Played a game!

It's been a while since we had a games night out at John's place. This time around I had a couple of games of Lord of the Rings with Adam who had brought his figures along. We started off with the first scenario from the Two Towers rulebook.

'Burning down the house' - latest hit from the band Orc-ing Heads

I was evil (muwahaha) and trying to burn some poor little Rohanis in their great hall. Yes, we were gaming the plot of 'the Patriot', except in this scenario the Rohan cavalry were on their way to rescue their brethren - they just needed to get through half of my Uruk-hai force.

'Wait for us! We brought marshmallows!'

On my deployment line the other half of my force was running (because everyone in Middle Earth runs - I've seen the films) to get into the action.

'Nice horsey...'

The riders of Rohan rode rapidly and roughly. I discovered that Uruk-hai are named after the noise they make when horses run over them - 'uurrrkk!'.

'Quick - form square - it works in Napoleonics!'

Needless to say half my force were crushed without much trouble - but they did delay the Riders long enough to burn a couple of civilians (it's all a bit gruesome really). But the Riders did manage to rescue the other four. Four out of six ain't bad as Meatloaf might have said if he had been revising his fractions, and it was enough to give the goodies the win.

We then played another game which was all foot troops with Eowyn and Lurtz involved. I took no photos of this game because I was really getting into it. And I won. Evil triumphed - muwhahaha! Although Lurtz died, but you know, he was expendable because he's a baddie.

Playing LotR did two things for me. First it made me want to get some figures. If anyone out there in cyberspace has a couple of dozen orcs and some Rohan chaps that they don't want (Scott, I'm looking at you!), let me know. I'll make you an offer that you'll probably refuse. I certainly only want to acquire stuff second hand as I am a notorious cheapskate - although refusing to pay Games Workshop's ridiculously outrageous prices probably isn't the definition of being a cheapskate.

Spare us an orc or two guv'nor?

Second, it reminded me how much fun and how versatile the LotR games system is. I played a lot of Legends of the Old West with Dan, which is essentially the same game, and I had no problem picking up Lord of the Rings for these games. Recently Geoff sent me his mods of this game for Samurai, (although I'm thinking of sticking to Ronin to begin with as I only want to play small skirmish games in that era) and it reminded me that this is a robust system to tinker around with. The end result is that I am going to look for a Star Wars variant, and if I can't find it, make my own. I'm also going to use it for the next project to roll into my feverish mind - Legends of the Feathered Serpent - or something similar - 28mm Aztecs and Conquistadors. Someone's already done all the hard work for this in the LotR Variants Yahoo group.

Latest in my never-ending list of potential projects

I had the Return of the King rulebook, but when John began collecting Lord of the Rings figures last year I gave him that copy to use. Then he got another copy in one of the Trade-me auctions he won and sold the copy I had given him. I just kind of expected that he'd give it back if he didn't need it - but when I gave it to him I guess the assumption was I didn't want it anymore. Never mind, I bought a copy off Amazon this morning for NZ$17 - 1p for the book and 7 quid for postage. I also picked up a copy of Michael Wood's Conquistadors book based on the BBC series of the same name, which is, incidentally, not on youtube, for the same price. Next week, time to order some sample figures from Outpost Wargames Services.

Nate