Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Orccon February 15th - 18th 2013

  It's over. The first wargame convention here in southern California. And I had a great time, running Lord of the Rings-The Siege of Minas Tirith. Funny thing about getting players at a wargame convention. It can be feast or famine. This time, both Saturday and Sunday, I had just one player, Andy Saturday and Phil on Sunday, both times they who wanted to learn the game, so in essence I guess I ran demo games, So Be It. Both I and they had a great time and enjoyed the games. The best part of Sunday's game was I ran it for someone I knew (I used to play D&D with Phil for some years) but he had never played LOTR and wanted to try it, and as I had not played ANY game with him in years, I was a blast! And now to some photos -

                                                                      SATURDAY
                    The Army of Mordor moves forward! I played Mordor and Andy played Gondor.



The Witch-King on Fell Beast attacks the walls! At this point in the combats of the next couple of rounds, the Fell Beast is slain and the Witch-King is on foot, out of Might & Fate.
                                                "I have come for your life, White Fool!"
   However, in the next turn the Witch-King is surrounded and have no Might or Fate left, is smited unto nothingness by Gandalf, Pippin and Beregond.

                                                               "I'LL BE BACK............................"

  The Forces of Gondor won this game, run by Andy (I ran Mordor). This game I am sorry to say I didn't take as many photos as I did Sunday. I was really in teaching mode. Sunday however, I have alot of good ones!
                                                                            SUNDAY

    The Forces of Evil on the move, this time with Siege Towers- Phil played Mordor and I played Gondor
                                          "Didn't we have this dance the day before?"
                        Siege Tower down - too many hits with the Gondorian "Battlecry" Trebuchet

    The other Siege Tower survives to get to the wall - ladders are moving up! And in the far left you can see that the Witch-King is still fighting with Gandalf & company!
The Mordor Orcs and Uruk-Hai and getting on the walls and Gandalf is still fighting it out with the Witch-King. The puff of cotton on Gandalf is because the With-King successfully cast "Your Staff is Broken!" on Gandalf.
After getting the Siege Tower to the wall, the Mordor Trolls move towards the gate of Minas Tirith to smash it in!
                        A Mordor Uruk with 2 handed sword tops the ladder to get into the melee.
"KNOCK...KNOCK! Mordor Pizza delivery! After 2 turns of unbelievable dice rolling for the Trolls, the gate is opened (a string of "6's"!)
Just a few Orcs left to back-up the trolls, but one has a banner (which allows re-rolls) 
"FOR GONDOR!!!"  
Note the With-King is gone. He finally lost a round of combat and with all resources used up, to the hit that sent him back home to Mordor. However, some Mordor Uruk-Hai have not come to take his place and play....
   Now it appears that Gandalf is missing....The Evil player decided NO MATTER WHAT to kill him and fired the Mordor War Catapult at him and if Orcs/Uruk were killed instead, oh well. Well, again with the right dice rolls at the right time, Gandalf, having survived the With-King's attacks but with no Fate and 1 Might left saw the Uruk he was fighting eyes get REALLY big and turned just in time to catch the catapult rock (The Evil player rolled a hit, 4+, then a "6" on the scatter chart for targeting a small target like person and then made the roll to wound) and fly off the wall is a very messy heap below. And after that, Gothmog moved in (center of the photo-black ringed base-I painted him darker that shown in the movie) to help finish off the last of the wall's defenders.
             The other Mordor Troll switched places and enters to face the valiant Gordorian Warriors! 
                Gothmog and company in melee with the last of the defenders of the walls. 
Looks like the troll is cleaning up! (The troll did lose on turn of combat and after some good dice rolls by me, the Good Player, I gave it 2 wounds). 
                                                               Top view-Not many Gondorians left 
                  The end is near....the last warriors are up against the Troll and Mordor Uruk-Hai 
"MORDOR!   MORDOR!   MORDOR!"

   The Sunday game was a teaching game, I didn't bother with the victory conditions as we were both having such a good time. So the defenders were slain to the last man....

  I also played for a little while in a 15mm American War of Independence game but was so burned out I had to bow out and get some zzzz's. More to follow on Orccon 2013.

TTFN