Wednesday 19 February 2020 – Having escaped the assault on the ranger base at the Forbidden Pool, Frodo, Sam and Gollum will now leave the city of Osgiliath to try and enter the lands of Mordor undetected. They escape through the sewers and are escorted by a small patrol of warriors of Minas Tirith. They are not alone in the sewers, however… This scenario is found in DeAgostini BGiME magazine #25 and is played exactly as described, except I’m using the new 2018 profiles and Gollum is added to the participants.
On the Good side we have Frodo, Sam, Gollum and six warriors of Minas Tirith. In theory Evil has an endless supply of Mordor orcs at their disposal, however a maximum of 12 Mordor orcs can be in play at any given time. This game is played with modular sewer terrain, of which only the entrance is in play at the start of the scenario. If a model stops their movement at the edge of a modular terrain piece, it can perform a scout roll. This represents peering into the darkness and will then reveal a new piece of the sewer at the end of the Movement phase. On a 1 this is a junction, on a 2 a T-junction, on a 3 a corner piece and on a 4+ a straight part. After the sixth part of sewer has been placed, every next scouting roll is preceded by an exit roll. On the roll of a 6 the next piece of terrain added to the playing area is the exit. The next scouting roll only requires a 5, then a 4, etc. This means that at the most 11 non-exit sewer pieces can be in play before the exit is placed. At the least this number will be 6. Good wins if Frodo survives and reaches the exit, Evil wins if Frodo is killed.
In this scenario Good doesn’t automatically get Priority the first turn. Every time Evil gets priority, they roll on the Reinforcement table, representing Orcs that have been sneaking in the dark and revealing themselves. On a 1-2 one Orc of their choosing enters on any sewer part in play. On a 3-4 there are 2 Orcs that enter and on 5-6 three Orcs enter. They can Move and Shoot in the turn of their arrival, just not Charge. They are also not allowed to enter within 1″ of any Good model.
Good gets Priority the first turn. This means no Orcs appear out of the shadows just yet and Good can march along.
The Good side maintains Priority in the first four turns, giving them the time to move up and scout the road ahead. In turn 5, a single Orc appears out of the darkness, who a single warrior of Minas Tirith then charges (not the most competitive choice, but I thought this would be more thematic).
The Orc wins the fight, but fails to slay the Gondorian, thanks to his Shield (requiring a 6 instead of a 5). The other Men of Minas Tirith move up and Gollum charges and kills the Orc in turn 6. In turn 7, Evil gets Priority again and a new Orc appears.
In turn 8 another two Orcs appear. One of them takes out one of the Gondorian escorts.
A bit more Orcs are now present and it takes the Good side quite some effort to kill them. In fact, none of the Orcs get killed and Sam gets wounded. His single remaining Fate point is spend successfully to negate the Wound. Meanwhile, the warriors of Minas Tirith not near the Orcs spread out to try and cover as much ground as possible in their search for the exit. So far, Good has been pretty lucky with Priority (in 10 turns Good won Priority 7 turns). Their luck continues when the second ‘exit roll’ reveals the exit to the sewers.
After a couple more turns, the Orc being supported by an Orc spearman finally gets taken down and so does the Orc spearman. A couple of new Orcs appear and a two-handed axe carrier slays a lone warrior of Minas Tirith.
Frodo, Sam and Gollum make their way through the dirty sewer water in the hope of escaping. Frodo fails his jump back to solid ground, giving Evil more time to have more Orcs enter the board. But Good is still quite lucky and only once does a new Orc enter the scene. This gives our Heroes enough time to escape from the sewers.
Aftermath
Good wins the scenario, meaning they now get +3 + 2 (for the named Heroes surviving) + 5 (bonus condition for Frodo, Sam and Gollum surviving) = 40 victory points. Evil has 33 victory points. This is the last scenario in the Two Towers campaign. Seeing as the difference in victory points is less than 15, both Rohan and Isengard still exist. Because Rohan still exists and the Ringbearer is still alive, Good wins the Two Towers campaign.
Post-game thoughts
This was a fun little scenario, that probably would have been nicer if I didn’t take pictures every turn and had an actual opponent. It was over very quickly and the low model count made every action count more (though due to mediocre stats without big heroes everyone seemed pretty tough to kill). Good also had quite a bit of luck with their Priority rolls. In the end, the game took 18 (mostly short) turns, of which there were only 5 turns where Evil had Priority. Considering this was Evil’s only way for his troops to appear, this is a pretty big deal. Things could easily have been different had there been a more even spread in the Priority distribution.
The modular sewer pieces were fun to use and it was nice seeing the board fill up. I didn’t bother to add many details to the pieces because this is likely the only scenario I’ll use them (and I generally don’t like the extra work for small details, I’ll admit), but I think if someone is more motivated to do so you could have a really good and unique looking gaming board.
Gollum is quite the asset for Good, with a Fight 4, Strength 4 and 2 Attacks. In the original scenario he isn’t present, which would make it more difficult for Good. Perhaps that would make the game a bit more tense. This playthrough I was never really worried for Frodo and Sam. Frodo also didn’t ever really need to use the One Ring in this playthrough. It would’ve been interesting to have to resort to that tactic.
I recommend this scenario for its quickness, fun factor and low model count. The only downside of this scenario is that it does require very specific terrain that you probably won’t get to re-use a lot. Though I suppose you could proxy the modular terrain pieces. But then I think you’ll also lose some of the charm of this scenario. That concludes the Two Towers section of the campaign. I’ll write more about it in the upcoming Two Towers Statistics & Discussion post.
In the next scenario of the Lord of the Rings campaign and the first scenario in the Return of the King campaign, Frodo and Sam make it to Shelob’s Lair, where a certain spider is anxious to feed on the Hobbits.