What happens when everything goes right: Revenge of the Elves!

Well, day two of Bilbo's Bash would see me playing 2 games with my Knights of the Blood Rose.  The first match would be against some orcs, lead by Gothmog and sporting the new "mini Mumak" as I call it.

Many things would go the way of the elves here, beginning with the terrain.  It was a reversal of the terrain issues I had the previous two games.  This allowed me to hide both of the stormcallers to protect them from the inevitable sap will spell from the ringwraith.

The orcs moved forward, as they often do.  At this stage of the tourney, I was not in a mood to dance around an enemy army.  There is very little defence for sap will, so I was going to use the will while it was there.  If I was fortunate enough to get wild channelling (which had not happened during the first game), then all the better.

As you can see in the image, that is exactly what happened.  I was able to knock down both groups of orcs with Nature's Wrath, which would turn out to set up some serious carnage.

The was the same Lords of Battle scenario from the previous game, which meant that it was all about killing stuff.  Even spent fate points counted towards the overall total.

Once I had them on the ground, my biggest priority was to get that ringwraith.  If I didn't kill it outright, I had to keep it occupied, absorbing will just to stay in combat.

Not only was I fortunate to get the wild channelling, the ringwraith did not resist the spell.  With him on the ground, it would be that much easier to wipe him out.  I was also lucky enough to get priority, which meant that I did not have to spend might near Gothmog.  The last thing I wanted to do was give him free heroic actions!

I didn't want to deal with him on the warg, so once I had bashed the downed orcs and killed the ringwraith (way to go Seregond!), I needed to get Delilah near enough to him to knock him off that critter!

Since I had gotten my will back from the first spell, Delilah had plenty to spend to go after Gothmog.  Once more, she bravely stood out in front of the foul host to issue the Warth of the forest.  Down went Gothmog, and Gwaihir immediately jumped on him.

It was looking very bad for the orcs in that center group.  The orcs on the right were a bit stuck on the terrain, as I was.  We mostly traded back and forth lost fights and non kills, with the elves taking down one every so often.

Only 2 or 3 orcs could get up the hill at any one point, so they were always outnumbered at least 2 to 1.  Eventually the fight skill 5 began to take its toll.

The baby Mumak's orc archers had been shooting at me like crazy, and missing like crazy.  It was rather shocking how bad the dice rolls went for them.  Once particularly brave (or foolish) elf stood in front of that to prevent it from charging into my troops in the center!  Several bow shots from the howdah orcs failed to wound him.

That made a bad situation for the orcs even worse, since the beast would never really get to charge into the elves with any sort of support from the original batch of orcs in the center.

One by one, the orcs by Weathertop are cut down.

The orcs in the center of the board are nearly wiped out.  All that remains is the taskmaster and one other orc.  The beast does manage to kill off the two elves that had sacrificed themselves to protect their brothers.

I had hoped to get at the drummer, since the break point had been reached for the orcs.  However, leaving him free to make his courage roll meant that I could rack up some more victory points!  This is where things continued to go my way.

Once an army is broken in this scenario, you roll a D6.  If it is a 1 or 2 , the game ends immediately.  We rolled at least 4 straight sixes, keeping the game going unbelievably long!  This would let me press every advantage which I had with my numbers and positioning.

I am still trying to kill off the last remaining orc infantry.  If I can do this, I can go after the beast, which had been wounded a few times by lucky bow shots.

Eventually I do charge the beast, making all the courage rolls needed to surround it with everything I had.  The fight skill 8 of Gwaihir (and his strength), would spell the death of the beast.

In the end, it was 32 to 10 in the casualty count for the elves!  Wow.  I had even been able to get one Knight all the way to the orc side of the board for the five bonus points, thanks to the 4-5 extra turns.

Again, everything possible went my way here.  A welcome change from the previous day.  Would this use up all my good luck?  We shall see as the worshipers of Sauron face stubby legged dwarves.  Again.

Stay tuned!