Batrep: Erebor vs. Easterlings

Had a chance to play a little bit of LotR last night. Had a great time playing Sean(aka dvdhwk) and his Easterlings force from the GT. Sean figured he would try a new trick and dropped 2 of his captains to allow him to field Khamul. Khamul is a great model and I look forward to seeing Sean's fully painted at our next meet up.

I played an Erebor army with stand-in models as my Dwarf box wasn't in yet. I look forward to refining that army list for the November 350pt meet up and then the February GT.

Overall Khamul worked ok. He led a force of Kataphrakts which went head to head with my dwarf line. They held well, 4 turns before I killed all of them, but Khamul fell after only the 2nd round of combat. Khamul did get a chance to reduce Balin's will and tried once to transfix him but failed.

Mission was Higher Ground(basically King of the Hill) which we decided to place a largish 3 level hill in the center and made a run for it. I tried to get my dwarfs to the hill early but made a tactical decision to move part of my force to block an Easterlings unit. This worked great as I held up a 10+ man unit with only 5 dwarfs. Unfortunately, the Easterlings did start the climbing of the hill first and got a better chance to mob my dwarfs as they climbed up. Luckily, my dwarfs held their ground and at the end of turn 9 I killed the last model to force break tests on the Easterlings.

Turn 10 started with an Easterling priority and the defection started. First the Captain failed his Courage negating his Stand Fast, and then the remaining models started running. Overall Sean had saved enough models to engage my units on the hill, but my movement enabled me to get 3 additional dwarfs on the hill giving me the greater number of models. Combat that round was bad, no kills on either side, which granted Erebor the Minor Victory.

Second Thoughts
Heroes. I had both Gimli and Balin and think I would be better served using Balin's points for additional Dwarfs. Also, I had no bows for any ranged combat. This needs to be looked at to see if Dwarfs with Bows or Rangers are the way to go. Additionally, I could look at using Throwing weapons.

Throwing Weapons. I NEVER once used the ones I had and should have been. Kept forgetting :(

Banner. Had a banner, but also forgot to use it until the final 2 or 3 turns. This resulted in a number of hits missed that could have been better.

Again, this was a great game and a great time I had. I look forward to my next gaming match up.