Saturday 9 November 2024 & Friday 22 November 2024
As the Dark Lord’s power grows within Dol Guldur, increasing number of Orcs and other foul creatures are drawn to his evil. This increase has been noticed by the Elves living in the Greenwood. King Thranduil sends a band of his most trusted Rangers into the forest to track down the reason why these creatures are on the increase.
Participants
| Good (22 models) | Evil (24 models) |
| 2 Mirkwood Ranger Captain | 4 Castellans of Dol Guldur |
| 20 Mirkwood Rangers | 6 Giant Spiders |
| 6 Mirkwood Spiders | |
| 6 Fell Wargs | |
| 2 Bat Swarms |
Objectives
The game lasts for 10 turns.
If 2 or fewer of the 5 objectives are corrupted at the end of the game, the Good player.
The Evil player wins if 3 of more objectives are corrupted.
Special rules
Corrupting Objectives – If, during the End phase of any turn, there is a non-Prone Evil model in base contact with an objective marker, and that model did not shoot or fight during that turn, then that objective has been corrupted.
Healing Objectives – If, during the End phase of any turn, there is a non-Prone Good model in base contact with a corrupted objective marker, and that model did not shoot or fight during that turn, then that objective is no longer corrupted.
The game
3 of the 5 objective markers are placed equidistantly across the centre line of the board. The other 2 are placed in the centre of each of the north-west and north-east quarters of the board.
The elves start within 12″ of the northern board edge. The Evil player then deploys their force within 12″ of the southern board edge.
1G. I’ve positioned the elves in a long ‘gunline’ of bows, at 12″ from the northern board edge, hoping to get some shots in. My opponent tried to hide his creatures as much as possible, meaning only a shots were possible after movement. The elves managed to wound 2 different Mirkwood Spiders, while the creatures moved forward as much as possible, as long as cover was possible.
2E. The elves stay back, hoping to shoot some more creatures. Only 1 wound is landed on a Giant Spider however. The creatures move up and with their high movement they are already nearing the first objective markers.
3G. Not a good turn to get Priority. The elves do get a number of shots in, but surprisingly they all fail to wound.
4G. Elven shooting hasn’t removed a single enemy model so far. This means that now that combat will soon commence, the elves are actually outnumbered and generally outclassed (most Evil models have 2 attacks in this scenario). The elves do have a higher Fight value, so if my dice rolling can be okay I could still get the advantage. Unfortunately for me, my aura of bad dice rolling from previous campaigns comes back to haunt me. Rolling 6 1’s in 8 rolls, my elves get absolutely annihilated. And against spiders with Strength 5, their Defence 3 means they’ll die on 3’s. 7 Mirkwood Rangers die in combat, while only 1 Giant Spider is slain in return. I should also note that at this point, I wasn’t aware that the Mirkwood Rangers had Elven cloaks as their wargear. This means that if I knew this and positioned them better, they couldn’t so easily be charged. Which would help a lot in the fights.
The forces of Evil manage to corrupt 1 of the 5 objective markers.
5E. An important Priority as Evil can once again tie up every elf, except for two. One of those elves shoots and kills a wounded Giant Spider who was trying to corrupt an objective. However this doesn’t matter too much, because the Fight phase is another massacre for the elves. 7 Elves die. A Mirkwood Ranger Captain manages to win her fights, but rolls two 3’s to Wound (only needed 4’s…) Another 3 objective markers are corrupted, meaning Evil now controls 4 of the 5 objectives. With 5 turns more to go, but only 6 remaining models for Good versus 22 Evil models, Good concedes.
Aftermath
A very major victory for Evil. This means that the Evil player may decide where Spider models enter play on a 3+ (instead of a 4+) in the next scenario.
Post-game thoughts
I definitely misplayed here by forgetting about the elven cloaks. My opponent positioned and played well. My dice rolling was honestly also very bad, in both final two turns 7 out of my 8 dice were 1’s. Thematically I like the scenario. Gameplay wise I found it to be a bit fiddly. The reason is the dense board and the important role of shooting, meaning positioning and movement is extremely important. This raises lots of questions regarding line-of-sight. I think the elves need to shoot down as much models as they can, because in combats they will likely lose (less attacks) and they can’t reposition as easily as the extremely mobile spiders, bats and wargs. So even if I played optimally, I think Good has an uphill battle here. Most Evil models outclass the elven models and then there are also more of them. The only thing Evil lacks is Might, but I don’t feel the two Elven Captains really make up for the advantages Evil has and I don’t think Might is extremely useful in this match-up in this scenario. So all in all this scenario was not my favourite, but I did like it as a chance for learning and getting to know a lot of different Evil profiles that I didn’t know very well beforehand.
Let’s see if the elves fare better against the spiders in the next scenario when they try to hunt down the Queen.
A game that requires one side to shoot a lot and shoot well on a board full of terrain does seem tricky. I’d imagine the elves felt a sense of panic as the spiders closed in though elves are pretty stoic on screen so maybe not! I’ll be curious if the bonus that the evil side gets in the next scenario makes a difference or not. It certainly sounds useful!