Battle Companies Campaign
Well it has been a long time between posts. New houses, new
businesses, a few birthdays… And here we are back again. I finally found enough
space to get some toy soldiers out again, together with some energy and some
inspiration.
The catalyst was the publication of the new battle companies book for what is now the “middle earth strategy battle game”. That seemed to me to give the kind of
narrative game I need to keep me interested and get a campaign starting without
a lot of fuss. In the grand arc of the storytelling, I now intend to start with
a single battle company (Rohan - as always my favourite), tracking the band through from
the initial stages of skirmishes and incursions for the layout to the largest
battles of the third age. I also now have enough models and rule sets in enough
different scales to enable me to do that.
So the basic idea is this:
- start with Battle companies and play as many
games as I want or need to get the group started with its own identity, back
story, and up to its maximum of 15 models
- then I will transition to Dux Britanniarum, with
my battle company being the Lord, champion and group leaders. I was inspired by Gunnar Lopez’s work (see his Dux Arda Posts at https://wartoendallblogs.blogspot.com/. South Bay Miniatures Guy has made some cards
to suit: https://sbminisguy.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/dux-arda-gaming-middle-earth-with-dux-britanniarum/
- then when I feel like it, or from time to time,
I can include either the Battle Company into a larger MESBG game, or into a War
of the Ring Game (28mm), or a Sword & Spear Game (10mm) depending on the
narrative
So – letting it grow a bit more organically, and story
driven, so I can do more gaming and put less obstacles in the road to enjoying
my hobby.
 |
| The Wold |
I selected the location: The Wold.
This is an area that seems to me to be right for conflict and adventure.
It is full of history and centrally located:
- immediately to the north across the river Limlight is the field of Celebrant, and beyond that Lorien (Elves and a site of a great battle)
- to the East lies the Anduin (the Great River) (a natural boundary, except for the Undeeps – see below)
- to the west lies Fangorn, and beyond the Entwood, Isengard (ents and uruk-hai are not far away)
- to the north-west lies the Misty Mountains and Moria (goblins!)
- to the north-east lies Mirkwood and Dol Guldur (Sauron’s orcs)
- to the south lies the Mark, and East Emnet (Rohan)
The Wold itself is unforested uplands. I imagine it is a bit
like a moorland in the English sense: scrubby, rocky, elevated, windswept, inhospitable.
A place where poor people might scratch out a living on the edges, but it is
not going to support a permanent population or sustained agriculture. But it might be entirely suitable for use by the
men of Rohan to occasionally spell their rich pastures and take their herd
animals into the Wold for a time in Spring and Summer, particularly their
prized horses.
Either side of the Wold are the downs, areas that are
notoriously short of water but slightly better country for grazing animals like
sheep. According to Karen Wynn Fonstad,
the downs north of the Wold were “rolling downs of withered grass” and those to
the south were “long treeless slopes” at whose feet “the ground was dry and turf
short”.
The other important geographical feature of the Wold and the
Downs are the valleys that lay between them, both north and south. These valleys intersect with the Anduin to
form the North Undeep and the South Undeep.
Both of the Undeeps had many shallows and wide
shoals that afforded an easy crossing for an army. These shallow
fords or crossing places on the Anduin were used both by the Wainriders (Balchoth)
and the Eotheod (Eeorl the Young) to cross the Anduin at the Battle of
Celebrant. The Anduin Undeeps then
became the north eastern boundaries of Rohan.
Aldhelm
So my battle company is a group of hardy Rohirrim warriors
who come from the Northern extremities of East Emnet, bordering the South Downs
and the Wold. They are poor men, from
poor families, who eke out a living grazing their animals and horses in the
great expanses of the south downs, the Wold, and even the north downs. But it is a place on the cross-roads, a place
where great armies have crossed in the past, a place under threat from raiding
orcs and goblins from both the east and the west.
Their leader is Aldhelm, an ambitious young man who has
attracted a small and loyal band of followers.
With the support of his village elder, he has begun patrols into the
Wold to detect and deter raiders, and help to bring safety for the northern
approaches of these hardy people.
Kazak
Opposing Aldhelm (at least to begin with) is an equally ambitious Moria Goblin, Kazak, looking for loot and spoils.
And so we begin.
