Gathering in the Desert 2012

I attended the 5th annual Gathering in the Desert (GitD) this weekend.  This is one of the best gaming tournaments you'll ever attend.  It's two days of Lord of the Rings gaming on some incredible tables. The scenarios are fun and the competition is tough but friendly.  I'm lucky to have this event happening right in my backyard.  We have people come from all over the country to participate.

Well, despite having a camera phone in my pocket the entire time, I took exactly no pictures (unless you count the picture I accidentally took of my nostrils while messing with my phone).  I attribute the lack of pictures, honestly, to the fun I was having and the concentration on my games.  I never thought of photography.  Keep an eye on the blog link above, and I'm sure Tim will have pictures posted.

Overall, I came in 8th place.  That's the best I've ever done.  I played a 600 pt force of Far Harad supported by Corsairs with spears.  They are a "one trick pony" style of army.  When I can pull off the trick, they perform fantastically.  Otherwise, they don't do so well.  They can, however, get punched in the face for a while.  That's why I had so many drawn games.  I tallied up three draws, one major victory, and one minor loss.  I did solidly in sportsmanship (I didn't swear or throw any punches) and appearance (wore fresh clothes each day), which helped cement my spot in the top ten. Not having some serious out of town competition around also let some of us mid-listers float up a bit this year.

With the changes in the new books, this was probably my Far Harad army's last ride.  I'm OK with that, as I'm tired of it at this point.  I want something different.  Let's review the games that formed their farewell tour.


Game One:  This was "The Artifact" scenario played on the Osgiliath table.  I faced High Elves.  This is a modified "Seize the Prize" scenario from the Legions of Middle Earth book. I had to dig up and carry the artifact off the enemy table edge.  My army got the artifact first, and the Elves sealed off every avenue to their table edge while I did that.  A huge brawl ensued and in the end my army broke and the Mahud King died.  He dropped the artifact and the Elves picked it up.  But time was called, and it was only a draw.  Whew!

Game Two: This was a straight up game of Domination on the Balin's Tomb table.  If you followed the above link you'll see the board and think that it's wide open. Believe me when I say that's an optical illusion.  There's very little LOS on that board.  I played it last year too; so I speak from hard experience.

I faced Gimli and his Dwarf buddies.  I unwisely tried to contest three points and ended up having to concede one and try to shore up my other two holdings.  I was able to retreat because the Dwarfs move slow.  But I had to feed them troops to allow me to do so.  That was all wasted resources.  When time was called, we ended in a draw.  That was a hard game.

Game Three: This was "The Emissary" which is a modified "Storm the Camp."  We each had to escort an emissary into the enemy's camp.  I faced Dol Amroth and Prince Imirhil on the so-called generic table #2.  It was basically both our lines clashing together and doing a meat grinder.  My opponent expected to walk through me like a revolving door.  But Far Harad excels at busting up stuff in close combat.  We fought to a standstill. The Far Harad broke and so did Dol Amroth.  A random die roll ended the game at that point, and so I got my third draw.  In all honesty, if we continued I had a serious risk of losing due to low courage.

Game Four: This was played on day two of the event.  We started with "Bilbo's Treasure."  I faced an Arnor list on the generic table #1.  There are five treasure markers on the table.  You randomly determine which number marker is going to be the treasure.  Then whoever gets to the marker first flips it and sees if they have the treasure.  I got to three markers after a few turns of movement.  It ended up being in my possession and right at the table edge.  I had two guys rush it off the table for a major victory.

But we still had two hours to play.  So we just continued on with a "kill 'em all" scenario where we fought to 25% forces remaining.  Arnor and their dwarf allies put up a great fight.  But Far Harad was in good form for this "fake game" and ripped Arnor into bits.  I felt bad dealing a horrible defeat twice, but we were just killing time.  The men of Arnor would be avenged during.......

Game Five: The final game of the tournament proved to be the most suspenseful of all my games. I played on the incredibly modeled Prancing Pony table.  I faced 59 Woses (Wildmen of Druadan), all with spears and blowpipes.  These were not the shitty Harad blowpipes that are move OR shoot.  These allowed a half move to shoot.  The scenario was "Head of the Snake," which meant my Mahud King had to kill the Woses leader Ghan-buri-ghan in combat to get a major victory.  This wouldn't be so bad but for Radagast floating around the back ranks casting Aura of Dismay and also Transfixing my tough guys.

Well, the Woses lined up a firing line and I dutifully walked into 30+ blowgun darts for three turns.  He couldn't always get all 59 blowguns on me at once, but managed quite a bit.  At first I doubted S2 blowguns would be much to worry about at D5/6 on the Mahud.  But the Woses player was rolling hot and I saw 6 after 6 after 6 come up.  By the time I got to the line, 16 of my men were dead and almost all were Mahud.  I had 5 left to break point.  It was fucking brutal!  I thought the game was done.

But my opponent had miscalculated my Mahud King's wounds, thinking he had already dealt one to me.  So we ended up in a dance with Ghan-buri-ghan and the King each seeking advantage.  There was a lot of nail biting at this point, and I'm not doing the tension any justice in this write up.  In the end, Radagast was out of gas and my King got on Ghan-buri-ghan and slammed four S5 attacks on his naked ass.  He only did two wounds and GBG rolled his Fate to save one.  Then the Mahud hit the break point.

The Mahud King failed courage spectacularly and left.  While I would've thought that to be a draw, since GBG didn't kill him, it was ruled as a kill for the Woses.  I ended up with a minor loss.  It really came to that last Fate roll of GBG.  Despite the loss, it was probably the most satisfying game I played in a while, coming from almost total loss to a real chance to win.  Oh and for what it's worth, when the surviving Mahud and Corsairs hit the Woses line, they tore them to shreds.  So it didn't feel too bad!

So overall it was a great two days.  I thought I'd be tired of LotR but just like last year this event reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the game.  While the new army books have screwed some armies, others got a nice boost.  It's time for me to do something different in LotR.  I tried Elves and detested their pansy play style.  I'm thinking Orcs and lots of monsters.  I want big monsters and ugly evil for my next list.  That's where I'll be headed when my gaming group is ready to pick up LotR again.

It's Small World Afterall

Time for another LotR battle report!  So the plan for last Friday was to test out changes to my Far Harad 700 point list.  But it wasn't my day, and I couldn't get to the game at the planned time.  Too much "real life" was in the way.  So by the time I did arrive, it was late.  Like usual, I was playing at Tim's house.  He's a great guy and lives very close by; so we tend to get in a lot of games.  We also tend to get talking and keep talking.  So it was really late and I thought we wouldn't actually get to gaming.

But we decided a friendly 175pt game would be both manageable and a refreshing change of pace.  Besides, Tim thought it would be a good opportunity to try out his Tale of Four LotR Gamers list.  I also happened to have Corsairs in the box with my Far Harad.  I scratched out a list and we were ready to go.  I took a Bo'sun with 15 corsairs, nothing special but for a three unpainted bowman models.  If you didn't click on the link above, I'll tell  you that Tim took his Goblin list featuring Durburz and a bunch of prowlers.  We shortened the board size and chose a meeting engagement for the scenario.

I absolutely love these small games.  I had 16 models and Tim had 20 models.  The turns moved quickly and the fights were quick.  But the game was no less complex and even at the small points scale, there were still a lot of great tactical decisions to make.  I think this game scales nicely from small points up to 700pts.  I've never played anything larger than that, so can't comment on those 1,000 point monster games!

Thanks to shortened deployment zones, I avoided the trees that are always in front of me!  I just ran for the hill to try to get my archers on the high ground.  I only had three, and thought they might be able to snipe a few goblins to even up the numbers a bit.

Hey, I think I can see the ship from up here!

Since this was a meeting engagement, there wasn't a lot of consideration about where everyone should be and what they should do.  The plan was to get stuck in as fast as possible and plow through the enemy.  My Corsairs are superior fighters, and are so confident in their skills that they fight in pajamas.  The goblins were a lot tougher with armor and shield, some boasting the dreaded "D6" that makes my dice hurt when rolling to wound.  As we closed in, I think one of my bows might have killed something.  However, once within 6" range my throwing weapons heated up.  Totally four goblins went down with throwing knives in their necks!

The lines clashed, evenly matched to start.  A few turns of push and shove ensued, with equal losses on both sides.  But then the Corsairs stared losing fights.  Recall the pajamas I mentioned a moment ago.  A lot of the boys started dying.

Meeting the goblins and trying not to die

The key moment of the game came when the Corsair Bo'sun lost his fight to Durburz.  It was actually a tied fight, and I lost the roll off.  The poor pirate would no longer be able to shout at his boys, encouraging them to greater achievements.  He failed his Fate roll and died where he stood.  In fact, in that round, both forces broke.

So as you can expect, I started winning priority from this point forward.  Therefore my cowardly sea dogs kept melting away.  The goblins, though broken, were all within Durburz's 12" stand fast.  So they hung around to finish the job.  We played until every last Corsair had fled or died.  But truly amazing was the lone Corsair who survived three combat rounds being trapped.  He died on the fourth attempt, shielding to the very end.  His heroic efforts sucked away four goblins and helped his fellows prolong their agonizing defeat at the tiny hands of goblins.

Buckler by Zildjian

When you don't have a force on the table, you don't generally have to look up victory conditions.  I assume it was a major victory for the goblins.

It was a refreshing change of pace to play at the small points level.  I hope I can play more in and around this number.  Up to 250-300 points is ideal for a few hours of leisurely gaming.  Tim and I really took our time with this, intermixing the game with our on-going conversation.  So it took some time to get done.  But if we concentrated, we could've got two games in during that time.

While I didn't learn anything useful about my Corsairs, having played them a lot over the years, I did learn about goblins.  I learned that Prowlers have some nasty abilities.  The backstabber rule was cool, but we didn't get to see it too much in play.  But couple that with a weapon that can be either two handed or single handed and throwing weapons, and you've got yourself a neat package of hurt for the points.

It was a good game that could've went either way for most of the fight.  But the Corsairs ended up having a day that reflected my own.  Still I had fun and look forward to trying this points level out with my Elves.

Far Harad and Corsairs

I took some pictures of my Corsair and Far Harad forces together as they will be on the table. While I know the Mahud are great fighters, they look pretty weak with just a few models out there. So Corsairs come to the rescue with cheap spear support! I would've done them all as spears, but would've had to buy another box of Corsairs to do so. It's not worth it, so a few sword and shield guys made it into the mix. There are also some crossbowmen who might help taking out a troll or two on its way in. I could drop them for Reavers, but I haven't decided yet. The Mahud are hitty enough on their own!

Here are the Corsairs alone. I never did a blog update of my whole Corsair force. There are more than what's pictured here. But this is what's allied with Far Harad. I was not impressed with Corsairs as a stand-alone army. They had some early success, but eventually their weakness overcame them. They are very much an ally army, capable of filling in as strong fighters. Just don't ask them to do the whole mission themselves. I guess that's sort of what you'd expect from real pirates!