the second elf hero for my Rivendell army I opted to take the prince of Mirkwood with armor. However, seeing as GW doesn't make a version of Legolas with armor, I figured it would be a great opportunity for a bit of conversion work. Using a metal galadhrim archer as the base, I started with a simple head swap.

A view every elf opponent has longed to see: the pointy-eared princeling's head on a spike

I filled the gap under head by modeling hair and extending his cloak in the back. Not content with simply a Legolas wearing galadhrim armor, I added scale armor under his mail, extended the quiver, added exposed tunic at the waist, extended plate armor down leg, and added a sword & sash.

Considering that the elves of Mirkwood are related to Lothlorien, I'm okay with the galadhrim influence on the armor, but it is still different enough to be unique.

Paintjob:

flesh: (GW) elf flesh with 2 coats (GW) orgyn flesh wash (this turned out a little darker than I intended)

hair: (GW) graveyard earth with drybrush of (GW) desert yellow

tunic: (GW) hawk turquoise

mail: (P3) Pig Iron with (P3) turquoise ink

armor: (P3) burnished gold with (P3) turquoise ink

cloak: (GW) graveyard earth

shoes/leather scale armor/quiver: (Game Color) dark flesh

bow: (p3) battlefield brown w (p3) burnished gold detailing

sash: (Game Color) Imperial blue

Finally a light wash of (GW) Devlan Mud was applied to the whole model (avoiding the skin)

This completes my Rivendell army - and just in time. The tournament is next weekend. 4 weeks of work later, the Vanguard of Rivendell is ready for battle. Fleet of foot, keen of blade, and with quivers full of death for the bastions of evil. The elves are going to war. 

Terrain Update and Tournament Update

So it's March now, which means that the tournament is rapidly approaching. This time next week, six excited gamers will be celebrating the first organized game play tournament of our hobby experience and we'll be looking for bigger and better things. For my part, I'm excited to try my Dwarves out against these guys, but I'm honestly not sure how this is going to work out. One foe will be Goblins (with wargs, a Cave Troll, and Burdhur), while the other two will be Uruk-Hai heavy armies...unless the Dwarves are on fire, this could be a very up-hill fight.

I digress, though. After nearly a full work-week of no pics, I finally have them. I worked this past weekend on the terrain that I'm bringing to the tournament...and I decided that making the smithy's roof stay where I want it will take more work than I have time to give, so the smithy won't be coming. Sorry. Instead, I have a few pieces to briefly discuss here.

First, I made a trip out to Home Depot to get wall spackling paste and left quite happy, spending only $3.65. Tax included. Pretty good deal to add some detail to Middle-Earth. In testament of the excellent suggestions in comments last time, the pieces look much, MUCH better - some white still to cover, but that should be taken care of when the gray detail paint comes on. Whether this detail paint is able to go on before the tournament has yet to be decided.

Some pieces of terrain haven't been spackled yet, mostly because I haven't had the time. This is what they used to look like before spackling, and you can compare it to the next picture to see the difference.

Smoother surface, no? Like I said, they're still WIP, but they're definitely on their way.

Besides the mound of terrain that got spackling today, I worked on my woods. I've decided to glue down the trees instead of keeping them modular in order to avoid any discrepancies during the games about "trees moving." Since this has happened in a few friendly games (without the time-limit), in the interest of cutting down time, I'll make everyone's life a bit easier. The woods at the back still needs their base colored, but that will probably happen before the tournament...hopefully.

 I also did some extra detail to the marsh (close-up from last picture). For the purposes of our tournament, the entire base is difficult terrain (even if it looks green). I like this piece of terrain because it is a great equalizer - no one moves over it easily and it mixes water and grass features. It's not done yet, still need to make the water glisten.

The mountain outcrops (two large pieces) were also spackled, but I haven't gotten around to painting over them yet. Hopefully, this will happen before game-day. I also used a dry-brush technique to bring out some of the features for my rocky difficult terrain pieces (emphasis on rocky since I'm bringing Dwarf Rangers to the tournament). These pieces were put together from different parts for tech shipment cushioning...makes for great little rocks. The exception, of course, are the real rocks shown at the bottom (also rocky difficult terrain, though most of the base is taken up with rocks).

As far as the army goes, the Khazad Guards are now fully painted and I think look awesome. With a few minor adjustments, they look forward to hacking Orcs, Goblins, and Uruk-Hai this weekend (and whatever else is thrown at us for that matter). I've also added names to the bases of all my Rangers, which will go along with a companion sheet I bring to the tournament to establish what gear they have.

That's all for now - looking forward to the tournament in a few days!