Battle Companies Campaign

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

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.