Rohan vs Mordor

Geoff and I finally played our delayed 72AP HOTT game last night. We used Geoff's 15mm Middle Earth armies, which were assembled over may years from figures bought at bring and buys; they are a mix of old and new figures and different painting styles, but he has a load of them and they look great en masse.

Anyway I selected an army from his Riders of Rohan figures, and Geoff went for a Mordor army. And here they are, all set up.

Rohan. I had one command of mainly spears, with some supporting knights. They were led by Theoden. Eowyn was in the army as a hero general. Her command was a mix of knights and riders. My final command was some ally ents. Led by Treebeard they were a mixture of behemoths and woodsmen warbands.

The army of Mordor. One command, led by a Ringwraith hero, was all hordes. Another was a mix of Olog-hai blades and warg riders. And a third in the centre was Uruk-hai warband and trolls under a Ringwraith C-in-C.

On Rohan's left the knights and riders under Eowyn faced a lot of hordes.

Ents in Rohan's centre.

The woodsmen were briefly inconvenienced by Shelob, but she was quickly driven off.

Meanwhile on Rohan's right the two armies were close. At the bottom of the picture you can just see knights and riders about to engage in a wood, in an attempt to outflank the enemy line.

Rohan spears vs Mordor Olog-hai. The advantage was with Mordor, but the spears were just there to hold them in place whilst the battle was won elsewhere.

And here's where I hoped to do well. Rohan's knights charged into the massed orc hordes. There was great slaughter. Of orcs (just in case you were wondering).

Rohan's riders stared down more orcish hordes on Rohan's far left.

The centre. Here the ents were fighting trolls whilst the supporting warband of both sides tried to avoid the enemy behemoths.

It got messy. The behemoth fight turned sideways and now the warband scrambled about trying to stay out of the recoil zones.

Orcs and riders met at last. Despite lacking the punch of Rohan's knights, their riders set to killing orcs.

On the other flank there's been some push and shove, but very few losses. Both sides took a moment to reorganise their lines.

The ents were getting the upper-hand against the trolls. And the woodsmen were finishing off the Uruk-hai.

Although Geoff was bringing back hordes as fast as he could, Rohan was riding them down faster. Now their general was looking exposed.

Over on Rohan's far right the skirmish in the wood had seen losses on both sides, but Rohan finally prevailed.

A Ringwraith comes under attack from lots of Rohan warriors.. But a hero general is a tough proposition, and fought them off.

A brief hairy moment for Treebeard as he was flanked by trolls. But he prevailed, forcing the opposition back.

Rohan kept up the pressure on the orc hordes.

Treebeard finished off more trolls, and Mordor's centre command broke.

However on Rohan's right Theoden was killed by some Olog-hai ...

... and that broke Rohan's spear command, most of which fled the field immediately.

Rohan had another crack at the Ringwraith.

But at that point Geoff counted up his losses and realised that he's lost the game the bound before (indeed before Theoden was killed, but we decided that a Nelsonian death in his hour of victory was a perfect end to the game). In fact the game was very close. The loss of Theoden's command put Rohan close to breaking; if Geoff had been able to fight on he could have pretty much brought back enough hordes to clinch a win.

This was a fun game. There wasn't a lot in the way of grand sweeping moves, but there was some interesting shuffling of troops in the various melees in attempt to get overlaps or prevent flanking moves. 

Thanks to Geoff for a fun battle.