Games night - a still smarting Timmy brings out the Rohan again - to be fair hes entering a tourney with them and is trying different tactics and ideas and im the sparring partner - I take Azog, because he terrifies him
On the right flank, prob 70% of his force - the only problem with my force is theres only 2 groups, compared to his 5, even if he loses the roll off at the start he can put down small bands to see where the majority of my forces are going and then place accordingly. If i win the roll off and place first theres no way for me to mask my intentions and he can change his set up on the fly. This game been a classic case of the problem, i put the hunters down first - he points all his horses at them, with the intention to sweep through them and flank azog
So hunters down, and he plonks theoden, gamling, eomer and durnhelm plus riders at the boys - the hunters fared brilliantly last turn becauuse he came in small groups, a full on Pellenor type charge will be a different thing
On the left flank i make a mistake, here he places a captain and a rider and i stupidly put the majority of the trolls and ogres and beserkers over there to get him - the scenario after all is to try and kill the heroes but this takes away any intimidation my right flank might have, no ogres or trolls and azog sat in the middle - he has no fear of this band and all his men are pointing at them
That been the case he rides straight thru the hunters - just bad rolls really - each mounted rider has the same attacks as a hunter but if he wins the fight the orc is knocked down and prone and has double the attacks so 4 to wound dice - i set it up so the majority of fights should be 2 orcs versus one horse but because most of his force is here it means its mainly 1v1 - not the maths ratio im aiming for. He also gets spectacularly lucky with his spear throws - Rohan can throw a spear one inch from the attack before crashing into the fight - he needs a 5 to hit and a 5 to wound and makes them all, to the extent he has to apologise halfway through, done brilliantly however as orcs in the way of him getting to Fimbul are speared down before the fight giving him access to the hunter captain
With the hunters mown down Timmy goes for the thing he fears most - the stumpy stomper which could effectively wipe out his front line - hes tough and strong but has no chance here - he goes down
With that my force is considered broken, down to 50% of its start value - to move everything now the model needs to pass a courage test and these are orcs, the remaining troll, and ogre and 3 beserkers fail and walk off the board - of my starting 800 points, 245 just left because theyre scared!
Time to redress the balance - Azog charges Durnhelm, a pain in the ass in every game, he gets to reroll missed spear throws, reroll missed wounds so hes getting it. Unfortunately Timmy calls Heroic Defence - meaning no matter how many wounds i cause i can only damage him on a natural 6 - i cant roll a 5 and use might to make it 6 - it has to be a 6 on the dice, Azog has 3 wound dice - the little w**ker gets away with it twice but i get him eventually when he runs out of might to use for the defence
And in the end it comes to this - Azog versus the rest of his force - thankfully if you kill a hero you get one might back, so Azog can use might to win the fight no matter how many hes fighting, kill a hero, get the might back and off we go again - doing this he kills Theoden, Gamling, a captain and a few cannon fodder - in the end he falls to Eomer the end score been 4-2 to Timmy
Lessons learned are to keep the trolls next to the hunters and then move them among them to cause terror in the riders and to just pay more attention to the set up
changes considered are dropping a troll and Fimbul and bringing in Bolg, Azogs son, same stats as Azog, less than a troll but able to use might to address any wayward dice throws, plus he gets scarier and scarier the more he kills, and hes mounted so no cavalry charge advantage against him