The Christmas Game

Club game last night and we had a large turnout, almost a full complement, our leader Matt gave a small talk on how the year has gone, the club is healthy, Dan the treasurer showed how buoyant we are and asked for ideas to spend money in 2018. We were treated not only to Julian's excellent mince pies, but cheese and biscuits, sausage rolls and a big box of Quality Street courtesy of Andy, a great start to the night.

The game was a huge Lord of the Rings skirmish, I think we had nine Good players and nine Evil players, I was reluctantly forced into being a goodie which goes against the grain, we were then told to go and collect our forces, I chose three mounted Rohan, they just looked good to me. We then headed for our deployment areas which were interspersed between Good and Evil, I had an Assassin on my right and a Mordor Troll on my left, points were given out for kills and capturing booty, which just happened to be some of the Cadburys Roses spread around the table.

Before the mayhem.

My beautiful but useless riders.

There was one of those large purple favourites just in front of my cavalry so off I went for a quick capture, this proved a two edged sword as it was high in points (60) but immensely heavy to carry, this would cut my movement down to that of a foot soldier. Sadly the treasure did not become lighter after I had eaten the sweet so I decided to drop it and go join the large fight which was developing on my left between some foot Rohrimm(?) and two trolls. As Dan's Troll hid behind a large rock we turned on Julian's, it suffered an arrow shot and my hero also managed to get a decent hack at it, in howling pain it made off towards its friend, I could see 50 easy points coming up. All of a sudden the pitter patter of tiny feet could be heard as a swarm of dwarves jumped on the monster and brought him to the ground, I howled in rage to no good, cheaters!

Our battleground.

The Trolls turn.

Rob, the Keeper of the Mince Pies, got his revenge on me as he gave our Evil foes a bit of a hand by dropping a Barrow Wight into the fray, this foul creature then froze my leader and one of my men, basically putting them out of the game as it was nearly impossible to wake them up. The Mordor Troll had come back into the game and was slaughtering our men left, right and centre, two brave souls, who had been protecting a large orange sweetie decided to leap from their fastness on to the Trolls back and kill him. One chickened out and stayed with the plunder while the other landed on the Troll but also impaled himself on one of his armoured spikes.

I had lost my first contingent and pulled more cavalry for my second, all this time the original plunder I had dropped had been fought around and ignored, as time was slowing slipping by I detached a couple of riders to pick it up, I couldn't end the game with a minus score. My new hero was as useless as my first one and took forever to kill a couple of dim witted Orcs.

You two get that 60 points!

The game ended and I had managed to glean 75 points, the winner had over 200, but I had the consolation that he was Good, so I had done my bit. There was all sorts happening around the table and laughter and banter throughout, a great evening. I even managed to get a couple of the mince pies to take home, I also got my revenge on Rob as my little group got to place a bunch of rabid Orcs or some such foul monsters right next to his last man standing, job done.

Revenge.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.