Radagast has delivered the message to the White Council, informing them of Gandalf’s journey into Dol Guldur. Now he must make haste through the Mirkwood Forest in order to save Gandalf. But giant spiders are drawn to the evil of the Necromancer, and seek to feast upon Radagast.
Playthrough: 1v1
Played on: Saturday 7 March 2026
Scenario: Fall of the Necromancer (2021) #12 (out of 13)
Ruleset / profiles: 7th edition (2024 War of the Rohirrim Edition)
Participants
| Good (1 model) | Evil (12 models) |
| Radagast the Brown on Sleigh | 6 Mirkwood Hunting Spiders (previously named Great Spiders) |
| 6 Mirkwood Giant Spiders (previously named Mirkwood Spiders) |
Objectives
The game lasts until one side has completed their objective.
The Good side wins if Radagast can escape the board via the southern board edge.
The Evil side wins if Radagast is slain.
Special rules
Spider Nests – Good models treat Spider Nests as difficult terrain. Additionally, whenever a Spider model is slain, keep it to one side. At the start of each turn, before Priority is determined, roll a D6 for each Spider model kept aside. On a 5+, that model will re-enter the board via one of the Spider Nests. Roll a further D6. On a 1-3, the Good player chooses which Spider Nest the model enters from, on a 4+ the Evil player decides. Models that arrive in this manner are placed anywhere within or touching the Spider Nest and may act as normal that turn.
These are Rhosgobel Rabbits – Whilst riding his Sleigh, whenever Radagast charges into combat, the Sleigh will inflict two Strength 3 hits upon one model it has charged. If, after this charge, Radagast is unengaged and has movement remaining, he may complete his move in any way the Good player wishes, and may even charge again if able. {In the new profiles, this is a standard feature of the Sleigh, and they are Strength 4 hits. That does not make any difference for this scenario as the Spiders are then still wounded on a 4+}.
Campaign bonus(Good) – Radagast rolls a D6 after a Giant Spider successfully webs him. On a 6, the web misses.
Pre-game tactics and thoughts
It will be fun to use a Chariot for the first time. Against the Spider’s low Defence, the impact hits will wound on a 4+. I hope Radagast can keep up momentum. With his 5 Attacks (2 from him, 2 from the Chariot, 1 from Sebastian) and higher Fight value, he should be able to win most combats. When he Charges he even gets to 6 Attacks and Knocks the Spiders down if he wins. So it seems like this should go okay for Radagast.
I will cast Terrifying Aura on the first turn with 2 Will and then Aura of Dismay on the second turn with 3 Will. That will be a big boon, as the Spiders are fairly low Courage. Other useful spells are Transfix and Nature’s Wrath, but they’ll be more of a bonus with the free Will point. Renew could be used on the Chariot, which has 4 Wounds.
The game
The game is played on a 6’x4′ board, representing the forest of Mirkwood. It is densely packed with trees and bushes, but the gaps between them should be big enough for Radagast’s Sleigh to fit trough. There are 4 Spider Nests on one half of the board, opposite from Radagast’s starting position.
1G. -> Good begins. Radagast successfully casts Terrifying Aura using 2 Will (1 free, 1 normal), pivots and moves 10″. The Spiders move up maximally. 1 Spider gets in range to shoot a Web, but misses.
2G. -> Good begins. Radagast casts Aura of Dismay using 3 Will, but needs to spend a Might point to successfully cast it. I regret not spending 1 more Will, as I have no real need for it later in the game and Might is more valuable. The Spiders do cast Terror, but Radagast’s Courage value is a 3+. Radagast charges into 2 Giant spiders, 1 of whom is killed by the Impact hits.
A Hunting Spider succeeds their Courage test and charges Radagast. But Radagast wins the combat and kills both Spiders.
3G. -> Good begins. 2 Spiders respawn in their Nests, one closest and one farthest from Radagast. Feeling pretty good so far, Radagast sees a route with 2 Spiders which he beliefs he can just mow down with his Sleigh. He casts a Transfix with his free Will point, but it doesn’t go off. The Impact hits kill 1 Spider and another Spider is killed in combat.
4E. -> Evil begins. 1 Spider respawns, coming from the Nest farthest away. Radagast is charged by just 1 Spider (his Aura of Dismay is doing something this time around), but no Wounds are done in the combat.
5G. -> Good begins. 2 Spiders return. Radagast tries a Nature’s Wrath, but fails. A Web hits Radagast, but he uses a Fate point to prevent becoming Paralysed. 1 Spider is killed, but Radagast is not really progressing.
6E. – 12E. -> Evil gets Priority 7 turns in a row. Radagast can’t move up and is often losing Combats or not Wounding anything. Meanwhile his Might store (to win particularly scary Combats), Fate store (to prevent becoming Paralysed) and Chariot Wound store (for losing Combats) is dwindling. Eventually, Radagast is swallowed whole. Evil victory!
Aftermath
Victory for Evil. This means that in the next and final scenario, Radagast starts with just 1 Might.
Post-game thoughts
Oof! Those dice!
Well, you can imagine I was pretty disappointed how that went. Losing Priority 7 times in a row, combined with Radagast consistently losing his Combats even with 5 Attacks, or failing to wound against Defence 3 Spiders, made me feel pretty irritated with my dice. I will discuss this first and then give my thoughts on the scenario in general.
The odds of losing Priority 7 times in a row is about 0,305%, or 1 in 327. So that would mean this would be a pretty rare occurrence, I don’t think I’ve played close to 327 games of SBG so far. But, this type of stuff seems to happen more often than this. This was especially evident in my Siege of Gondor playthrough, but such a Priority streak has also happened at least once in my favour as well. So let’s dig a little deeper.
This game lasted 12 turns. What are the odds that one player will get a 7-turn Priority streak or longer in a game of this length? Those odds are actually not that low: about 2% or 1 in 50 games. A 6-turn streak would already be 5,6% or 1 in 18 games, which is thus fairly common if you play a lot of scenarios. I don’t think that is a particular example of good game design, rather it seems to me a simple design decision which was probably fine about 25 years ago, but could use a modern update.
Priority is so key to how the game goes, especially with Narrative scenarios where there is often a low number of Might available. But even with Might, you have a similar and even worse problem with Heroic Roll-offs. Because they are 50/50, you could easily have someone win all the Heroic Roll-offs. At least with Priority, you win on a tie.
So how to fix this? This actually seems to be pretty straightforward. You could let the player who lost the Priority roll last turn roll 2 D6 and use the higher value. Official rules give a 42% chance of winning Priority if you had it last turn. With this rule, that would go down to about 25%. Which means it could still happen, but the chances of Priority passing back and forth would be a lot higher and long streaks are much rarer.
But there is an even simpler solution, one that I am sure I have already seen people implement (but can’t remember where): have the Player who had Priority last turn get a -1 modifier on their new Priority roll. This would make the chance of winning Priority 28% if you had it last turn. If that is still too low, you could let ties after the -1 penalty be re-rolled, which would bump the chances of winning to 32%. But that would come at the cost of having to roll even more dice, which is probably not ideal.
Given that one of my biggest grievances with this game is the swingyness of the die rolling, I am very open to trying out this houserule in the future. I will have to discuss with my opponent of course. You lose a bit of variance, but the game already has so much variance that I think that is actually a good thing.
Additionally for the Heroic Roll-offs, I might implement some houserules as well. I will likely share that in another post once I’ve discussed with my opponent.
I am very interested in your thoughts and your experiences, so please do leave a comment if you have the time! 🙂
The scenario
The scenario itself actually seems pretty fun. Under normal circumstances, Radagast should be able to get pretty far before he gets whittled down. The Impact hits are super fun (for the Good player). And the respawning Spiders make it so that you definitely just want to traverse the board as fast as possible. I also like that the objective isn’t just to kill X units, but to actually traverse the large board as fast as possible. With 3 Fate which can now auto-prevent a Paralysing Web (contrary to having to roll a 4+ on the Fate point in the previous ruleset when this scenario was written), means Radagast has a better chance of not getting webbed.
So I think the scenario itself is probably fine, and pretty fun!
In the next and final scenario of this campaign, the White Council confronts the Necromancer in Dol Guldur.
That is a bloody shame! That chariot is Finecast, I think, and is probably a pain to work with and to get a 6×4 board together with terrain and have it go this way is not what you want to see. I’d be tempted to try this one again and see if the results vary just because there was some strange luck afoot!
I think house ruling is well worth trying! I know there is tension in the priority roll in MESBG but I prefer Fallout’s system where whichever side that has the lowest model count, goes first automatically. Fallout uses a model by model activation system so the side with more models gets what feel like extra actions because the lower model count side can’t really react after they’ve taken all their actions until the following turn. If the model count is a tie then the priority automatically shifts to the other side as well. This system wouldn’t translate well to MESBG’s rules but I wanted to mention it since I really enjoy it and perhaps there is room for MESBG to improve in this regard in the future.
Yes, I should definitely try this scenario again sometime. Interesting how Fallout uses that system, seems sensible! I think MESBG is one of the few games where you activate all of your models before the opponent has a go. Most other games I know use the switching back and forth between individual units or squads. There are pro’s and cons to both approaches, but I’m not sure a unit based activation system would really work for MESBG. What I especially like about it is that it frees up some mind space, because you don’t have to consider which unit your opponent will activate next. However this does mean that having Priority or winning a Heroic Move-off is so vital and can be absolutely devastating. I’m interested to see how the game feels by houseruling it so that Priority switches sides more often.
I don’t have access to my game now, but I think SPQR does priority different- whoever gets priority according to the dice can decide to go first or second. Haven’t tried it with an opponent so don’t know how it works in practice.
In the newest edition of MESBG (7th / War of the Rohirrim), this is also the case. I think this is a great change and gives players more agency while not increasing the complexity. But that still leaves the problem of long Priority streaks being more prevalent than I’d like them to be.