Recapping the practice games I played to prepare for my first league matchup.
I now have two practice games under my belt, played in preparation for my upcoming league game. Both games were played against my Flames of War buddy; let’s call him by his Starbucks name: Chris. When Chris heard I had joined a MESBG league he instantly asked to join as well. Similarly to myself, Chris loves the movies and has collected the minis since they first came out, but can count the number of games he has played on one hand. The rest of the guys were more than happy to have him, so now we have 9 registered participants!
Despite owning loads of excellent, out of production metal minis, Chris was unable to field 600 points. Thankfully, he found an Isengard battlehost in a local shop and is using that as the nucleus for his army. For our two introductory games my Gondorians we have to face the might of Saruman’s elite troops. We tried two scenarios: To The Death and Domination.
To The Death
Our first matchup featured my 600 point list against Chris’ pike block, lead by Saruman. Chris also included Grima, several berserkers and two banners in his list to maximize rerolls. This was really just a learning game to get used to our forces and give Chris some practice with spells. What we learned very quickly is that Uruk Hai in The Muster of Isengard are extremely dangerous to armies of men! All the Uruks in Chris’ army (basically all his models) receive the Hatred of Men special rule, giving them +1 to wound and effectively negating the effects of my heavy armor. This made shield walls all the more important for me so I could get that initial wound roll up to a 6+, rather than a 5+, reduced to 4+.
I ended up destroying Chris’s army in detail, however, thanks to my cavalry and Chris still learning the best use of pikes. He was dead set on receiving my charge on his pikes and strung out his battle line in order to do it, only to realize that he had robbed himself of support opportunities and that the bonus against striking the horse wasn’t really worth it anyway. Grima was a huge pain, on the other hand. His ability to idle in my backfield and force any hero within 6″ to double might point expenditure was incredibly annoying.
Domination
Our second matchup was more of an actual game than a learning game. We brought nearly the same armies, but Chris traded out one of his banners for more berserkers. Domination requires a single objective in the middle of the board and then players alternate placing four more total objectives wherever they want, more or less. We wound up with four objectives in a single quadrant and one in the opposite quadrant. In retrospect this was a mistake based on my cavalry advantage, though it actually had no bearing on the game.
We both deployed more or less on the middle line, with my forces in the quadrant with the four objectives and Chris opposite me. I was quickly able to engage Chris’ battle line away from the objectives and walk a couple warriors off to hold them. My cavalry smashed into Chris’ flank, inflicting huge casualties but slowly getting whittled down over the course of the game. My infantry pressed hard in the center but the hateful Uruks were able to make good use of the duels they won. One of the strengths of The Muster of Isengard is their higher break point and it proved decisive. The Uruks don’t break until they have taken 66% casualties and I ended up taking courage checks before them. My main battle line held, but catastrophically all but one of my warriors on the objectives fled on the first turn of rolls. Faramir managed to get a charge and Saruman in an effort to turn the tide and completely botched his duel rolls and was dispatched.
The final score was a 4-3 victory for the Uruks who killed Faramir and outnumbered me 2-1 on one objective, while I held just a single objective. Uruk Hai with hatred are a decidedly tough matchup. My biggest takeaway is that I need to be better at maintaining my shieldwall and surrounding enemy units. Also, I don’t have to clump my cavalry as much as I do. They get a fight value bonus for being close to Faramir when he charges, but outside of that they are still mounted with lances and can inflict a lot of hurt on infantry.
In any event, on to round 1 of the league on Sunday!
