Friday 16 October 2020 – Having defeated an Orc raid on Rivendell, an Elf force led by Glorfindel is pursuing the survivors towards the Ettenmoors. Unfortunately, as night comes down, the Orcs recover their courage and turn to face their pursuers. To make matters worse, Glorfindel’s scouts warn him that a Goblin war party has come down out of the mountains and has picked up the Elves’ trail. Caught between two enemies, Glorfindel orders a withdrawal to a ruined watchtower. Both the Orc and Goblin forces pursue the Elves to the watchtower, neither warband aware of the other’s existence, so focused are they on the presence of the Elves.
This scenario is found in the Shadow & Flame supplement, scenario number 6. It is not part of a campaign, as it is a stand-alone scenario part of the appendix.
Glorfindel, Elladan, Elrohir and Arwen, together with 15 Wood elves with armour and bows and 18 Wood elves with armour and elven blades or spears are pitted against a force of Orcs and a force of Goblins.
The orc force consists of 2 Orc captains on Foot, 1 Orc captain on Warg, 5 Orcs with two-handed weapons, 10 Orcs with shields, 5 Orcs with bows, 4 Warg Riders with bows and 4 Warg Riders with throwing spear and shield. The goblin force consists of 2 Goblin captains, 1 Cave troll with spear, 1 Cave troll with chain, 8 Goblins with spear, 8 Goblins with shield and 8 Goblins with bows.
The Evil player must kill three of the four Good Heroes. The Good player wins if both Evil forces are reduced to below half strength before the Evil player accomplishes his goals.
Both Evil forces are treated separately and will only be broken if their force is broken, they cannot make use of each other’s Heroic actions and roll separately for Priority.
In the first turn, the forces of Evil advance. They immediately get within Shooting range of the elves, but they can’t return fire yet because of their primitive Orc bows. The Elven shooting takes down one Goblin archer and one Orc archer.
In the next turn, the Elven bowfire is even more deadly. Six kills are made! Meanwhile the limited return fire from a number of Goblins fails to make any impact.
Turn 3 and a Goblin archer manages to kill an Elf by shooting. Two soldiers of Evil are slain.
In turn 4 the first forces of Evil reach the hill and charge the first line of Elven defenders. One Elf dies in combat, another is shot by a Goblin. Evil loses three troops and the Orc Captain on Warg loses a wound.
The Orcs and Goblins quickly realize the superior fighting skills of the Elves is beyond their ability. Their numbers don’t mean much in such a narrow fighting space. So a brave Cave troll rushes forward and hurls an Elf through 5 other Elfs. One of them doesn’t survive the hurl and the rest is knocked Prone.
The Orcs and Goblins are delighted, Evil seems to have found a strategy to get rid of those pesky Elves. Realizing this danger, Glorfindel and the elven twins Elladan and Elrohir try to make their way down the stairs, while the Elven defenders try to retreat.
This new plan of Glorfindel doesn’t come a moment too soon, as 4 Elves die this turn versus only one Goblin.
The next turn, the brave Troll kills another two Elves.
But Glorfindel has now made it to fight the trolls. It only takes one combat to kill the Troll that caused so much carnage.
The next Troll is despatched quite swiftly after that, though it does take two turns this time.
From here on out Glorfindel and his fellow Elf soldier keep pushing forward, first slaying the Orc captain on Warg and then continuing their way down. Meanwhile the Elf archers atop the watch tower kill some Orcs and Goblins here and there and there is no chance for Evil to even get close to fulfilling their objective. It doesn’t take a lot longer before both Evil forces have less than 50% of their starting forces remaining, meaning Good gets the victory.
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
This was pretty fun, though quite one-sided. I learned a lot by playing this scenario.
First off, Elven shooting is deadly. Secondly, the Elven fight value is very, very good and very important in fights. Thirdly, Glorfindel is an absolute monster. Although I didn’t actually get to use them in this scenario, I’m fairly confident all three of Elrond’s children are very good too. There was no way Evil had the slightest chance of winning this scenario.
Making the hill only accessible via one path was very much advantageous for the Good side, so for balance reasons that was definitely a mistake on my part. It also would probably make for a more exciting scenario if the hill could be entered at all sides, as was very likely intended, looking at the photographs in the Shadow & Flame supplement. I chose to play in the way I played for at least two reasons however: 1) This was much easier to do using the terrain I had finished specifically for this scenario. I also think thematically it would make more sense for a watch tower to be placed on a hill that is well defended naturally by making it virtually inaccessible for possible enemies. 2) I wondered how this would play out.
Well, in response to point 2 it went pretty much as I expected. The Cave Troll hurling was a nice surprise and a weakness in this plan. But Glorfindel being so crazy good with Fight 7, Courage 7, 3 Attacks, 3 Might and his Lord of the West special rule that allows him to re-roll one D6 both in the duel and the to Wound step meant even the strong Trolls were incredibly outclassed.
It reminds me of the incorrect (and thus fake) Tolkien quote “I killed a Balrog. You are so outclassed it’s not even funny.” – Glorfindel, to the Nazgûl on the banks of the Bruinen, book I, chapter XII.
To summarize I definitely had fun, but I feel this scenario is not very balanced and therefore not really replayable in its current state. Even if the hill would be accessible from all sides, I think Evil still has a tough time here. Using the old profiles instead of the new ones would make Glorfindel slightly less powerful, but then the Trolls wouldn’t have Brutal Power Attacks either so I don’t think that would fix it. I think a good fix would be less Elves and/or more forces of Evil, and obviously allow the hill to be climbed from all sides.
Thematically it’s pretty cool and a similar scenario would be hugely enjoyable and exciting in a Battle Companies setting I would expect. With a lower model count, the losses are more significant so it would feel even more claustrophobic for the defenders.
