Monday 05 October 2020 – Upon taking leave of Tom Bombadil, the Hobbits travel through the Barrow Downs towards Bree. As night comes on, a chill mist comes down, and the Hobbits stray from the path, soon losing each other in the hills. Danger lurks within the mist as the Barrow-wights try to lure the Hobbits into their dank tombs and ritually sacrifice them. Will the Hobbits realise their danger in time to call for help or will they be slain and their remains doomed to lie in ancient tombs for the remaining ages of the world?
This scenario is found in the Shadow & Flame supplement, scenario number 5. It is not part of a campaign, as it is a stand-alone scenario part of the appendix.
The four Hobbits start 6 inches apart from each other. The 4 Barrow wights all start within their barrow. The board edge with the trees is part of the Old Forest, the Hobbits need to go towards the opposite side towards Bree. If three Hobbits escape off the Bree table edge, Good wins. Evil wins if Frodo is slain or if two Hobbits are sacrificed in a Barrow.
While in a Barrow, a Barrow-wight gets to roll a D6 if it loses a wound, on a 3+ the wound is not lost. Additionally it gets a free point of Will each turn while it remains in the Barrow.
The mist reduces visibility of the Hobbits to 6″. Additionally, before the move of each Good character, roll a D6. On a ‘1’, Evil gets to move that model, though he may not move the model into or out of combat or cause it direct harm. The mist is cleared when Tom Bombadil enters the table.
From the turn when a Hobbit first sees a Barrow-wight, he may make one D6 roll every Move phase, trying to call for Tom Bombadil. Tom enters the next turn if a ‘6’ is rolled in this way. Only Hobbits that have spotted a Barrow-wight gets to call on Tom.
The Hobbits cannot be slain directly by the Barrow-wights. If the Barrow-wight inflicts the final wound on a Hobbit model, the Hobbit becomes Paralysed, exactly as if the magical power of Paralyse has been successfully cast. He can then be dragged around by the Barrow-wight, who needs to bring the paralysed model towards a Barrow where on a 4+ as part of a D6 roll, the Hobbit gets ritually sacrificed.
Good has Priority in the first turn because it is a Narrative scenario. Sam gets lost in the fog and walks right towards the barrow (he rolled a ‘1’ on the D6 mist roll). The other Hobbits move towards Bree. The Barrow-wights get out of their barrows and move towards the Hobbits.
The Barrow-wight in the above pictures moves to Pippin and tries to Paralyse him using 2 points of Will. Double ‘1’s and Pippin is fine, well, except for seeing a ghost!
In the next turn Pippin tries to call for Tom Bombadil, but his cries for help get absorbed in the mist. Good has Priority again so the Hobbits move forward, but Merry then gets Paralysed by a wight.
When Good gets Priorty again the next turn, Pippin rushes to try and help Merry. Unfortunately when Evil moves, Pippin gets Paralysed too! The same thing happens for Frodo. Tom still hasn’t heard the Hobbits cries.
Evil Priority now and it’s looking bleak for Good when even Sam gets Paralysed. All Hobbits are now fast asleep, ready to be taken and dragged off by the wights. This is then exactly what happens.
But, Merry awakes from his slumber, right before he entered the barrow (rolling a ‘6’ as part of the Paralyse effect at the end of the turn).
Frodo also awakens and so does Sam.
Nothing exciting much happens in the Fights. There is a lot of back-and-forth the following turns, but all the while Pippin gets dragged off to a Barrow and the wight tries to ritually sacrifice him.
Sam loses a Fate and a Might point and Merry loses his only Fate point. But hope is on the horizon, as Tom Bombadil has finally heard the cries of the Hobbits.
Since Sam is Paralysed again, Tom decides to try and help Sam. This is not as easy as it may seem, as he still has to travel quite some distance to reach him. Meanwhile, Frodo escapes towards Bree, while Pippin is still stuck in a Barrow with a wight that is apparently not very good at ritual sacrifice.
After four turns of Pippin being stuck in a barrow, waiting to get slaughtered, I realise I forgot to roll his ‘awaken’ roll at the end of every turn. Rolling for those past turns now, he should already have been freed from his captor, so I decide to move him out of the barrow.
In the meantime Sam has also been dragged into a barrow, but the ritual sacrifice also failed here and Tom Bombadil then awoke Sam with his Refreshing song. When the Barrow-wight haunting Sam was lured outside of his barrow, Tom cast a second Banishment on him and the wight dissipated in the air.
After a number of turns moving 4″, then being charged by a 6″ moving Wight, not much happening in the fight, rinse and repeat, Pippin also managed to escape towards Bree. Tom Bombadil banishes another Barrow-wight, but has spent a lot of his Will points and therefore can’t banish a third. He can charge the wight one last time though, giving Merry and Sam some time to escape. Tom runs off after having 0 Will left and his plan fails when Evil gets Priority next turn.
Somewhere around this point I realize I forgot the Hobbits were unarmed. Not that it would have made a huge difference, but it would have resulted in the Barrow-wights winning a few more fights perhaps. Merry gets dragged to a Barrow while Sam runs towards Bree. He does get stopped every turn because of the wight moving faster and then charging him. With Evil getting Priority for a number of turns, the net movement is so slow that Merry gets sacrificed in a barrow in the meantime. Poor Merry!
Sam does make it to Bree safely, eventually, resulting in a victory for Good.
Aftermath
Good victory! Because this is part of the Appendix of the Shadow & Flame supplement, there is no effect on future scenarios.
Post-game thoughts
Well, I don’t think I’ve played a game of SBG where I forgot so much about the special rules. That was a bit annoying (but really my fault). Next time when there are this many special rules I should write down points that I’d easily forget (such as the D6 roll at the end of each turn for every Paralysed model), or place a marker somewhere. And perhaps not let a day pass between reading the rules and playing the scenario.
Other than that I think this is a pretty fun scenario, mostly because of the theme and setting. It didn’t feel very balanced towards the end (and started to become a bit boring), but initially it was quite tense and thematic. So what is, according to me, the problem? The problem is that the Barrow-wights will eventually run out of Will. Using the new profiles, they have the Blades of the Dead special rule, meaning they use the opponent’s courage value rather than their defence value for their To Wound rolls. Against low defence (D3) but quite courageous Hobbits (C6 for Frodo and Sam, C4 for Merry and Pippin), this means it is harder for the wights to land wounds on the Hobbits. They need to fully ‘kill’ the Hobbits before they get Paralysed in combat, so this takes some effort, more than casting the Paralyse spell. The Hobbits again get an advantage in the new rules, since Resistant to Magic now allows one additional Will die at every resist roll, instead of just when they’ve run out of Will. So the Barrow-wights have a harder time with the new rules and profiles.
The Barrow-wights have been buffed to have 2 Wounds rather than 1, but since the Hobbits are unarmed it’s nearly impossible for the Hobbits to land wounds anyway (S2 against D7, so requiring a 6/4+). The only way to do it is by using Might points and that’s a risk. Tom Bombadil does have the Banishment spell now, which allows him to wound Spirit models, so the 2 Wounds are useful against this. To be honest if there was no Banishment I think the scenario would become even more tiresome, because then you can only use Tom to stall the wights while the Hobbits try to run for Bree. So I think the inclusion of this spell is definitely an improvement.
Tom still can’t make strikes in the new rules, which I understand, but I think maybe in this scenario they should make an exception. For example making it so that he can cast a free Banishment by (automatically) winning the fight. That seems the only real way to get rid of the wights and seems to be more thematic than just pushing the Wight a meter or so away.
So what has been changed for this scenario in the new Quest of the Ringbearer book? Nothing that I could spot, when compared to the Fellowship of the Ring journey book version, as far as I could tell. Compared to this version the Wights get the free Will within 3″ of a Barrow rather than just inside the Barrow and it’s easier to call for Tom (5+ instead of 6). After Tom, Goldberry can also make it towards the table. Everything else seems to be the same. Which I think is odd given the profile changes.
So how would I change it? For one thing adding the Banishment in Fights by Bombadil so that it hopefully becomes less of a drag towards the end. While I love the Goldberry model, I don’t recall her coming to the Barrow Downs in the book so maybe not add her? (like in this version of the scenario). I also think the Blades of the Dead special rule on the wights don’t make a lot of sense here. It only makes the fights quite dull because the chances of wounding a Hobbit are quite low with just 1 Attack and Frodo and Sam have a healthy amount of Wounds, Might and Fate to withstand it. And it’s not like they die, they only get Paralysed. Maybe dealing a wound should be enough to Paralyse a Hobbit. The tension just isn’t there in the fights, the Priority roll-off is actually much more exciting (and it really shouldn’t be here, you have unarmed Hobbits fighting spirits, that should be scary!). Finally, I think the need of a ‘6’ for Tom Bombadil to be successfully called upon makes for a more exciting game than on a 5+ as in the Journey Book and Quest for the Ringbearer book.
With these changes I think the balance might be fairer and the scenario will likely be a bit faster paced than the slog fest this became after Tom made it to the wights. I may sound quite negative, but I’m trying to be helpful here. It is a really cool scenario with a lot of potential! And I love the theme and setting. I think it could just work a little bit better with some rule changes.
