Goblin Attack!!

Seven of us gathered around the game table last Sunday for some LOTR SBG. It was the first we'd been able to play in what seems like ages! We played two of my recently written scenarios, and those played through in about 45 mins-1 hour each. Then we set up a small village and the Warriors of Minas Tirith attempted to hold off a superior number of goblins and Uruk hai berserkers.

All scenery except the square dice tower was produced by my company, BATTLESCAPES TERRAIN, although the stone walls had not been flocked at this point. All the goblins, Warriors of Minas Tirith, and the dice tower were the work of my friend Joel's company, A Hole in the Ground Terrain.


The warriors gather at the city walls as the goblin force approaches..

Given the goblins ability to climb, the walls weren't as great of a barrier as the warriors had hoped...the goblins split into two forces, going to the right and left.

Meanwhile, the goblins were also supported by a unit of archers. A minor irritation with their weak bows, but they eventually helped win the game serving as reinforcements.

The Uruk hai berserkers took their toll, and took several warriors to bring down...

The goblin archers arrive and begin to swarm the central barricade...

The warriors stood to the last man, but the day was won by the goblins' superior numbers and the strength of the berserkers.

New Road System

Here's a quick shot of part of my new road system. I made about ten 1' straight sections, two curves, a fork, and a "T" section. They are 4" wide, and allow for 3 men in the road with 1/2" or so of grass on either side. All are interchangeable and fit together in a a variety of configurations. The pieces are made from 1/8" wood, beveled on the edge, covered in sand and kitty litter, and lined with flock, static grass, and clump foilage.

Playtests for "Gathering the Troops" and "Treasure Quest"

This weekend my son and I had the opportunity to play through two of the scenarios I wrote for LOTR SBG. They both went pretty smoothly. Although he's only eight, my son has really learned the rules and strategies of this game...He's become a formidable opponent! We managed to finish both of these scenarios within one hour each...

Rules for these scenarios can be found here: http://barts-toys.blogspot.com/p/scenarios-for-lord-of-rings-sbg.html


Gathering the Troops-My son always prefers to play the bad guys, so he started out with two Uruk hai. I took the part of Good, and started with three Rangers. The idea behind this scenario is to try to find friendly troops during the night, and sometimes you stumble over enemy troops instead. With a few lucky rolls, I managed to find more of my troops than he did...and eventually wiped out his Uruk hai.

Notes for Gathering the Troops:

I thought this game was pretty cool because it was very unpredictable. One side or the other may be quickly overwhelmed, or it may wind up being a tough, slow fight. We found it was smart to keep several of your troops together, in case they unexpectedly ran into a mass of enemy troops. The other cool part was that you tend to wind up with a lot of small skirmishes all over the board, rather than having mass battles in one location. Overall, I thought this game represented disorganized night fighting pretty well.




Treasure Quest-Again, my son took on the Evil side (should I be worried here?) in the form of 24 Orcs and an Orc Captain. I started off on the other end of the board with 20 Rangers. Ultimately, treasure rolls decided the game. The game ended when all the treasure had been captured. Both sides found almost equal amounts of treasure (Rangers 6, Orcs 5), but my treasure value rolls were consistently higher. Final score- Rangers: 1600 gold, Orcs: 1100 gold.

Notes for Treasure Quest:

Again, it was often about the luck of the treasure value rolls. The Ranger's bows and long distance striking capability helped even out the troops by the time they reached each other for close fighting. The best strategy for this scenario seemed to be to spread the troops out in order to reach as many treasure piles as possible. I did see that it was very important to get the treasure piles evenly dispersed and fairly equidistant from both starting lines to give both sides a fair chance. The ones in the middle were the most fun because we had to fight over them.


We really enjoyed the shorter scenarios. Generally, it's difficult for us to play through an entire game due to time constraints and attention span...but both of these took less than one hour each and we were able to get through the whole game.

Hope you enjoy them! Sorry there were no pictures....


Bart

Temple painting finished!

I've finished the painting stage for my temple ruins, as shown below...now to add some green growth and weeds here and there and I'll be finished!

This update shows the final stages of painting...the lightest grey and some highlights of off-white. The off-white seemed to really make the details and edges pop, so I stayed away from any pure white...

Thanks for looking again! Any constructive comments or criticisms always welcome!

More work on the temple

I've had some time to make some headway on my temple ruins project this week, so here's the update. At this point I've finished the construction and done several layers of paint. I started with a solid black layer and then drybrushed with increasingly lighter greys. These photos show the temple with with some parts with the light grey highlight, but not all of it. I'll eventually finish with a few highlights of pure white.

The stone and roof portion is constructed out of 1/2 foam insulation and 3/16 foam board.

I hope to finish this one up soon...Thanks for looking!

Temple work in progress

I started this project about a week ago, and it's probably about half done at this point. The platform is made of 1/8" wood and the columns are made from dowels and 1/8" wood. The broken sections are capped off with plaster to give them a more natural, crumbled look.

There's a bit more carving to be done, and lots of painting. I'm considering doing a bottom layer of foam that would be carved like stone work, like a support platform.

I decided to throw in a couple of guardian statues for flavor, breaking off the arm of one as though it was knocked off by falling debris.

That's all for now, but hopefully I'll get this finished up over the next week.

Terrain Mania!!!

I haven't had as much time as I'd like to play any LOTR lately, but I've made some significant  progress in the workshop. My main goal over the last few months has been to create some versatile battlefield terrain to break up the landscape a bit. Below you'll see a hill and tower that I've already posted about, as well as my new river and bridge, multiple forest pieces, some stone obstacles, a table edger, and three Fat Dragon houses I assembled. I didn't play an actual game, but I wanted to lay it all out to see everything together with a few troops on the board. So...Here ya go!

The board as a whole...

A few closeups of some of the forest bases...

The bridge and river...

The hill and tower as seen previously...

Some stone obstacles, one with some rune carvings in the top...

The table edger ( this idea came when I was looking at the off-cuts from the river banks, thinking "hmmm...what to do with these?" )...

And finally, three Fat Dragon houses I assembled. These take about 1 hour each and look great in my opinion...I love this stuff!

New Tower for LOTR

It's been a while since I last updated around here. That doesn't mean I haven't been busy with projects, just too busy to post about them!

Here's a tower I completed a month or so ago. I'm more or less pleased with it, although I think I'll do a few things differently next time around. It's constructed of 1/2 inch pink foam cut in circles and stacked. The base is also made of pink foam. The top of the tower is simply larger rings with the inside cut out, and the very top was glued down lightly and then I cut out the unwanted sections. The door is from a MageKnight Dungeons set...The wizard pictured for scale is from Reaper miniatures and was painted by my lovely wife!

The tower is just set on the base and can easily be removed in case I ever just need a flat topped hill or want to set the tower on a different landscape...