"Pelennor Fields " Topic

Pelennor Fields: Turns 1-3

Initial positions were chosen by the moderator (me), and meant to capture the 2 large waves of the Witch King's troops from the SPI board game Gondor, from which the rules were modified for miniatures. See the gameboard geek site boardgamegeek.com

or Mike and David's Tolkien Boardgame Collecting site

link

for more info on SPI's "Gondor", which was included in later versions of SPI's classic "War of the Ring" game, along with "Sauron," for which I also have a miniatures version. My brother and I played a version that came out in SPI's gaming magazine "Strategy & Tactics", but that was back in the late 70's (or Second Age)… Photos of the first 3 turns of Gondor are at this link:

link

And now to the action…

The strategy of the Witch King players was to attack with everything as soon as possible taking advantage of the night turns and numerical superiority. Turns 2-6 out of 16 total are night turns; orc's are "fanatical" during the night turns and score automatic hits in melee combat. Unfortunately, the Orcs are pretty poor troops, and their hits usually amount to nothing, since Gondorians on the walls can ignore retreat results unless they take casualties.

Due to the superiority of the Gondor infantry, only 1 missile unit of Gondor was half eliminated in the fist 3 turns, while 6 Orc units were slain. Even during the first night turn, when Gandalf failed in his magical attempt to break Sauron's darkness, the orcs charging up their ladders and attacking from siege towers to engage the Gondorian infantry were not only ineffective in causing any casualties, they were slaughtered themselves for the most part. Lots of the carnage was caused by vats of boiling oil that was spilled on the hapless orcs. For the Lord of the Nazgul, at least there are only 4 of those oil attacks left on the first wall. The fires and heads you may see in the photos are from shots fired by the Witch King's catapults, too bad for him that none of the fires resulted in destruction of any Gondorian catapults or cauldrons of oil.

The quality of the second wave of troops is far superior to the first on average, and they are pulling Grond, which will arrive next turn and begin to bash in the main gate. The second wave includes Trolls, Easterlings and the Army of Harad. But unbeknownst to the Witch King, the Army of Rohan is fast approaching (I guess you probably knew that bit)! They can arrive as soon as turn 5 with 1/3 probability. Can the Witch King make any progress on the assault before the Pony Men and their retched King arrive?

Stay tuned for the next segment in 2 weeks.

Very cool! Where did the castle come from? Is it a scratch build or a commercial set?

Very enjoyable, great photo's.
It looks like you guys had a really fun time.

Thanks for the comments, Gents.

The walls, towers and gates (first 2 boundaries of Minas Tirith) were made from Zvezda Fantasy Fortress kits. What you see in the photos is almost the entire contents of 3 sets (which was purchsed for $30 USD a set). A quick look on line and I cant find anything less than 96 pounds or 125 euros for a single set.

Thanks to this link for saving me a bundle (or I would have had to scratch build):

TMP link

In fact, the two wall sections used up all of the castle bits from 3 sets, exept 3" of wall, 1 tower, and 1 gate.

The Witch King's mount (was supposed to be a dragon), catapults, oil cauldrons, battering ram, and large wooden shield sections (cannot recall what those are actually called in siege terminology) are also from the kits, & they contained lots of troops, bases, decals, and balistas that were not used). The concept was to recreate every unit from the original SPI counter sheet, and I was able to do that; actually I added one extra unit per side so the Gondorian forces under siege could at least man the outer walls and towers fully at start.

The inner fort and tower are pseudo-scratch built from foam, balsa wood and plaster. I say psuedo becuase the inner fort was actually pieced togeter on a common foam base from 4 castle quadrants that you get in a set of Milton Bradley's "Samuri Swords." This was originally made by my friend Rick to serve as the Hornburg, but is seeing new service now.

The siege towers are also from Zvezda, and were fun and easy to assemble. I need to do a bit more stain work and I'll be competely happy with them, but it was too cold to do that prior game day, so it will have to wait for spring.

Lots of the battle remains so the fun will continue… but if the Witch King keeps rolling like he has been, we might have to see an early retreat to the black gate!

It looks like you used alot of the old Heritage minis in your battle of 5 armies game, too cool!

Yes!

Der Kriegspielers, Ral Partha, Minifigs, and Mithril. But mostly Heritage Elan Merch (my favorite overall).

For Pelennor Fields, I had to incorporate some Orcs of the White Hand, but Saruman wasn't using them so I thought what the heck.

Turns 4 to 6:

More of the same bitter defeat for the Witch King at the start of session #2. His troops cannot take the outer walls of the City no matter how hard they press, instead casualties mount for Orcs as they continue their onslaught against the stout defenders. Their masters hope that eventually forcing even one Gondorian unit to retreat will create a void that can be exploited by Sauron's reserves. Turns 2-6 are night turns; Sauron's forces do not have to roll for hits, instead they achieve automatic hits and roll only for damage or retreat, that is, unless Gandalf's magic intervenes. Each of these turns, Gandalf does indeed attempt to break the darkness, and he is successful on two turns, but the Witch King eventually is able to stalemate Gandalf, and he cannot break the darkness in the final two night turns.

The Lord of the Nazgul also casts a spell in order to active the great ram, Grond. The spell is so successful that the gate is shattered on the first attempt! A unit of Mountain Trolls is first into the breach, but they are instantly killed as boiling oil is spilled on the poor brutes.

On the 5th turn, with just 2 rounds of combat and siege left prior to the dawn, the banners of Rohan are seen sweeping across the northern fields of Pelennor. The Pony Men attack in 2 Eoreds; Theoden leading the main force and Eomer leading a smaller force that starts to the east. As the Riders are seen in the distance, the Haradrim and Easterlings prepare a defense. Their Mumakil are spread out stop a general charge (horses will not approach Oliphants), so the Riders under the King unleash a torrent of arrows instead, destroying one unit of Mumakil.

On the ramparts of the City, the Orcs finally have their breach! 1 ½ units of Gondorians are destroyed the Orcs take a section of the wall. In the City below, Haradrim Cavalry rush in the broken gate and engage the Swan knights of Dol Amroth, who are forced to retreat.

Now there is only 1 turn left before the dawn, the Witch King has just enough magic ability left to cast a final freeze leader spell on Gandalf, who will then not be able to break the darkness. This final frenzied night attack may well determine the outcome of the entire battle. If Sauron's inferior army cannot take advantage of this last night induced battle frenzy to crush Theoden, Rohan's cavalry may very well roll over the remainder of Sauron's host. Aragorn will arrive very late in the battle, too late to offer much help to Rohan. Stay tuned!
Link to pics:

link

The end of the road for the play test:

My gaming group finally got a chance to finish the play test and it was ugly. Although we all had fun, it was agreed by both sides that using the existing rules from the SPI's "Gondor" hex and counter game (modified for miniatures and to fit my set-up) did not present a decent chance for victory for Sauron. The main complaint was that Sauron's units were too weak. Even his best troops, the trolls and mumakil had the worst morale such that any "hit" against them, although difficult to roll would be devastating. In the "Gondor" system, a unit's morale determines the impact of any adverse combat die roll, so when the trolls and other "elite" units of Sauron would take damage, they tended to get destroyed in one or two shots. The Gondorian and Rohovian units, on the other hand, all have excellent morale, and usually just get a retreat and disorder result when they took damage. Sauron's numbers, although impressive, were not enough to make up for this disparity in the quality. So it became apparent after King Theoden and his troops entered the battle, that there was no way that Sauron could ever achieve the victory conditions from the Gondor game. And that was the second major complaint, the victory conditions were too old-school SPI with demoralization points for destroying enemy units vs. taking and holding terrain objectives, and were not only unobtainable for Sauron, but they were unrealistically difficult as well.

The only good news for the Witch King was that he was able to start wreaking havoc with the Minas Tirith Garrison. They were taking heavy damage, losing figures and retreating on all sides. But with the victory conditions including the requirement for Sauron to control the road to Osgoliath, as well as demoralizing the garrison and staying undemoralized himself, it was apparent that there was no way he could ever win. Although Sauron was rolling well, the Rohovians were eventually going to roll through these inferior troops, even before Aragon and his reinforcements were to arrive. Aragorn's troops are about equal in quality to Rohan, but with less cavalry, of course. The Witch King was doomed, so we decided to bag it.

The next game:

With these "lessons learned" we came up with some fixes to make the game more balanced, more realistic to what Tolkien had in mind, and with more logical victory conditions. The play test also pointed out some situations that I had not envisioned when writing/modifying the rules (which forced an instant rules determination that all players were not happy with). By not following the rules form the original Gondor hex-and-counter game as closely as we had, I think we will have a much more balanced and fun game, without all of the complaining ;0

Pictures are at the link below, and include the new unit statistics (for which every unit of minis on the table is labeled). If anyone wants the rules, drop me a line.

link