What happens when a hobbit who is fond of his grog is abducted by a group of goblins to force him to provide them with booze?
Why, the Shire Protectors leap into action (though some of them only at 4" a turn)! We thought it would be fun to have another good company to do some team missions later on with my son's elves. I really like hobbits, so we decided to put together a battle company that represents what may happen if something happened to a hobbit. We know that the Dunedain are always out there keeping an eye on the Shire, that dwarves trade and travel through the Shire and that every now and then there'll be an elf around. So we put together a company that is mostly Hobbits, but with a few extras that may appear from time to time. At it's core you always have to have more Hobbits than anything else, so it'll always look more like a Hobbit company than anything else. It's probably not that competitive, but should be fun =)
Hedger the Dunedain (so called because he always seems to be lurking in foliage) calls up Skodi and Loki the Dwarves to help mount a rescue of Jolly Wilcom who has been abducted by goblins. He is joined by several brave Hobbits, Cookie (with the frying pan), Tolman (Tom) and Halfred (Harry) the archers and Hugo and Roriamac (Rory) the Shirrifs.
The goblins don't suspect a thing, as if Hobbits would attack them down in their caves?!
The goblins are half sozzled (and therefore use random patrol rules) so the company sneaks up slowly and takes out one with a hail of arrows and stones!
Here's how we do our random patrols, roll a scatter die and a D6 for each goblin, they move the indicated direction by D6" (for goblins it maxes out at 5). It's a much quicker version than normal sentry rules, though loses some of the "back and forth" of swapping who moves them.
Slinking forward, another goblin is taken down in a hail of hobbit pelted rocks!
And there goes another one! At this stage Oscar is bored (he's controlling the goblins) and keeps taunting me to just go for it and don't worry about the alarm being raised. I keep reminding him that Hobbits are even worse than Goblins at fighting!
And then the fateful turn where I miss with all my ranged attacks thanks to some in-the-way rolls due to the high hill!
The goblins begin charging towards the company, the alarm having been raised! A lucky stone from Cookie takes out one of them!
Hedger nocks an arrow and shoots another incoming goblin - they're coming from all directions now!
Fortunately my shooting is pretty good, Harry takes out another incoming goblin.
Loki climbs up the hill and is attacked by a goblin! Skodi is forced back by another goblin (and saves a wound with his fate) and Rory falls to an arrow from the archer on the top of the hill!
Cookie and Hugo charge in to fight a goblin, who shoves them back but fails to wound them.
Three archers manage to take out the goblin on top of the hill! The goblin with a spear shoves Loki back down the hill, he falls but manages to land unhurt!
Meanwhile Skodi manages to take out another goblin in the archway!
The goblin archers shoot into the combat between Cookie, Hugo and another goblin - they hit! Unfortunately (for the goblins), they hit the goblin and kill it!
Skodi pushes a goblin forward, away from the Hobbit archers and Loki and Hedger double team and use some might to take out another goblin
Cookie, Hugo and Skodi surround a goblin, ready to take it out... but another goblin arrow flashes into the melee and thunks into the goblin, slaying it! This was soooo funny! We were like, what are the odds of that happening again?! Hedger and Loki come up towards the goblin on the hill from two sides this time.
They take him out together, freeing Jolly Wilcom from the clutches of the goblins.
And the rest of the team overwhelm the remaining drunken goblin archers.
Jolly has been helping himself to the beer and is a bit surprised that there's a crowd of people around him. He's had a great time and doesn't quite get what the fuss is all about!
With the points from the mission success I buy Harry a Horn so that I'm more able to get good reinforcements! Let's face it, rolling for reinforcements and getting a Hobbit Militia worth 4 points is not quite as good as getting... anything else from any other battle company! On the plus side, Hobbits are cool =)
Stay tuned for further adventures! The plan is to level this team up so that between the elves and the shire protectors we can do one of the missions like the warg attack one, where we play with one another rather than against one another. Oscar's not a fan of us actually attacking each other, but has no qualms taking out random baddies =)