The Battle of Five Regions 2022 was a six round Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game (MESBG) team event held in Wellington in April 2022. Team size was four players with each team bringing two evil and two good armies of no more than 555 points each. Teams were paired off each round with games paired within the team pairings as 1v1 good versus evil games.
The event attracted six teams, so the event was run as a round robin with the final round being paired by overall placings. In the final round individual players were paired against the army which they did not face in the round robin.
PhantomNuisance (PN): I was really happy when Minitrol was keen for the event (we hadn’t been to a SBG event together for a number of years). We teamed up with a pair from Christchurch and dubbed our team the Shirrifs of the Southfarthing (having the Southernmost representation of any team at the event) and promptly started brainstorming team costume ideas (cowboy hats and sheriff badges were surprisingly efficient).
In my continued exploration of lesser-used armies I decided to take a Wolves of Isengard legendary legion. I figured a good v evil event at 555 points was the most viable event I was going to have to try the army, and set about painting and converting the last of the warg riders I needed to round out my force.
Minitrol (MT): Since my last event was 2018 I knew I had work to do. I did pre-match games read through the matched play scenarios and crafted a list capable of utilizing every phase. Also I included Heroic March. I also didn’t paint the army at the last minute.
Okay. So that’s obviously not true. What many people don’t know is that I am a Frodo at work, cool, impassioned and professional. But at home I am a Pippin – irrational, governed by emotion, and constantly dropping things down wells to alert hordes of stunted orcs…
So I had played one game this year which was using a different army, different points and different spirit.
Now to be clear the unusual dictates of the event required two good and two evil per team at 555 points. One team member bagging Dwarfs and the other two Evil I had to pick a Good force. This is is not my favourite in general terms I don’t really gel with any of the Good lists except the Fellowship:
Despite PhantomNuisance’s appeals to logic “Take Beorn and the Eagles” I knew I had no choice; a long time ago PhantomNuisance gifted me the new Denethor sculpt and I had been itching for a chance to paint him.
I already had a fully painted Warriors of Minis Tirith force, so easy. Anyway long story short I ended up repainting and rebasing the entire army in 4 days again.
Game 1: Domination
PN: My first game was against a Return of the King legion with Aragorn and the King of the Dead, with the rest of the force made up of Warrior of the Dead and a couple of Riders of the Dead. With high defence all around, and a free point of Might each turn with Aragorn I knew that I would have to rely on my mobility and numbers in order to win this one.
Two of my warg riders got a pre-game move and I tried to take advantage of my opponent’s positioning to kill his banner bearer with my throwing spears. It was a cheeky long shot which didn’t pay off but it made my opponent keep a good eye on his banner bearer for the rest of the game. In the first turn proper I landed a number of throwing spears on King of the Dead but failed to wound.
I also took the opportunity to cast channeled Fury with my Shaman as I needed the automatic passing of courage tests to charge the dead, and I figured the ‘prevent a wound on a 6’ would come in handy as the dead would normally be converting any wins to wounds as they were rolling against my courage value rather then my defence. The auto-pass courage served me well for the game; the wound prevention didn’t, including when Sharku went down to a shank from the King of the Dead.
I used my mobility to flank, I used my knockdown and numbers to win fights, but my real nemesis in this game was my inability to wound. My warg-riders needed 6’s in combat to wound while the throwing spears needing 6’s followed by 4’s and kill conversions just weren’t coming fast enough. At the end of the game I had killed only killed 6 warriors but due to fully controlling two objectives and contesting one other I managed to keep the game to a minor loss 4-7
MT: The night before we had discussed over a bizarre ice cream soda inspired beer the forced which would most give us pause (we had of course listened in rapt attention to the List review show HERE). One list I felt I had no tools to deal with was the Uruk Hai Fighting Legion with Ballista and Crossbows and tonnes of captains.
Very small chance of that we laughed.
It’s fair to say I had no control from the start of the game. The ballista killed Denethor the first shot and while I gamely took the objectives the numbers and my inability to keep my Shieldwall intact were telling. I used Might poorly and I had no clue what to do with Gandalf the White who I had never used before and was much less offensive compared to my Nazgul or Cave Trolls.
With not one point of my own claimed my Opponent romped home with a very solid 9 – 0.
Game 2: To the Death!
PN: My opponent in this game was running a Minas Tirith and Fiefdoms list which also included the Fellowship version of Boromir. My first objective was going to be closing the distance between our armies without taking too many casualties (including warg casualties) from the Black Root Vale archers which were arrayed against me.
My concerns were well founded as the first turn saw both Sharku’s warg shot out from under him and the Shaman suffer a wound, though my flanking warriors were safely out of range and closing the gap quickly. In the movement phase of the second turn my opponent started tactical withdrawal moves, slowly moving his force backwards to keep out of range as long as possible. All the while shooting into my force, though this turn I fared a bit better as nothing hit.
Priority, in the third turn, went to me and in an attempt to negate my charge bonuses my opponent called a heroic move with Hurin. I countered with Sharku, got priority, and proceeded to charge. Boromir’s horse died to a throwing spear as I entered combat. Combat went well for me, including killing Hurin’s horse and watching him suffer a wound as he failed his Thrown Rider test.
After that turn things quickly swung against me though as I lost both captains and Sharku in the same turn. I did kill Hurin and wound Forlong, and I broke his force in the turn which I was reduced to 25% however it wasn’t enough to avoid a major loss 4 – 10
MT: I was so excited about Game Two my opponent was and remains one of my favourites to play against over the years and the game was good fun, great banter, and high drama.
I had no idea what to expect as this Moria horde contained a secret weapon – a Watcher in the Water.
My hope was to place pressure on getting supported fights to blunt his numbers and kill as many as possible before the Watcher broke through the surface as if it came behind me I would be ruined.
The Watcher emerged screaming turn 2.
This was bad but it didn’t need to be the end! I still had Gandalf I had a solid block of Spearmen and warriors flanking and I could still butch the goblins. But I could not convert wounds yet the Watcher would kill three warriors a turn.
There was a tonne I could have tried but this was his game to lose and that wasn’t going to happen. A great game that taught me a lot. 10 – 0 to my opponent.
Game 3: Assassination
PN: This game saw me facing off against a Khazad-Dum Dwarf army. While it was slightly less daunting defense-wise than the Army of the Dead from my first game it was still not going to be easy. I also had a plethora of eligible assassination targets, and three heroes of my own to be the assassin (well, it was realistically only two as I was never really going to choose the shaman). My opponent and I had a good discussion about defence, wounds and fate at the start of the game (especially in regards to the two Heralds accompanying the King’s Champion and the Siege Veteran) and I decided to attempt to assassinate the Siege Veteran with my Red Captain.
My opponent deployed his army in a defensive line across the middle of the board and his ballista on the edge of a fountain, a defensible position which would negate my cavalry charges. I rolled a 5 for my pre-game scout move and took the opportunity to throw five throwing spears at the ballista crew, none of which wounded. We then proceeded to roll drawn priority a couple of times before the game eventually got started.
As with the previous game Sharku had his warg killed from underneath him early on, but the battlelines quickly met and I started to get the upper hand, including causing a wound on one of the Heralds and making him use a Fate. It wasn’t long before my opponent had to call a heroic move to try and blunt my charge which I of course countered. Needing to take at least some sting out of the turn my opponent called a second heroic move which I countered again. As none of our heroes were in the centre of the frontline this ensured that we would each control the positioning at one end of the line. The following turn also saw a double heroic move called as my opponent tried to take a bit more control of the situation.
Things were going in my favour and I took the opportunity to get my Red Captain around the flank and heading towards the ballista. I continued to heft throwing spears at the Herald I wounded earlier to keep my opponent’s focus there. My opponent’s defensible position served him well, and it took a couple of turns until I was able to position myself, but I did get the Assassination kill.
Casualties were mounting up on both side and my opponent and I both reached break point on the same turn. Things escalated quickly from there as almost a quarter of my force fled, and by the end of that turn I had taken enough casualties for the game to end. My valiant assassination efforts had got me my best result of the event so far, an 8-8 Draw.
MT: Not my favourite scenario for my perfectly narrative but weak as an upturned crab army list.
My opponent had 2 characters, I had three and one was Pippin and one had a Broken Mind so all in all there were no surprises for how the match played out. It was another Fighting Uruk-Hai list this time led by the White Wizard himself and Lurtz.
PN: #TrueWhiteWizard
MT: I caught my opponent off guard as you can start deployment incredibly close so my Warriors and Gandalf flanked and prevented the crossbows’ from shooting while kicking down fools. Unfortunately, I had sudden second thoughts about what to do with Gandalf and kept moving out of harm’s way which was also out of the way of being useful.
I once again forgot to channel and cast Blinding Light which would have made such a difference. I had even written it on my hand (thanks to Opponent 2 for suggesting this).
I couldn’t really get the upper hand and despite inflicting reasonable casualties he Compelled Pippin into the open riddled him with crossbow bolts and I failed to do one single wound to Lurtz.
Looked close on table but on paper was another 10 – 0 loss.
At the end of Day One the Shirrifs had 1 win, 1 draw, and 10 losses to our name, and from that result our team tournament goal was set – to finish with a triple digit victory point total.
To be continued…
52 Weeks 52 Games 
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