2nd Battle of the Isen Fords - LotR Skirmish

For our club game this week I had been thinking previously about some LotR action and when Kev last week asked if I fancied a game I enthusiastically agreed, choosing to play the Second Battle of the Isen Fords scenario, a scenario I had played before and enjoyed muchly.

To see life on the bright side I chose to play the Rohan forces, as I had played on the Isengard side previously. Kev, providing all the nicely painted troops for both sides (as he has a impressive LotR collection) took the role of umpire with Pete stepping in on the night as the Forces of Darkness.

The scenario involves Rohan defending the crossing for 10 turns and in that time Isengard try to reduce the the Rohan numbers to 12 or below to win. From round 3, Rohan dice to see if their re-enforements come in the form of a passle of cavalry, and from round 4 Isengard dice to see if they get some Warg Rider re-enforcements.

Rohan (foolishly perhaps) take the offensive

Deciding to try and beat the odds I decided to go on the offensive and try and beat the c#@p out of the enemy when the wise thing to do would have been to withdraw and make the enemy come to me. With the Rohan Warriors on the west bank moving towards the gathered Uruk-hai and Dunlendings and accompanying Troll, Erkenbrand and the Royal Guard advanced across the ford with the archers supporting from the east bank.

Much to everyones surprise, not least my own, the dice gods were kind and the mighty Rohan warriors cut a notable swathe through the Isengard horde., giving generally better than they got, much to Pete's chagrin.

Re-enforcements arrive for both sides

Round three and four saw the speedy arrival of both sets of re-enforcements appearing and they added their joint weights to the now spreading melee for the ford.

Straight into the melee on the west bank

The Trolls might proved to much for Rohan on the southern side of the melee with the troops there getting pretty short shrift but on the north end with the cavalry arriving adding to the push, Isengard was cleared from that side pretty effectively. So the battle pivoted north south with the warg riders having a poor time of it on the east bank the fight there turned the same way.

End game with Rohan fighting to the bitter end - heroically

Come the end of turn 7 however a count of the particularly brutal round of fighting where Isengard caught up on the mayhem a bit both side had lost more than 50% casualties which meant courage tests for everybody.

Of course the odds were fairly poor to keep enough alive and fighting for another two or three turns and this proved to be the case with 9 bodies deciding that they would rather be somewhere exceedingly importantly elsewhere leaving 15 still fighting for Rohan. Even though they had been doing exceedlingly well, the Troll still kicking would a least kill a couple and even though they may have cleared the table of the enemy, 12 or less Rohan meant an Isengard win.

So the barny ended there with a loss for Rohan even though they had beaten the odds and gone on the offensive and nearly triumphed. C'est la guerre!

Great game, much fun and banter as the forces clashed and Pete was slagged for his rubbish dice throwing. Cheers to Kev for providing the figures and fun.