Uruks sir, thousands of 'em!

A few months ago I had game with Joey Spike, my LoTR-fan chum who's visiting at the weekend, and there were pics, so I thought I'd give my lovely fans a look. 

The forces of Good pause for the pre-battle cup of tea.

The scenario was loosely adapted from the most "siegey" sounding one in the Two Towers rulebook, We didn't have all that much time, so I imposed a 10 rather than 14 turn time limit on Evil to get into Helms Deep, deciding scores via the Duckworth-Lewis Method. 

The Army of the White Hand, with chop-stick ladders.

Inexplicably, Joey Spike set up his troops some way behind the starting line, possibly to make up for his insisting on taking more uruks than his fair share. Someone wanted to get his whole army on the table. 

The early turns consisted of my archers mostly targeting ladder holders and bomb-carriers, getting distracted by counter-battery fire (should have known from Wellington that that DOESN'T WORK). Orcish crossbow-fire proved less murderous than usual, thanks to Grandad's home-made wooden crenelations.   

Triumph over first orc casualty. 

Things went swimmingly, apart from the good heroes, who start at some distance from the battlements to counteract their murderous combat power. Perhaps too far in my case: Next time I shall measure the distances to match what the Rule Book Says (tm).

The heroes took forever to get out of the keep: I'll deploy them closer to the action next time.

Once the uruks reached the walls with ladders and ram, things took a turn for the worse: despite the immense advantage of defending fortress walls, humans can't stand up to Uruks in a fight. Still, the walls held, and the gate stood firm...

As the forces of Evil reach the walls, I attempt to channel Napoleon.

The tipping point of the game was turn 10-ish: (yes, we played for longer than intended) I ruled that Joey Spike's bomb could destroy the deeping wall section, as neither of us had read the rules about what they did until the fateful moment and rules lawyering at that point seemed unreasonable. 

With a massive hole in the wall and ladders everywhere, defeat is certain for the defenders.

As the light faded and bedtime approached, I observed that a phalanx of orcish oddballs were within distance of the gap to win the game if it were protracted to turn 14. To decide if I could pull back a draw, we looked to the last fight phase to see if any Uruks could scale the ladders. Despite Aragorn disembowelling the captain pitted against him, elsewhere the forces of darkness surged over the ramparts. Defeat!

We wuz robbed!

Next time I'll make sure to use some of my new models, I feel that two-handed weapons might pull it back if the orcs make it over the walls, but that remains to be seen...