A Show of Strength: MESBG Battle Companies Campaign

The latest game in our Battle Companies campaign was A Show of Strength. Victory would go to the Leader who kills the most.

Both our heroes with wounds were well enough to fight, and I got to use a Raider for the first time. I can't find my box of Raiders, so I used a metal Serpent Raider as a stand in.

Early missile fire downs one of the Harad Bowmen 

The remaining Bowmen use the ruined arcade as cover and Qayid and his retinue head for the ruins. The Raider tries to hide by the woods, waiting for the approaching Fiefdoms troops.

The Knight of Dol Amroth, supported by one of his Men-at-arms, clashes with Qayid and his retinue. Despite the superior numbers of Haradrim, they are beaten back, but avoid injury.

The Raider and one of the Bowmen charge into the Axeman and the Man-at-Arms

The Men-at-arms falls to the Bowman, but the Axeman of Lossenarch easily fights off the Raider and Sayaad.  The Warrior moves round to tackle the Pikemen supporting the Knight, but is felled for his troubles.

The Knight once more beats back Qayid and Shawish, but they avoid injury

The view from the other side of the battlefield 

At this point the Haradrim were Broken. Qayid saw that he stood no chance against the Knight, so ran (hobbled) away, most of his troops followed. The brave Raider held firm, and even managed to knock the Axeman down, but failed to injure him.

At the end of the skirmish neither leader had felled any opponent, so it was a draw.

Aftermath

One of the Fiefdoms will miss the next game. My warriors were all fine, but disastrously, Sayaad, my great bow hero, got an arm wound, making him much less effective. I'll just have to hope he gets that recovery result should he be put out of action in a future game.

Two more of my Warriors have become Heroes, clearly they watched Qayid and thought they could do just as well.  I've now got a good amount of Influence to spend on my Battle Company, I've already got some thoughts in that direction.

This was an odd game. It's fair to say that it was the first game of the campaign that neither of us particularly enjoyed, it wasn't a bad game, just dull.

From my point of view, I rarely managed to win a duel, and even rarer wounded my target. The dice were not kind to me, often teasing with 6s to hit with a bow, then another 6 for the 'in the way' roll, then a 2, or that's how it seemed.

I didn't make the most of my numerical advantage, but I was hoping that Qayid would get at least one 'kill', so I probably held the rest back too much.

One interesting point, this is the first time we've actually used the recommended four foot square table (Citadel's Realm of Battle), rather than our usual three foot square mat. We found there seemed to be too much space, it took a lot of moving just to get close enough to do much. We'll stick to the mat for future games.