Fantastic Battle: The Myrin Tree

 I was really looking forward to Chris visiting today as we haven't had chance of a game for some time now. The scenario for todays game of Fantastic battles with Chris was as follows...(with myself being the Elves and Chris his LOTR themed Orcs: 800 points per side). 

The Myrin Tree

Once every thousand years, during the winter festive season a mysterious large tree, known as the Myrin Tree appears somewhere in the Elvish border lands. No-one is ever sure where the Myrin Tree will appear but it only ever appears for a single day. It is due to appear this winter so large elf patrols are scouring the Border Lands to seek the tree and collect the bright red fruit it bears. This fruit is highly valued for it's healing properties and it takes a unit 2 turns stationary next to the tree to collect it's fruit.

Having heard that the Myrin Tree may have appeared a force of Orcs is also searching the Border Lands for it. Legend tells that if the Myrin Tree ever falls a foul evil will be released upon the land. By chance, an elf force finds the tree just as the orcs also locate it.

Place a large wintery conifer tree in the centre of the table and the two forces will deploy either side of the Myrin Tree, 5BW away from it (per the usual deployment rules).

If the orcs wish to attack and destroy the Myrin Tree they must attack it using the following stats: Res: 8, Def: 5+. Once it's Resolution has been reduced to 0 it will fall causing damage in the same way as a falling Giant (page 12) but effecting units within 3BW. It will also cause a 'Ripple Effect' of Resolve loss in all elf units within 3BW of the tree's stump, with all elf units inside 3BW losing 1 point of Resolve. . 

The elves must try to prevent this from happening and also collect the red fruit. The orcs may also try to collect the red fruit once they have 'captured' or felled the tree.

If the Myrin Tree is felled a great evil will blight the land...(cue a possible second scenario!)

This was Chris's first game of Fantastic Battles and I was really hoping he was going to enjoy the game as we are both collecting some 10mm Lord of the Rings themed armies. The scenario was inspired by a sparkly Christmas tree model that my daughter has bought recently and was next to the table as I set the game up.

Here is the table after the armies have deployed but before mishaps. 

My elf army is deployed along the bottom of the photo, Chris's orcs across the top. 

The Myrin Tree is the large central snowy tree.

You can see a bit of movement caused by 'Mishaps'.

The orcs were perhaps more effected by 'Mishaps' than the elves but nothing too drastic. My elf scouts which had rushed forward foolishly entered the woods to my left only to be charged and devoured by an evil pack of wolves. (I hadn't realised the wolves also had the 'forester' trait). 

You can see my elf scouts fleeing the wolves, first two companies lost. 

As early as turn 2 disaster struck as the evil trolls charged the Mryin Tree and felled it in one go, squashing some of my elf spearmen as it fell. I must make a note to watch more carefully what my opponent's elite nasty trolls with heavy weapons are doing.!

So, objective achieved for the orcs but the valiant elves battled on, determined to clear the orcs from the Border Lands. 

And so we had a right good scrap with unit after unit piling in to the enemy and a fair few spells began to fly. The Blink spell was very useful to blink my elf knights into position for a charge the next turn and also good at pulling the heavily wounded spearman back a few BW. It didn't help that my spearmen had been cursed by the orcs resulting in a -3 modifier per company in combat!  

My elf knights charged bravely into the trolls but lose and are scattered.

My brave and noble treeman got chopped to pieces by the wolves supported by hordes of nasty orcs. As luck would have it, both forces were reduced to over half their units destroyed so both withdrew at the end of turn 4. That was a short but bloody battle and as the Myrin Tree was felled a great evil is about to plague the land!. 

We really had fun playing this game and we also learnt a bit more about the rules and how they play. We also tried a variety of combination of 'Traits' some worked, some were not so good but all can be tweaked before the next game. 

I have also finished my third unit of 15mm Vikings, some Huscarl's, see photo's below. These brave chaps will be used in games of Fantastic Battles and also historical games such as Hail Caesar.  

Finally once we had completed our battle we got out our town buildings that we have been making (28mm scale) and set them out on the table to see how they looked, It was great to see them as on village although we do need to add a few bits of random scatter such as walls, fields,  wagons, crates etc.. and a few villagers to add 'life' but we do feel we are getting there. This will be used in a variety of skirmish games both fantasy and historical.