When we last saw our intrepid Elven heroes, they were on the cusp of collapsing the entire left side of the orc line. Gwaihir had silenced the Mouth of Sauron (he is now one of those singing bass things you hang on the wall), and Seregond had done lots of mayhem to the remaining orcs.
At this stage in the battle, the eagle managed to free himself from a pesky orc and land by the shaman to say "Hi". The fury cast by the shaman would be far more troublesome than a whole unit of orcs, since we were about to break the orcs. The last thing I wanted to happen was orc doing a daisy chain of auto passing courage tests around that hill!
I also had to kill off that banner bearer, who was at least the 3rd orc to pick that darn thing up!
The eagle failed to kill off the shaman, but he lost the combat, taking away the fury, which is what I needed.
However, the mostly intact orc unit had made it to the central hill, as did the troll. My lady stormcaller managed to beat the 'mighty' troll in combat, so she continued the fight with her cricket bat. However, if the orcs broke and rolled under a '2' on the next turn, the game would immediately end. This is what I had hoped for myself in the last game, but the killing continued :-)
OK, the shaman and the rest of the troublesome orcs have essentially been wiped out. The troll did kill the lady stormcaller (having to pick on a girl, of course!), and a few other Elves died to the orc captain. The orcs were well into the break point, so we rolled a dice...
It came up as a '2', so the game came to an end. I had tried to get as many elves over to the hill as I could, even passing up easy kills away from the hill. I was already up 6 victory points (3 for breaking the orcs, and 3 for killing the Big Mouth). Would that be enough?
In the end, Rich outnumbered me 10-7 on the hill, which meant that I had a 3 point victory! Without a doubt, the eagle was a huge addition. The King could not have reached, much less hurt, the Mouth of Sauron. Gwaihir flew over a batch of trees and nabbed him. The banner on the horse was not as useful as I thought, but there was one crucial re-roll that came up a 6 to win me a fight. I will need to take better care of him. We both realized that we had finally come up with something that worked.
Don't feel too bad for Rich, though, because he was still able to get revenge later on, as we tried out a new Settlers game:
We all thought this was far better than regular Settlers, where people get out in front really fast and stay there. The rolls of the dice are minimized, in fact. I loved that! The map is very interesting, and there are many many more paths to victory than standard Settlers. This is a definite win, and something we would love to have!
Speaking of wins, here is Rich celebrating...
While we were doing that, the Malifaux guys were getting more comfortable using the new terrain board:
All in all, a very interesting day! I am looking forward to getting the new eagle from CoolMini, which will be used as my Gwaihir!
