The third episode of the scouring of the shire is the Brockenborings. A secret meeting is being held by Lobelia and Fatty in a remote hobbit hole. They were all having a lovely time, Fatty and Tippers were enjoying the drinks while the others were talking about the encroaching ruffadrim. Suddenly they hear a loud bird call from the nearby forest, that's a signal that there are incoming baddies!
In this mission, the hobbits all have to scatter - run off a board edge, while encircling ruffadrim as well as the evil Sharkey and Worm try to capture them. However, because the hobbits won the last mission, after setup they can move D6 figures. So originally they were all evenly spaced around the hobbit hole, but then I rolled a 6 and moved six of them all over to one side. So instead of scattering in all directions, with ruffadrim all over the place, I now only have about two ruffadrim to get past - seems almost unfair!
The hobbits all bolt for it!
Except Tippers who has had slightly too much to drink and just wanders around outside the hobbit hole door.
A ruffadrim catches up with him pretty quickly (they move 6" while hobbits only move 4") but fails to wound the wobbly hobbit.
Another ruffadrim takes on two hobbits, but no damage is done except to slow them down a little.
And as the clash continues the hobbits back him up against a fence and dispatch him! Meanwhile Sharkey is trying to cast spells, but is a little too far away!
In a bizarre twist, Tippers manages to knock out the ruffadrim attacking him!
Sharkey casts Immobilize on Fredegar and halts his escape, but there's still nobody close enough to engage with the hobbits.
Finally there are a few combats, Sharkey catches up and takes one hobbit prisoner, another ruffadrim beats back a hobbit, but with no damage done.
Worm is actually bested by Bookman, who clubs him with a massive hardcover tome!
And another combat causes the hobbit to back away, but he avoids injury.
Tippers just ambles right back to the hobbit hole, ready to refill his drink flask.
And after that the hobbits mostly get away! Lobelia, Fatty and six other hobbits managed to escape, we may see them again in a future episode =) These games are pretty fun, super quick and, so far, very easy for the hobbits. I reckon this one would have been TOTALLY different if the hobbits hadn't had the free rearrangement at the start. If they had still been spaced around the ruffadrim would have been able to catch up with them much more easily and Sharkey would have been able to get some more spells off.
At some point we might get the newer version of the book, but so far these have been good =)