Lord of the Rings, 10/9/2012

This was another match in Simon's campaign, this time playing Simon himself. The latter fact alone kind of makes this whole post a bit redundant; you always lose against Simon, right?

Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be...

OK for those of you who are interested, a bit of background - I've known Simon for a while, since I've worked at Games Workshop and I saw him around afterwards as well. He's one of these power gamers that I don't have a lot of patience with, so I rarely play him by choice. Other than that he's a really nice kid, and we get on well. He's put a lot of effort into organising this campaign, and while I still think he's got a lot to learn in terms of what does and doesn't work in a shop environment, I felt obliged to play him as a reward, with me using my Harad, and Simon using his Dwarves.

By nature of being Dwarves Simon's army had high levels of defence, and Simon had used the rules imposed on the campaign to make them even harder to hurt. They'd take a while to get to me, but they more than made up for it by having a Balista there as well. With Gimli and Durin as his special characters, I was in for a rough ride, especially since I had to kill 75% of his models in order to win and that would have to have included at least one of the characters...

It was never going to end well for me, was it?

Daunting task though that was, I was as surprised as anyone when my archers, in an uncharacteristic display of professionalism, managed to take out four dwarves in the first couple of turns. Simon chose that point to move the dwarves behind the ruins, forcing me to take the fight to them. Unfortunately it wasn't going to happen, as I had Gimli and Durin to deal with...

Far more typically of me I failed to wound either of them. I did try Sap Will on Durin, which I couldn't even get off, and then I tried to Black Dart him, which was a waste of time because I'd forgotten that he was defence 10 and therefore needed a lot higher than the usual 3+ to score the wound. Having shot half of my army to pieces with his Balista, and munched most of the rest with the Dwarves, Simon called the game to a halt at the point my army broke. Strictly speaking it should have gone on longer, but it was over by then and we both knew it.

Simon's asked me for a rematch and I don't know if I want to oblige; the fact is my army's not powerful enough to deal with him and I don't think it'll be much fun if I get involved with another game that I obviously haven't got a hope of winning.

Still, I'm going back to Workshop on Monday Night so we'll find out what happens then...