Shadow opened by massing against Rohan. Cards on the table from both sides turned the northern front into a stalemate, and very little happened there through the night aside from periodic reinforcement and an Easterling strike on Dale. Instead, the game featured a very methodical grind through Rohan and on into Gondor.
The Fellowship elected to move south through Isengard. This slightly longer path might have made the difference between a victory and a defeat, given the closeness of the result. As it was, the slightly greater danger of being hunted by orcs out of Orthanc was mostly negated by poor hunt rolls early in the game.
Going into what would almost certainly have been the penultimate turn of the game, Shadow was still missing three victory points, and the Fellowship (guided by Legolas(!) and Pippin(!!)) was only four steps from Mount Doom. Minas Tirith had crumbled under multiple assaults, taking Gandalf, Aragorn, and Boromir with it. An enormous number of non-hunt action dice gave Shadow just enough resources to take apart both Dol Amroth and Lorien, as the clock ran down.
Neither siege would have succeeded without the perfect set of Shadow event cards. The siege of Dol Amroth featured Grond, Hammer of the Underworld, providing a 3 round battle.
Meanwhile, the siege of Lorien was supported by the balrog of Moria, good for some extra rolls pre-battle at 4+.
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| Why have you forsaken me, Google image search? |
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| OK, that's better. All is forgiven. |
My mistake was being overly cautious with the fellowship. I could have pushed harder during the opening turns, trying to gain distance, but I shied away because of the number of eye tokens. The Hunt rolls were statistically reversed for a few turns, with four dice yielding now sixes, and later a single dice yielding two sixes!
ReplyDeleteEither way it was an awesome match. I particularly enjoy the asymmetry of the two factions. As the Free Peoples you are placed under the gun from the first turn, and the numerical and economic superiority of the Shadow forces is riven home repeatedly. The game masterfully captures the desperate times and choices surrounding the events in the novels.
A Saturday night well spent!
It's weird to play a side that has such total military dominance, but still constantly is scraping the bottom of the barrel to eke out a frantic victory against those sneaky hobbits.
ReplyDeleteThe fellowship really needs to push hard to move early regardless of hunt dice, wait for the inevitable 3-damage tile to turn up, and then burn Gandalf to absorb it. Since you're going to be able to bring Gandalf back into play immediately, there's no reason not to do it. The rules are just begging you to kill him. (Die, Gandalf, die!)
I think I got an average number of sixes overall, but it sure happened in a strange way from turn to turn.