Rohan Gone Wild

Jon and I met this morning to give WotR another run-through. Jon had never played witht the expansion before, and I was more than happy to show him the ropes. Jon volunteered to take the Shadow, so I packed up my pipeweed for a long journey.

Despite my warnings, Jon seemed less than impressed with the Ents lurking in Fangorn. Jon repeatedly sent many of Treebeard's pals through the buzzsaw, and before long Fangorn was teaming with angry bushes. Jon sallied forth to lay siege to Helms Deep, but right behind him shot about 10 Ent miniatures making a beeline for Orthanc. After making the journey, the Ents were able to roll a total of 30 dice against Orthanc, then the army outside Helms Deep. Despite atrocious rolling, the Saruman was squished down into maple syrup, though the army outside Helms Deep only took minor losses.

Jon recovered quickly, sending the Snakemen up to snatch Erebor, then lay siege to the Woodland Realm. Jon also sent a strong party of the survivors from Isengard northward to capture the Shire (!) and move onward towards the Grey Havens. Jon also activated the Corsairs and was moving up the coast to Dol Amroth. His plans were well afoot.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't have enough time to carry them out. Emboldened by the example of the Ents, Theoden launched Rohan on a massive jihad, killing everyone who looked like they might have a little bit of orc blood in them from Edoras all the way to Moria. He took Orthanc; he destroyed the Hillmen villages; finally he and his merry band of madmen besieged Moria, defended by the Balrog, two Nazgul, and three orcs. It took a few turns, but in the end, Theoden achieved a Free People's military victory! Meanwhile the Fellowship was taking a nice long picnic nap just south of Lorien somewhere...

Jon then retaliated by taking me to school in Epic BattleLore. I was taken apart, scrambled, beaten, roasted, then sent home without any supper! I must be hungry.... Anyway, Epic BL is, in my opinion, the only way to play BL. More of everything! I also like the shared command card mechanic. If only Memoir had this kind of setup.... I did see an Origins 2007 picture of Mr. Borg playing what looked like Epic C&C: Ancients, so I'm hopeful...

My last game of the day was a quick game of Cowboys with Chris. I picked what looked like a short scenario, since it looked like SABG baseball was on the agenda for the rest of the evening. We played Lynch Mob, which had me guarding a prisoner in the jail against 14 angry townsfolk and a ringleader. The scenario itself was pretty lame, with Chris just running zombie-like townspeople in, and me gunning them down at point blank range. There was no decision making to be made, and I can't imagine spending another 20 minutes of my life replaying it. In the end, I miraculously won by one bullet, so it was a little exciting. However, the only reason I won was winning a pretty uninteresting dice rolling contest. To be fair, I'm sure there are more interesting scenarios later in the book, though I think this one was #10/26. I think the game will work best as an icebreaker, doing an every person for themself massive shootout. The game itself is actually simpler than Epic Duels, which I'm a bit suprised by. Still, I'm still keeping hope alive that this doesn't suck.