BATREP: LotR - Fiefdoms

On Sunday last weekend I took a trip to the SPL(That's Secret Pirate Lair) which is hidden away in the deserts of Arizona. This trip was for the purpose of testing out my Fiefdoms army against a new opponent army. Most of my games have been against a relative few different armies, and with the upcoming Gather in the Desert(GitD) event I felt it was important to get some experience against other army types.

This game we played a variation of the Capture the Prize mission. Normally the mission involves getting the prize and then removing it off your army table edge. The variation we played changed the requirement to removing the prize off the opponent's table edge! This new requirement makes it a much harder event as you need to hold off your enemy which still maintaining enough force to punch a whole through the enemy lines.

My army was of course(Fiefdoms). My list was my GT list and included Imrahil(mounted), 7 Knights of Dol Amroth(mounted), 12 Knights of Dol Amroth(foot), 8 Men-at-arms of Dol Amroth, 4 Axemen of Lossarnach, and 12 Rangers of Gondor. This gives me a pretty elite force at 44 models. The primary concern is my hero support which only includes Imrahil. Don't get me wrong though, Imrahil is a powerful hero!

My opponent was Tim and his Moria army. All I can say is, 'Fear the Horde!' His list included a Moria Goblin Captain, Moria Goblin Shaman, 2 Cave Trolls, 14 Moria Goblins with bows and another 55 Moria goblins with a mix of sword/shield, spear/shield and spear armaments. This was the largest army I have ever played against and it was a bit overwhelming.

The terrain was pretty basic with the prize buried in a ruin in the center of the table and a mixture of trees and hills over the remainder of the table. I won a roll off and elected to have the goblins setup first. This allowed me to see his layout and 'try' to counter it, but really, when the enemy is 2+ models deep in his lines and covers the entire 4 feet of table edge, there isn't much to exploit!

Having the only cavalry I was able to gain purchase of the ruin first and tie up the goblins long enough to finally dig up the prize and hand it off to one of my mounted KoDA, but in the end the toll of losses was too much. My dice failed me badly as I was unable to win many fights against the Goblin Horde and even when I did I couldn't kill them for nothing. My Rangers also were mostly ineffective as their bow fire was mostly wasted in Volley fire attempts which rarely succeeded in hitting, let along kills. Even when they could shoot with direct fire then many times failed to hit the goblins, which we started referring to as 'stealth goblins' due to their ability to hide from any missile fire.

In the end I was able to make the table edge but needed 1 turn more to actually leave the table. The goblins were broken and the only model able to catch the Knight disappeared due to its failed courage test, but time was called as I had to leave. Net result was 4 hours of gaming and a overall Draw. But the game was worth it completely!

Sorry there are no pictures of the event, there were some issues with the colors of the shots as the goblins were 'stealthy' and kept disappearing from the pictures.

I know this batrep doesn't have much meat to it, but I am curious what you all have done in match ups against such overwhelming numbers? I do note that I split my Cav and also engaged with them early which was a mistake. Hopefully I can keep from doing that again in the future!