Battle in the Mist: Dwarves vs Orcs in Middle-earth

I’ve not gamed Middle-earth for a few months, so it was nice to be able to get a game in with Pete at the club last night. Pete has been reorganising his substantial collection of GW minis into armies for my Midgard Heroic Battles rules (which are due for publication by Reisswitz Press in the future – no date yet but watch this space for updates).

On a whim, I decided to bring my much-loved Dwarf army. Their Orc opponents were kitted out as an army of Isengard from the Third Age, so our clash would not be strictly canonical, but quite suitable for a game of toy soldiers with a nod to Tolkien.

The two armies clocked in around 400 points each in Midgard; this gave the Dwarves ten units of high quality troops plus 5 Heroes, whereas the Orcish horde had roughly double this, with many poor-quality warriors and archers backed up by Uruk-Hai, Warg riders, a couple of Trolls and Saruman himself (alongside a slew of disposable Orc captains). This was definitely a quality vs quantity game, although the higher quality Isengard units – Uruk-Hai and Trolls in particular – played a critical role in the battle that was to follow.

I was testing out a new scenario called ‘Encounter in the Mist’ that actually had its origins as a Wars of the Roses Battle of Barnet game that we played last year (you can read Tom WD’s account of it on his blog here). The key principle was the same: creating confusion! We deployed the armies in three ‘battles’, then diced for each one to see what had happened to it in the fog.

I was very fortunate in that only one of the Dwarven battles deviated slightly from my planned deployment, but the Orcish left and right battles got completely lost and veered off to the far right and left of the battlefield. Better still, both groups had units in the woods, which would create further command and control problems as the game started. The Dwarves were, so far, in the pound seats and looking forward to a fast advance to crush Saruman and the Orc centre before the wings recovered. Well, that was the plan!

Terrain-wise, we used a Cigar Box mat (mine is a long pile version that is sadly no longer available) with a variety of coniferous trees that I found on eBay and rebased serving as the mountain woods. The mist is just soft toy stuffing (bought in a bag from a craft store – NOT extracted from mercilessly-hunted teddy bears!) For a bit of extra set dressing, I used a scratchbuilt watch tower from my collection as well.

Pete’s Orc army is entirely GW, with a mix of metals and plastics dating back to the early 2000s. My Dwarf army is mostly composed of Vendel Miniatures (now available from Thistle & Rose in the USA) and UK-based Conqueror Models, all sculpted by the talented Colin Patten who is now working on Ragnarok Miniatures. There are a number of other minis in my Dwarf army, which you can read about here if you want to see more. Right, that’s the endorsements out of the way, now: to battle!

Part 1 of the plan went pretty well: the well-disciplined Dwarves moved up without too much trouble, whereas the Orc captains in the woods suffered merry hell trying to get their hordes moving! (It was quite fun watching Pete cursing away). Midgard uses a very simple command test, but it becomes more complex if you have reluctant troops, especially if they’re in rough terrain. Oh yes, and the mist made it harder to pass the command test too. Laugh? The Dwarves were certainly having a chuckle in their beards.

However, the mist worked against the Dwarves as well, reducing visibility to just a single Spear Throw (the unit of game measurement). This meant that the archers had to hang back, and let the Orcs get the first charge in. I can’t blame the mist for the terrible dice the Dwarves rolled in the first round of combat, but suddenly they found themselves being driven back by a horde of Orcs.

Fortunately, quality started to tell, and the Dwarves fought back, crushing the first rank of Orcs. However, cunning Saruman had created a second line of Trolls and Uruks, who then piled into the combat-weary long beards.

Weapons clashed up and down the line; Dwarf Lord Drifir took down a goblin captain with a single blow of his hammer; and the Orcs on the flanks started to draw in, finally responding to the whips of their masters.

Turn 4 saw the mist beginning to clear (on a random dice roll) and it looked like the Dwarves might prevail, but three of their Heroes were now wounded. Noin, mighty Dwarf champion, fell fighting a huge troll.

The other Troll was weakened by a curse from the Dwarven Elder before before decked by a combination of warriors and archers in an impressive pincer movement (the Troll then fell on top of the archers, who were fortunately saved from a certain crushing by a cry from Nundir, their lord).

However, it was too little, too late. With the mist clearing, the Orcs on the right flank had finally escaped from the woods and were bearing down on the Dwarf archers who had been sent to head them off, massacring them in a vicious round of combat.

Dwarf lords Nundir and Drifir, both wounded, were still locked in combat with Saruman’s Uruks in the centre, but had failed to land a blow on the white wizard.

The loss of another unit of warriors on the left reduced the Dwarves’ reputation too far, and they broke and fled, leaving a heavily mauled force of Orcs in command of the battlefield.

This was an exceptionally fun game which swung both ways before the Dwarves finally threw in the towel – it could have easily gone either way. We’ll definitely play the scenario again. Cheers Pete!