Let Rohan Look to it's Horses. 10mm Lord of the Rings Fantastic Battles

I got a couple of games in with good gaming buddy Bodvoc today. The first was another one of our 10mm Lord of the Rings games. As host I came up with the scenario, and I thought of something involving orcs raiding Rohan for horses around the time the Fellowship were heading south (they didn't take part, but it was an excuse to try out some rules for the Witchking as we know he was in the area).

I spent a lot of time thinking of various scenarios involving a chase across the board, rules for controlling wild horses and random movement of the same.  Then I checked Nic's latest document on the Facebook group, and realised the Reive and Retrieve scenario pretty much did what I wanted.  So with a bit of colour text (and an increase in points as Bodvoc had some new Rohirim to show off), to battle.

The two forces face off, herds of wild horses grazing in between them

The Rohan army

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and the hordes of Mordor

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Both sides advance towards the herds.  Rohan captures the first herd

The view of the early battle from the Rohan side

Mid game the Mordor troops are all over the place.  Shooting (and Resolve loss due to a lost company takes it's toll).  In return, the orcs struggle to hit anything.

Again, the view from the Rohan side.  The defenders seem much more organised.

The Rohan cavalry slowly advance, picking off the orcs as they go.  

Nearing the end the orcs have finally started to bring down some of the Rohirim, but have lost all chance of capturing any herds.

I don't have any pictures of the end phase; I was busy enjoying the triumph of Rohan.  It was very tense, in the last turn the Witchking was charged by several companies, including the Rohan general.  Both leaders went down (though the Witchking will, of course, return), causing both sides to break in the same turn.  At the count, Rohan had two herds, with another two running free, so had won.  Sauron will be looking for different mounts for his most trusted captains in future (though the Witchking hardly merited such reward after his performance in this game).

I really enjoyed the game, despite struggling to make any headway against the enemy.  At the end I was surprised to have broken the Rohan army; Def 5+ is really tough, especially since in this scenario all companies were single companies, no multiple company units.  The orcs' main strength, their numbers, was hard to bring to bear, and I failed to hold on to any of the captured herds.  Irregular infantry make poor herders with the -2 to Melee (and +2 to the opponents) when attacked.

My main mistake though was the Witchking.  I included him partly as a nod to the passage in the book placing him near the Anduin (Spoilers - Legolas shoots the flying mount) but mostly to experiment with how I thought he should work.  I tried a character company with a mage lord on a dragon with flying, fearless and terrifying.  Being a character company meant he never got to use curse as he was always moving.  terrifying proved ineffective against Res 6 elite cavalry, though the -2 to melee was nice, it offset their ferocious charge and master of horse somewhat.

Next time it might be a dragon with passenger, though that does risk the Witchking being taken out on that pesky double 6 roll.

I must point out that Bodvoc played a far cleverer game than I did.  His deployment alone helped him capture two herds early on.