I've started a new campaign, this time with an opponent. I have to admit I wasn't too keen on this setting, still relatively shortly after finishing the big Lord of the Rings campaign, but the scenarios do seem fun and against an opponent it will likely be more fun. It was especially the many strategical and tactical decisions I'd have to make on both sides that I was dreading. Siege of Gondor is one of the oldest source books and I have pretty much all the required models and terrain build and painted, so it seems like a good reason to try it out.

Full overview:
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-campaign-overview/

Linked campaign
Scenario 1: Prologue: Osgiliath (24-02-2022)
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... osgiliath/
Scenario 2: Act One: First Assault on Cair Andros (16-03-2022)
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... ir-andros/
Scenario 3: Act Two: Second Assault on Cair Andros (20-03-2022)
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... ir-andros/
Scenario 4: Act Three: The Rammas (25-03-2022)
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... he-rammas/
Scenario 5: Act Four: The Siege of Minas Tirith (03-08-2022)
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... as-tirith/
Scenario 6: Epilogue: The Pyre of Denethor (ETA 2022)
To be played

Appendix
Scenario 7: Act One: The Defenses Must Hold!
To be played
Scenario 8: Act Two: Forth Eorlingas!
To be played

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Nice battle report as usual and I think you were due for one you enjoyed!

Osgiliath looked nice. Some of the ruins I recognize as the GW kits, but many buildings (e.g. the tower) didn't look GW. They fit in well with the GW models, though. That gaming mat is perfect for the city -- where did you get it from, if you don't mind my asking?

Your experience with Faramir seems all-too-typical. I think we've all got models that never seem to perform as well as expected for whatever reason. It's usually not the same model, though! And it's practically a miniature wargaming trope that the troops you feverishly worked to finish painting the night before are the first to die in the following day's game.

Better luck for the Good guys next time!

Thanks Dave!

Some ruins and the tower are from TTCombat (tower is 'Bell Tower'), the fountains and statue plinths are from Sarissa Precision. The temple from Thomarillion (now probably sold by Ziterdes) and the rest of the ruins and buildings are indeed from GW and others from Amera Plastic Mouldings. The plastic Amera ones are quite cheap and do look a bit cheaper in real life, with less texture, though from a little distance it works just fine.

The mat is from Deep Cut Studio 'Cobblestone' 6x4 feet Mousepad, though for this scenario only 4x4 feet was needed: https://www.deepcutstudio.com/product/w ... bblestone/

True points you make about some side effects from wargaming, it's funny to hear people berating models because for them they consistently perform badly. Hopefully Faramir will do better next scenario.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Great blogpost, I remember playing through most of these scenarios when the SoG book was originally released. They are tough.
Table looks good (TTCombat buildings are great value) but needs rubble, all the bits missing from those buildings had to land somewhere!

Can only echo what has been said, great write-up of the battle report, nice layout with assorted buildings, well done!

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thank you! And Rob you are absolutely right about the rubble. I should make some one day.

Meanwhile scenario 2 has been played, which turned out to be quite a short one (thankfully ).
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... ir-andros/

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

It was more fun to read about than to play, evidently.

You mention not anticipating Evil's concentrated deployment, but without changing the scenario rules I'm not sure what else you could have done besides spread out. Thinking about it a bit more, it's weird that Good deploys first, as if they couldn't see the Orcs massing for attack in one particular spot.

Maybe Gondor needs to hire better contractors to build their walls than those Rohan guys....

That's very true, I hadn't even thought about that!

The follow-up has now been played as well, which thankfully was a bit better in my opinion:
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... ir-andros/

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Wow, you're really knocking them out. As always, an enjoyable read.

You haven't mentioned your opponent much recently. Have you made a convert to SBG, or is he just indulging you?

Come on here to comment on a battle report and find you've done another!

As usual, both are well done and as usual, question GW's methodology in designing the scenarios.

Always feel that the scenarios need to be played twice, once using GW and the second time with house rules that make more sense. I haven't really compared the earlier scenarios against when they are republished but I feel all that changes are figures.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks Dave and Mapper. My opponent is still playing against me and he seems to be enjoying it so far. He is difficult for me to beat because he rarely seems to make mistakes, though I do feel that the dice certainly aren't always in my favour, particularly in the latest one:
https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... he-rammas/

@Mapper I think you are right about playing scenarios twice, the problem with that for me is that I almost never immediately want to replay a scenario when I'm done, I'm usually just glad it's over.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

Are you sure you're rolling d6s and not d4s?

The campaign advantage of orcs suddenly appearing behind the walls seemed to really put you behind the eight ball. Still an interesting battle report to read, though. Thanks for posting!

I don't expect you to play the scenarios twice, I'm just happy that you are doing them at all! Maybe you should throw out those dice or make sure your playing partner hasn't brought his own . Maybe rename the priority phase also?

On a different note, have you played War of the Ring with your painted figures yet?

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

I am enjoying see this campaign progress despite Good suffering so much from the cruel hands of fate.

A shame about your cavalry charge though. In my experience, the Gondor's knights do tend to perform in a lackluster manner most of the time. I only seem to get them to do anything when they are directly following a big hero around and basically riding to glory on said hero's coattails. I was hoping to see them make a decent showing for once.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

Thanks a lot everyone and apologies for the late follow-up!


I have and it's beautiful! I wish I could play the game more often! I don't have photos of it in action, but I will try to make a few when I play it the next time.



After about 4-5 months we have finally played the next scenario. This one wasn't as one-sided, though I do start to see that these older scenarios are in my opinion hampered a bit by the lack of Might among the participants, leaving outcomes more to chance and less to interesting decisions. Still, it wasn't a bad scenario, I have just seen and played ones I enjoyed more.

https://aiwendil.net/siege-of-gondor-20 ... as-tirith/

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

That was another great read. Your to-scale walls and resulting huge siege towers look great.

Did you have the siege towers as legal targets for the trebuchets? Taking one out would have helped Good, I'd guess. On the other hand with only two on the table maybe it would be too imbalanced if Evil loses one?

I hear you on the bewildering lack of equipment specified in the old books, something that's generally much better these days (if still not perfect). I'd have thought that the horse option would be closer to the movies and books than the Fell Beast, though. Isn't this the iconic scene where he and Gandalf have their standoff? Might help with the balance problem as well.

Anyway, nice job and I look forward to the next one!

Thank you very much Dave!

Yes, the siege towers were legal targets, but I decided not to focus on them because Evil started pretty close to the walls and they had 4 Wounds each. Statistically I would then maybe make them lose 1 Wound each turn, but by turn 4 most Orcs would have probably already made it off and there would have been a good chance to not score a Wound, extending the period for which Orcs could escape and climb the walls.

It appears that the Trebuchets haven't really done much for the outcome of this scenario, because they only killed some random Orcs at the back, but it's possible those orcs would have otherwise made it to the walls and thus given Evil a win. The Trebuchets also were a common target for the Mordor Catapult, a number of Orcs from the siege tower and even the Witch-King, which helped the other Good troops stay safe from those (at least more so than if there were no Trebuchets).

In my BGiME playthrough of a similar scenario I did use my Trebuchets to fire on the Siege Towers, but that resulted in the awkward situation where I scored 3 wounds, but then there was a bit of disparity between the old and the new rules. In the new rules a Siege Tower only has 3 Wounds, in the old situation they have 4 Wounds. I try to play with the newest rules possible, but there I ruled that, because of the hugeness of these towers, 4 Wounds were more likely. But you are right that that would make a tremendous impact on the game. And I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with how the Siege rules are handled in the newest edition. They are scattered across different books, not always clear and it feels quite incomplete. In this supplement the Siege rules are generally clear, interesting and well detailed.

The horse for the Witch-King would indeed be closer to the books. But I think a Winged Beast is necessary here, because in 6 turns the Witch-King wouldn't be able to do much, even with a horse. Maybe to balance things more every turn it should become increasingly likely that Rohan arrives, so a 6 is needed for turn 6, but then a 5+ for turn 7, 4+ for turn 8, etc.

Thanks for your comments! I don't know when the next one will happen, but I'm hoping to play and post about it this year.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

> I don't know when the next one will happen, but I'm hoping to play and post about it this year.

You're managing better than me, which is great for you and less good for me. I hope to get back in the swing sometime, but it's likely to not be until next year.

Always enjoy reading these, and your dedication to playing them.

Using new rules on old scenarios seem to cause problems, but makes sense.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Hello everyone,

On February 19 my blog will expire since I will not renew it (for financial reasons). I haven't been very active with this hobby lately due to increased work load and with a baby underway, I don't see a lot of time available that I could realistically spend on the hobby. I am sure that will change at some point in the future so I do expect an eventual return, but probably not this year. I did back-up everything on the blog.

Thanks a lot for following and reading along on my hobbying adventures! I did manage to finish this campaign not too long ago by playing the Epilogue: Pyre of Denethor scenario, but didn't take many photos and wasn't planning on writing a battle report for it. I can say it was a bit of a lopsided scenario, though that may have been due to Evil getting the campaign bonus which allowed a lot of their units to spawn at a much better spot than normally. In typical 'the Good player' has it rough with the dice rolls fashion, I lost Priority a lot of consecutive turns at the start of the game and Gandalf failed to even cast Terror (2+) for multiple turns in a row. Also, Denethor burned Faramir by rolling a 6 immediately when he got the option, making the best possible outcome a Draw. Halfway through the dice did go in my favour, but it was already too late and the forces of Good were ultimately decimated, giving Evil an easy victory and making them the clear winner of this campaign.

My favourite scenario of this campaign was probably the Prologue, because it really evoked the atmosphere of Osgiliath for me, both in looks but also in gameplay. I wasn't too impressed by the other scenarios unfortunately. In the future I plan on starting a campaign that appeals more to me.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/