New Snow table

Andy and I played a good game last night, using the houserules.

He took Elves - with three units of Longbows! He also had a unit of High Elven Cohort with Thranduil and a unit of Warriors or Arnor (like MT warriors with a higher fight value) with Imrahil.

I had my Carn Dum list, except I dropped the 'King of Carn Dum' and a Siege bow to get three more Warbands. I expected Elven bowfire to chop up def 4 (no shields vs Elven bow!) within 18".

So with the Rivendell Longbows (Galadrim statline) all set up in three terrain pieces across the board, my plan was simple - Wings of Terror Rush!'Its a game of skill, really. As you would expect, the Carn Dum warbands were nailed by Longbow fire and were both short over a couple of companies once they got past this photo (above) and into the charge. However, the Longbows in the woods survived..
With two formations of Rivendell/Arnor heavy infantry, led by great heroes closing in, I had to confess I panicked and bounced the Dwimmerlaik out of the middle warband (before hiding that one in the middle forest) and into the larger warband. They spent several turns with both Nazgul inside devoted to the sideshow of finishing that longbow unit - Elven courage and terror is a bitch - while my other troops struggled manfully vs the Elves in the Centre. Buhrdur didn't really do much for me and without a Nazgul those courage two Carn Dum warbands were never going to pass terror, except when they got very lucky. However, every casualty on a High Elven unit is a casualty too many for them. For some reason Andy did not keep them in the wood. Still, Buhrdur died to Thranduil's nature magic. So several turns later, the two Nazgul returned victorious from take ages to kill a single archer unit.
Even now that the High Elves had found the sanity to hide from artillery in the forest, a few turns of 'Strenght form Corruption' continued the process of whittling them down. So, in the end, the Dwimmerlaik led his warbands against them in battle and smashed them out of the wood. The way was then clear for the one-two hit above. The Tainted popped into the wood, sapping the courage of the men of Anor (min-maxing the stalines doesn't seem such a good idea now) while the Dwimmerlaik was lucky enough to get a successful 'transfix' on the Longbow and smash them in a berserk charge. The men of Arnor were unable to muster the courage to hit the chargers in the flank and on turn seven the warriors of Carn dum finally smashed the Rivendel-Arnor invasion of their lands.
Here is the fruits of my weekend terrain project. I made four (ran out of paint and 'no more gaps') snow bases for my woods - to replace the ugly felt. I think they look the part. I'll call that an Angmar themed table for me to set up at Natcon 2011 WOTR. Andy tells me he is locked in for the event, and has a nice big evil fort to set up on another table. We haven't even opened registrations yet, and things are looking good.

The houserules worked well. Andy felt that it would be better if Epic Strike was back in, and gave heroes their base fight +2. That is my preference as well, it looks like objections to that might be in the minority. If he took the Cohort Commander and Thranduil, that is two fight 7 elevn heroes with three might. At the moment, with no Epic Strike, that is a fearsome combo - since not many heroes can match fight 7 with terror. I expected to lose my Nazgul early to duels, and if they do the army pretty much falls over.