The Scouring of Che-Shire 5: Steve's Struggle of Strength

 Hello all! It's now time for my write-up in a weekend that started well in terms of results, but then slipped dramatically as the days went on. My goal however for the weekend was to at least meet my previous result at a previous Scouring event of going 2-4 so let's see how I got on! 

For the event I used one of my lockdown army projects - Lothlorien. I've always liked the aesthetic of the woodland elves compared to their Rivendell cousins (and have a display board in the pipeline) but I also just wanted to get them on the table for a weekend and work them out a bit more. Without further ado, my list:

Warband 1 - Lothlorien 249pts

Warband Leader - Galadriel - 130pts (Army Leader)

Galadhrim Knight (w/Elf Bow, Shield) - 21

2x Galadhrim Warrior (w/Shield, Spear) - 22

2x Galadhrim Warrior (w/Shield) [20pts]

Guard of the Galadhrim Court [12pts]

4x Wood Elf Warrior (w/Elf Bow, Wood Elf Spear) [44pts]

Warband 2 - Lothlorien 295pts
Warband Leader - Celeborn (w/Heavy Armour, Elven-made Hand-and-a-half Sword, Shield) - 150

Galadhrim Warrior (w/Banner, Spear) - 35

2x Galadhrim Warrior (w/Shield, Spear) - 22

2x Galadhrim Warrior (w/Shield) - 24

4x Wood Elf Warrior (w/Elf Bow, Wood Elf Spear) - 44

Warband 3 - Lothlorien 156pts

Rumil [85pts]

4x Galadhrim Warrior (w/Shield, Spear) - 44

3x Galadhrim Warrior - 27

31 Models, 3 Warbands, 9 Might, 8 Bows

I had two main reasons for building this list the way I did:

1. I've been hit hard by ranged armies lately (specifically the Assault on Helm's Deep Legendary Legion) so wanted to mitigate that somewhat with Galadriel's Blinding Light spell.

2. I really didn't want to buy multiple boxes of both the Galadhrim Warriors and Wood Elves.

I realise the list isn't the most competitive, but it's the most rounded I can make with the models I have available. I was also quite keen to give the Wood Elves a try as a cheaper method to get bows and spears into the list (admittedly at the cost of defence, but the wood elf spear shielding would be fun to use in a pinch!). Celeborn was intended to be the big beatstick of the army, with a backup of Court Guard to tie up any pesky lower Fight value heroes and Rumil rounding the roster out as an annoying wall.

Game 1  - Assassination Vs Sean Clarke's Riders of Eomer

Sean straight off the bat told me he was a newer player, so we decided to play the game slow and just take our time with it and not rush to meet finish before the clock ran out. I won't rattle on about tactics or go into much depth about this game as at the end of the day Sean was a lovely bloke to play against and was a pleasure to get him more acquainted with deeper parts of the game such as trapping and magic (including him getting off some good Sorcerous Blasts with Gandalf!) I did however manage to get Celeborn (my assassin) to take out his Captain (my target) a long with breaking his force not net me a 10-0 win. A good warm up to start the day, including reminding me of some rules a long the way!

Game 2 - Seize the Prize Vs Joe Pettit's Assault on Helm's Deep

The list that had driven me to go with Lothlorien in the first place...It was nice in some way to see that some preparation of mine had gone to good use. I did lack one thing in my force compared to Joe's however which gave him a crucial advantage - I had no heroes with Heroic March. With that he was able to safely Seize the Prize and pass it through his units to safety. The best part about this game though? With Celeborn scrapping through the pike block, he was caught unawares as the demolition team rolled in and took him out with one blast! This isn't quite as bad as it sounds however as the pike block now had a big hole in the middle of it, allowing some of my units to eventually skirt round and take the prize for Lothlorien and net an 8-1 win, although that score does not really reflect just how close the game came.

Game 3 - Contest of Champions Vs Kalman's Erebor Reclaimed/Thranduil's Halls

Galadriel is my leader, 0-12 loss. She did get to slap Dain in the face however.

Accurate depiction of mine and Kalman's reaction when Galadriel slapped Dain with her Nenya-hand.

Game 4 - Hold Ground Vs Ben Smith's Angmar

Day two, a fresh start (well as fresh as you can start on a hangover from the previous nights post-game festivities) and another army with the March advantage over mine. Also Gulhavar. Needless to say I was pretty nervous coming up against the big guy, but was relying on my army-wide Resistant to Magic to keep the Witch-King and Barrowight from shutting me down too much. Once more I was late to the central objective due to lack of March, but one plus side was that my maelstrom rolls meant my whole force was coming on from where I wanted them to and the initial engagements went well with a lucky arrow wound scored on Gully (who eventually got take down by Rumil). It does seem however that using the new Angmar dice with ands Angmar force does give you supernatural rolling powers (as I'm sure Ben will agree!). The 6's just kept on coming and they didn't stop coming leading to a lot of fights lost and very few orcs dead giving Ben the advantage on the centre objective to close the game out at 0-6. 

Game 5 - Breakthrough Vs Tim Elwess' Minas Tirith

Mine and Tim's first reaction when we saw our table was 'How on earth are we going to play this?'. We were on a Laketown board and ended up houseruling a few parts of the battlefield such as the large amount of ice present (we went for fun rules of if you fall in the water by failing a leap test, your model dies, and if you have to back up from a fight into the water, you die) which led to some fun interactions. Like with the Helm's Deep legion on the day before, I was scared by the double trebuchet that Tim has brought with him - even with Blinding Light from Galadriel. Against the D6 of Minas Tirith I just wasn't scoring the kills that I needed (a common occurrence on day two of me not killing a whole lot) and Pippin turned into an absolute beast all of a sudden, taking out two elves on his own! I played the objectives as closely as I could, but unfortunately due to Gandalf's mobility and the stoicism of Ingold I was caught out in a few places and couldn't secure any objectives purely for myself leading to a 0-5 loss.

Game 6 - Divide & Conquer Vs Mark F's Return of the King LL

The final game of the tournament...safe to say I was pretty exhausted at this point. With both me and Mark on 2-3, we decided we'd just have a laugh with this game to not give ourselves a bigger headache after such a long weekend! Once more, I was hampered by lack of Heroic March, with Aragorn getting the Dead to sprint to a good choke point against the larger bulk of my advancing force. This is essentially where most of the game took place, with many an Immobilise on Aragorn in an effort to take him down. Many fights were won with Celeborn taking the lead but unfortunately not many wounds getting through. In the meantime, Rumil was sprinting with his warband towards the centre, and one archer of mine perched on top of a Hobbit hole to snipe two Warriors of the Dead! That only sound impressive when I tell you I killed a total of four models in this match! The long slog at the bottle neck eventually wore me down and when I did eventually lose fights, I was losing elves quick (especially to Legolas and Gimli). The lack of strength against a high defense enemy was yet again hampering me. Unfortunately, I lost the centre objective and it went downhill from there, leaving me with a 1-8 loss!

Summary

Once again, Scouring proves itself to be a great event, I started off strong, but just couldn't quite keep up the momentum. I've certainly learnt that with an infantry force I absolutely need Heroic March somewhere to give me a bit of mobility for objective grabs. The magic with Galadriel was great fun to use, but it's definitely a case of me being worried that she could be craftily taken out with her low defense and lack of combat capability. There were definitely a fair few tactical errors I made throughout my games which I'm taking heed of, but a large downfall for me was elves just lacking that killing power. Great at winning fights, just not great at finishing them! All in all a great tournament, a lot of fun had and some great opponents who I'm keen to play against once more!