Another joint blog entry you lucky devils! Minitrol (MT) and PhantomNuisance (PN) decided to attend Side by Side with a Friend again this year off the back of a great event in 2023 in Ōtautahi – Christchurch.
Billed as “Christchurch’s largest doubles Middle Earth SBG tournament” we were looking forward to a fun weekend of games and camaraderie. Army composition for Side by Side is two 400 point forces, with each of those forces coming from the same army list (or Legendary Legion), meaning each teams’ total force can only be comprised of maximum two factions.
MT: We really enjoyed list crafting last year coming up with a force dripping in
theme by using the Cirith Ungol Legendary Legion and resulting in me
painting two forces or fun unique models. However, this year due to a
combination of life and, well life, I had less time and we decided to work with
our existing forces and add some fun units I could paint in my one weekend
before the event I had free.
We’ve both been playing Angmar lately, so after a merry diversion in and amongst Minas Tirith, Goblin-town, and Moria (MT: and a very silly list we dubbed the “Romance of Aragorn” with Rivendell led by Arwen and Rangers with Aragorn I may return to this one day!). It was Angmar that we settled on. While the discussion on exact army composition was long and had many iterations what we finally settled on was smaller versions of lists we’d each run at events within the last six months with Minitrol’s headed up by Gulavhar and PhantomNuisance’s by the Witch King.
It was an uncomfortably small army with 31 models compared to last year’s 42 and we were distinctly worried about our lack of shooting given our experience of “gunline” armies the year before but not to worry the meta had once again pivoted!
Game 1: Fog of War vs. Erebor Reclaimed
Our first game saw us playing two of NZs best players, George and Denny… or it would have if Denny had actually made it to the event. Pro tip: when booking travel for events in New Zealand as we’re heading into winter, maybe think about arriving the night before.
George had managed a desperate rally around of alternate pieces from the Christchurch community which while not the list submitted was close enough – curve balls happen and it would wrong to penalise someone just because their partner could not physically make it, and with the tournament organiser standing in, we set to our first game.
We opted to play a baiting game moving two forces on the flank and they did the same trying to bait Gulavhar into a combat which was identified as our best means of tearing apart the Dwarfen warriors. We had some great success staying in place forcing them to move around terrain. We used a spectre to draw Thorin out into the open, and killed his goat with a Black Dart. Thorin fell prone on the ground, but unfortunately it wasn’t a situation we could capitalise on without serious reprisal so we held back and waited for our moment to strike.
That moment was the following turn as our battlelines clashed. We activated the Shade’s ability (-1 to duel rolls for all non-Angmar models within 6″) and promptly lost all but one duel and about a quarter of our force.
We managed to stall things for a couple of turns while we maneuvered the Witch King into position for a magical barrage and charge into Dain to try and deal with his fearless bubble. Needing a 3 or higher to cast Transfix PhantomNuisance managed to roll a 2 highest with two dice and a re-roll so used a Might to cast it. Dain resisted the spell but we continued with the charge, backing our Witch King’s three attacks in combination with the shade. It went as well as when our battlelines met earlier and the Witch King met his end.
Meanwhile Gulavhar and a small number of Orcs on the right had been engaging in a game of cat and mouse with some Dwarf goat riders, with the orcs intent on capturing our intended terrain piece. Unfortunately the breaking of our army saw some of our orcs flee leaving our terrain piece contested by a dwarf, though we did use a spectre to ensure our opponent’s didn’t claim their terrain piece objective either. We played well, but the dice were definitely not in our favour for a couple of key turns and so we started our journey with a 0-9 loss.
Game 2: Total Conquest vs Minas Tirith
Fielding a similar army to one we considered bringing to the event the Forsey’s (a father and son team) arrayed the might of Boromir, Hurin, and an avenger bolt thrower against us.
This was the first of our scenarios with a ‘hot zone’ deployment, where one force from each side deploys in the middle of the board with the potential to be engaged in combat from the first turn.
PN: When Minitrol and I were discussing Minas Tirith options with Avenger Bolt Throwers (yes, that’s plural), we quickly came to the conclusion that the range coupled with hot zone deployments would limit their effectiveness (as Good armies cannot shoot into combat) and we used both combats and range to our advantage in this game.
The Witch King force was deployed in the middle and, with the help of the shade, our force held its ground in the hot zone, won combats, and killed a bunch of Minas Tirith warriors. This was the army working as intended and was the opposite of our first game (it was nice to have the concept validated after such a poor showing in the previous game). Maelstrom deployment was good to us and Minitrol used his force to good effect stalling Boromir from getting to the hot zone by threatening with Gulavhar and the cave troll.
We controlled both fronts well and as the game drew close to the end we moved models to claim or contest objectives, giving us a comfortable 9-2 win.
Game 3: Take and Hold vs. Halls of Thranduil and Rivendell
The event had a high proportion of Elves and a number of Elven Lords of the West and we were happy to have avoided these until this game (PN: we played elves all three games on day one last year). Arrayed against us were Thranduil, Glorfindel, and the multi-tool that is Cirdan. We had briefly discussed these match ups and had a plan going in, but we were going to have to work for it.
PN: My part of the game plan with the Witch King focused around the concept of ‘cheeky one dice Sap Will’ with the Witch King, a plan which went surprisingly well as I managed to get the required 5 or 6 each turn with the benefit of the re-roll from the Crown of Morgul.
With the Witch King whittling down Thranduil’s will, Minitrol was kiting and threatening the Rivendell half with Gulavhar while his cave troll was throwing stones, including one which hit Cirdan and took his Fate from him.
Meanwhile Gulavhar had been charged by Glorfindel but survived the elven lord’s onslaught. Minitrol called a heroic move to retreat, using Gulavhar’s fly move to avoid the scenery and get out of range of Glorfindel’s charge. From there he ate a few elves to replenish his wounds before a successful barge allowed him to get into combat with Cirdan and finish off the shipwright too.
PN: I sent my three warg riders around behind the Palace Guard, hoping to draw a few of them away and was pleased when seven of them were assigned to deal with the wargs. I was even more pleased when my warg riders killed four of them over the next few turns.
Despite our successes the elves were holding their own, and they managed to kill enough orcs to break us, leaving us in a precarious position as we scrambled to claim the objective (it turns out shades have courage 1). A transfix on Thranduil, and a couple of failed terror tests from our opponents meant that when the game ended we had controlled the situation enough that we outnumbered the elves for control of the objective, had managed to break them, and killed their leader giving us a 6-1 win.
At the end of day one things were looking pretty good for us: two wins and a loss. Apart from some poor dice in the first game things were going well. We were in sync; we were working well as a team and were successfully navigating the scenarios and armies against us.
Game 4: Clash of Champions vs. Rivendell
Another Elven Lords list, this time with Gil-Galad, Glorfindel and Cirdan; tough, but we’d managed a win against a similar list yesterday and we were confident we could do it again. We were in sync, remember?
PN: Well, I don’t know what happened overnight, but we weren’t in sync anymore, and we started this game by messing up our deployment. It was going OK initially with my “cheeky one dice sap will” strategy kicking into gear and the troll dismounting Gil-Galad from his horse with a thrown stone, but by the end of turn three Minitrol and I realised we’d made that aforementioned deployment mistake.
To further emphasise how out of sync we’d become, instead of resolving our issue by some sensible regrouping, we went and made it worse and overextended ourselves. We spent the next few turns stuck in a reactive position, trying to control both Glorfindel and Gil-Galad while keeping Gulavhar safe.
This meant that Cirdan was able to wander up to our lines with his Terror-causing area of effect and his auto-pass courage area of effect and put pressure on us.
It was a bit of a long shot for us to pull it back together, and when both of our leaders died in the same turn it was the beginning of the end. James and Stu played well and capitalised on our mistakes, but in this case we were our own worst enemies and our 0-12 loss reflected that.
Game 5: Destroy the Supplies vs. Ugluk’s Scouts
PN: Our final game saw us across the board from a 64 model Ugluk’s Scout list. I loved this list from a theme point of view, as it mirrored the list Minitrol and I took last year, including one person controlling all the Uruk-hai while the other controlled the Orcs. Great theme, huge mass of bodies. Love it!
With our force being almost outnumbered by double we would quickly lose a game where we tried to rush their supplies. We decided to play defence and only take an opportunity to destroy some supplies if it wouldn’t compromise our own. Gulavhar and our cavalry were our plans for this, but even then we knew it would be a long shot.
Our opponents surged forward with the majority of their forces, leaving only a small number of archers back to defend their supplies. They had also picked we weren’t going to be rushing them.
Our first offensive started well with a cheeky spectre and black dart combo nearly killing one of their banner bearers (who promptly had an escort of at least three models for the rest of the game), however once our lines met things turned dramatically as our paralyse and transfixes failed to work and Gulavhar found himself taking a wound from Grishnak. We once again found ourselves out of sync and overextending, leading to Gulavhar getting locked in combat against the front of the enemy battleline for most of the game.
We held the line well, our terror helping to control the situation, and over the next few turns we drained most of the Might resources from their force, but their sheer weight of numbers was still keeping us contained. We managed to claw back a bit of control but by then a small number of their force had got around our flank and were threatening one of our supplies, and we didn’t have enough bodies to counter the move, resulting in them destroying one of our supplies.
We killed their Uruk-hai banner bearer but the barge and follow-up combat from our cave troll failed to kill the orc banner bearer. Gulavhar finally broke out of the main line of combat and jumped over the battleline, making a line to an enemy supply (through a bunch of enemies to regain some health), however the war of attrition had held long enough for the game to time out and our final game was a 2-4 loss.
And so another Side by Side comes to an end. It may have been a 2-3 win-loss, but it was five fun games with a good friend and if the brainstorming on the drive home is any indication, we’re both keen to return next year.
52 Weeks 52 Games 