Game Reports

The Lord of the Rings, a pararell adventure

Posted by blacksmith on 31 Aug 2023, 12:27

Somebody in this forum asked me to post my games with all the Dark Alliance figures that I have been painting, so here it is the first episode, copied right from the publication in my blog: http://javieratwar.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-lord-of-rings-parallel-adventure.html.

I did not know how to call it. What I am planning to do is playing solo encounters with the members of the Fellowship through their journey from The Shire up to Gondor or even farther. But it is not going to be exactly as in the books or in the movies as I am going to skip big events and battles, as well as powerful, almost unbeatable characters from the skirmishes such as Tom Bombadil, the Ring Wraiths, the Balrog, the Undead from the Dark Door or Sauron to name a few. My idea is to play skirmishes with everyday monsters so to speak, and see if the members of the Fellowship survive or not; in a fashion to the old PC game Lord of the Rings from 1990 that had that fantastic soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh-dWwbtRAQ. I mean, it is quite probably that some of them won't make it, and that the One Ring passes from one bearer to another on its way to its final destination. We shall see.

In my mind, I thought about playing two encounters with the Hobbits going from The Shire to Bree, then one with Aragorn before Bree. After that, the survivors will have two more encounters before reaching Rivendell. There, the Fellowship will be formed (I won't play encounters of Gandalf, Gimli and Boromir reaching Rivendell as I cannot remember there were any information about them). The Fellowship will depart from Rivendell and will have one encounter in Moria, maybe another encounter in their way to Lórien. Later, the ambush of the Uruk Hai and then one mission with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to rescue Pippin and Merry if they still live. After Helms Deep and the meeting with Saruman, the surviving members of the Fellowship will go to Minas Tirith, but before that I will surely play at least one encounter with Frodo, Sam and Gollum, maybe with Shelob and Cirith Ungol, and probably, if I reach that far, I will think and play some more encounters like Ithilien and who knows? maybe a few more up to Mordor.

I'll be using home made solo skirmish rules for the fighting, and the beautiful book Jouneys of Frodo by Barbara Strachey to get a general idea of the journey and its surroundings when deploying terrain. The miniatures to play are all 1/72 soft plastic soldiers, mostly from Dark Alliance and Caesar, plus the Fellowship of the Ring that it is 3D printed.

This copy belonged to my best buddy who sadly passed away on 2020, and I am going to share this adventure with him as well as with you, dear readers.

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Woody End
Hiding from the the Rider, the Hobbits took the path through Woody End south of East Road. The river is The Stockbrook, and they have to cross it to get to Maggot's Farm and then the Causeway. The Hobbits start at the bottom left, on the path, and there is one hazard token (HT) up in their way. More HTs, one per turn, will appear on any border at random: 1d6: 1-3 top border, 4 rightt, 5 bottom, 6 left. HTs can be good or bad things, events or even a false alarm. The Hobbits in the thick wood count as hidden and enemies can only detect them by passing a spotting test.

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Our little adventurers coming out from their world for the first time.

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Suspecting some trouble ahead the compay decided to get out of the path and into the wood but the HT also moved similarly. HTs move at random.

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They continued to move East and having sight of the HT they resolved it. Funnily, of all possible things they could meet, it was an Elf. -Look Mister Frodo, Elves!
Another HT showed behind them but I was more relaxed after seeing they will have some help.

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The Elf and the Hobbits pushed forwards towards the ford and for a few turns they did not see anybody. Here I made a mistake with my own rules as HTs should have started to appear since the very first turn, and also move straight towards the centre of the table and then at random, but instead of that, they started moving at random since they appeared and so, they ended very dispersed and away from the Hobbits. When I realised about this it was too late so I decided to leave it as it was and give the boys some edge for being their first encounter.

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Here are the adventurers about to cross the ford and exit the sector with success. Another reason for this lack of enemies was that I never rolled 1 to 3 with a d6 for deploying HTs and thus no one came to their front, but from sides and from back, allowing them to escape without any trouble.

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Not a very exiting game but we will see how they manage in the next encounter, crossing the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs.


For those of you interested, I'll be posting following encounters in this same thread instead of opening a new one, so stay tuned.

Cheers,
Javier
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blacksmith  Spain
 
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Posted by Kaiphranos on 31 Aug 2023, 19:52

Looks like fun, hope our heroes make it through OK!
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Kaiphranos  United States of America
 
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Posted by PaulRPetri on 01 Sep 2023, 00:39

This looks cool as heck Javier!! That book looks very interesting but a bit expensive for me when I looked it up, around $90 USA. Oh well.
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Posted by PhilC on 01 Sep 2023, 11:46

Waow, very nice table, there's something smooth and comfortable in theses pictures... I hope you show us new episodes very soon!
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Posted by blacksmith on 01 Sep 2023, 17:04

Kaiphranos wrote:Looks like fun, hope our heroes make it through OK!

I suspect some of them won't make it in the Uruk Hai ambush after Lórien, we'll see :9
Cheers
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Posted by blacksmith on 01 Sep 2023, 17:07

PaulRPetri wrote:This looks cool as heck Javier!! That book looks very interesting but a bit expensive for me when I looked it up, around $90 USA. Oh well.

It cost 3.50 GBP back in the day! The book gives information about where the group stopped to sleep and have a meal, dates, the phase of the moon, etc. plus beautiful drawings of Middle Earth, but there are other books similar or even better.
Maybe you can find this one on Ebay?
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Posted by blacksmith on 01 Sep 2023, 17:10

PhilC wrote:Waow, very nice table, there's something smooth and comfortable in theses pictures... I hope you show us new episodes very soon!

Actually, the first encounter was so short and quick that I played the second one inmediately after. I'll probably play the third encounter (in Bree) this weekend, and soon you will see them published :)
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blacksmith  Spain
 
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Posted by Peter on 06 Sep 2023, 14:18

I'm ready to follow this! :-D

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PS: nice looking table! :love:
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Posted by blacksmith on 07 Sep 2023, 17:41

As I said, I'll keep posting successive encounters in this thread. Here's the second delivery, The Old Forest:
https://javieratwar.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-old-forest.html
Cheers,
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Posted by blacksmith on 26 Sep 2023, 20:53

A third encounter. This time is Aragorn in The Chetwood, north of Bree, cleaning the forest from lurking creatures: https://javieratwar.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-chetwood.html

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Cheers,
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blacksmith  Spain
 
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Posted by Susofrick on 27 Sep 2023, 09:51

Really cool stuff! I have read all the books, the comics, seen the movies (Bakshi and Jackson). Read A LOT about the books and a lot of other stuff by and about JRR so I follow this with some interest! This is very nice! Maybe not for the orcs or Aragorn (who have to work some), but for the decent people in Bree and four travelling hobbits.
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Susofrick  Sweden
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Posted by blacksmith on 27 Sep 2023, 14:17

Susofrick wrote:Really cool stuff! I have read all the books, the comics, seen the movies (Bakshi and Jackson). Read A LOT about the books and a lot of other stuff by and about JRR so I follow this with some interest! This is very nice! Maybe not for the orcs or Aragorn (who have to work some), but for the decent people in Bree and four travelling hobbits.

Like you and many people, I also read all books and comics and play computer games as well about LOTR. LOTR by Interplay marked me when I played years ago and now I'm trying to replay with miniatures.
Thank you Susofrick, I'm deligthed someone may find my reports amusing. Next encounter will be in the Prancing Poney but it will take some time because I have never been so busy in my life as I am now.
Cheers,
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Posted by MABO on 03 Oct 2023, 07:20

Hey, I like the spiders I saw on your blog. You should post a picture here as well!
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Posted by blacksmith on 04 Oct 2023, 17:11

MABO wrote:Hey, I like the spiders I saw on your blog. You should post a picture here as well!

You mean these ones? They're cheap plastic Halloween spiders that I did not even bother to paint.
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Well, I painted some for 28mm:
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They look bigger on the round bases.
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Posted by MABO on 08 Oct 2023, 06:48

And they look cool as well, even if they are simple and cheep!
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Posted by blacksmith on 15 Oct 2023, 14:06

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Posted by Peter on 15 Oct 2023, 14:41

Looks very good! :thumbup:
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