[Tale Telling] Halfish Battle Report - Thinking About 750

I've been quiet for a few weeks as I also haven't had a game of MESBG over that time. Entirely my fault, I've been busy with other things but should be getting back into the swing of things this week. Fortunately that came to pass as I got a game in against a new player on Wednesday during one of the normal meetup nights. I didn't do a proper Battle Report of the game since he was new, so that seemed a bit unfair, and I also expected the match to take a very long time (which it did).

I took my WIP Lake-Town/Lothlórien Army and we did play a 750 Point game, that was my opponent's preference. He was playing vanilla Isengard and using what he had which was a bunch of Urukhai with either Shields or Pikes, a Banner, a Troll with Shield, Lurtz, two Orc Captains (one on Warg), 5 Warg Riders, and 4 Crossbows. So quite a high body count but not much Might/Hero power. My army was Galadriel with 10 Court Guard, two Knights with Shields, and 6 Wood Elves w/ Bows and Spears. The Lake-Town side is Bard with Armor and Horse, two Captains, and a bunch of Militia with max Bows and 1 Spear.

Previously my build was to use Gandalf, Galadriel, and Bard but it really hurt my numbers so I'm not convinced that's the way to go, I may still try it though. In any case we played Reconnoiter after our bans (Assassination for him and I forget the other), I put probably 90% effort into the game since I didn't want to seem annoying to a new player and I had some rust from not playing for two weeks.

Overall the game went very well. Our Terrain was fairly sparse with a Forest along the center line to the right, a rock formation in the center, and then some small area pieces in the remaining quadrants of the table. This was intentional since I didn't want Terrain to feel like it was getting in the way of play, nor did I want one side to feel punishing to play with. Unfortunately it did make kind of a valley that we'd be funneled into although that hurt me more than the Isengard so it ended up being fine.

I had all but one Captain come in on Turn 1, same for the Isengard, and the rest came in Turn 2 so nothing went sideways there. My Shooting utterly failed in the early game, I wasn't even hitting much less accomplishing anything. By about Turn 4 our lines clashed, I believe I'd killed a Warg Rider while they killed a Knight back with the Throwing Spears. From here it was a lot of inconclusive fighting. Originally the Warg Riders came in hot while the Uruks set their lines, that allowed me to fight just the Cavalry and get some Traps but I didn't want to go all in since that would break my lines and make losing Priority/Heroic Move a big deal. I was still able to kill all but one of the Warg Riders and dismount the Captain though.

Once our armies properly met I found myself with a problem: I didn't have enough space to get all my models involved because of Terrain and the Troll. I was dealing with the Troll well as Galadriel just Immobilized it over and over again but I also wasn't able to harm it very well. The low Courage on my Militia meant I failed a fair amount of Charges and although I have a good amount of S4 (Militia with Axes) I just wasn't rolling well to Wound despite continually Trapping it.

Elsewhere the Fights went back and forth. I sold some Militia away early to hold up Pike Files, giving me time to clear out a few stragglers and hopefully kill the dismounted Captain, but I failed to do the latter. I'd win some Fights and lose some Fights while generally gaining the advantage on my left, where the Troll was, and holding even on the right. Bard was instrumental on the left as he cut through a few Shield Uruks, giving me much better odds to pick up kills on the Defense 5 Pikes.

Things went back and forth for many Turns until we both were Broken in the same Turn. By now most Might was gone from Isengard and I was on 3-4 Might, I'd won fairly solidly on the left and was holding the right. Unfortunately I hadn't gotten any models off the table and both Knights were dead, I was unable to move my surviving Knight to threaten a run off due to the Crossbows and their open Line of Sight (they'd gotten onto the rock formation).

We fought another few Turns until I Quartered the Isengard, being nearly Quartered myself. In that Turn Galadriel got Charged by a few things but I managed to peel most of them off and she didn't take any Wounds. Lurtz was in a Fight with Bard and several of my models, which I won, but I only did 1 Wound which he blocked with Fate. I did manage to finally kill the Troll as well.

In the end we had a 1-1 Tie for us each Breaking the other, so an anti-climactic game score wise. On the positive side my opponent seemed to have a really good time and learn a lot, I walked him through what I'd do in certain situations (only when he asked) and overall it seemed like he was excited to play more. Normally I'm not good at teaching people to play or giving demos, it's just hard for me to explain things to other people that I already know a lot about for whatever reason.

My play overall was quite poor, mostly with regards to army positioning. Making the small, tactical decisions seems to be going fine for me most of the time but I'm struggling with Deployment and unpacking my list on the table. This leads to me having useless Warriors in the backline, a major issue. It could be that I'm just running too many models and running into issues on very normal tables, as I said our Terrain was a bit sparse and I still got bogged down. That makes me think about if I should give Gandalf a go, I lose a lot of models but if I'm not able to bring them to bear, what's the point? It would also help shore up my weakness to Monsters/Heroes, having two Casters really locks down an enemy army. I'll see what I can cook up in Battlescribe.

Anyways that was my game, a nice slug-fest in a Scenario I need to do better at. I'm down to a single proxy as my Printer forgot I wanted a mounted Bard, so that'll be ready this weekend, and my painting is going well with everything now at least primed and base-coated, likely drybrushed as well by the weekend. Would be nice to put up less embarrassing photos. :P