Lord of the Rings Wargaming, 1976 style

 Before Peter Jackson most of us probably discovered the Lord of the Rings in the school library, and before Games Workshop produced games based on the film there was the Middle Earth Roleplaying game for the very small scale and there was The Middle Earth Wargames Rules produced by the South East London Wargames Group. 

We played this six player game including our club's own house rules from around 1980 created by a the then teenaged and now retired Andy. Our club member John Curry ran this game using miniatures from the same era, some historica,l some fantasy.

The setting is winter, the Ents are sleeping and the forces of Mordor aim to burn Fangorn while it is undefended. The forces of good unite to oppose them. On the evil side, on the left we have Goblins, Wargs and Shelob, in the centre Orcs and a few Giants, and from the midpoint up to my forces on the right, Haradrim. 

On the other side the forest is guarded by Rangers of Ithilian, in the centre Elves, Rohirim, Dwarves and Hobbits, and on their left (our right) the forces of Gondor. Deployment was mostly in the order they came out of the boxes, and as the number of potential players increased we added another table more troops.

 

The Wargs and Goblins were first in to action and new units on both sides joined turning oue flank then another. 

In the centre The Orcs advanced on the Rangers and Elves and received a charge from Riders of Rohan. the orcs 

My forces was clearly inferior to those I faced I had mostly light cavalry against knights, light infantry against heavy, and a few skirmishing archers and slingers against armoured crossbowmen. My plan was too delay contact while tying up the greater quality force. 

My best troops, the medium cavalry with the commander were wiped out by the Knights of Rohan. I did managed to send some skirmishers all round a wood to get a rear charge on some infantry in a wood. But inevitably my force dissintegrated and the enemy began to turn towards the centre.

There the Giants and Trolls were not making much progress. The Haradrim in the central command were slowly moving up. On the left we were also losing and it was decided the forces of good were the winners.

 We discovered that the Ents would have woken and come to their aid if they were needed, but they weren't. 

 The rules are old school with charts and tables and modifiers to see which column to apply the dice roll to. It was a fun game and I don't think most modern rules would have handled a game this big any quicker. A lot of fun anyway.

 

Chain of Command: Operation Sea Lion

Operation Sea lion was the planned German invasion of Great Britain, intended to take in 1940. Fortunately the Luftwaffe failed to gain the required air superiority due to the great success of the RAF in the Battle of Britain.

 This game was played using Chain of Command published by Two Fat Lardies and using the 1940 exapanion book, at Lincombe Barn Wargames Society https://www.bristolwargaming.co.uk/ in September 2025. We had five players, each with around a platoon and their own force morale.

 

The beach was heavily fortified with trenches, barbed wire, tank traps and more. Further along the coast was an small beach surrounded by cliffs with bunkers on top. In the village beyond there was a military camp for the garrisoned troops.

 On the German side we had regular infantry to attack the main beach, mountain troops to scale the cliffs and glider borne paratroopers to appear behind the beach. We expected the main beach to be hard work, the plan was that I would land my fallschirmjager beyond the cliffs and attack the bunkers from behind. This would allow the mountain troops to come ashore quickly and we could then support the main beach landing, attacking the trenches from the side and rear.

 It turned out we had no control at all over where the gliders would land. One landing zone was at the far end of the village, with the troops coming onto the table split between two back gardens. I didn't get the dice to move them as I still needed to secure the other landing zone in case it was overrun. The defenders got a double turn, moving sailors from the street to the houses, and then assaulting one half of my squad in one of the gardens. I took heavy losses including the leader and the rest routed off the table and the landing zone was lost. My remaining troops started to come on not too far from the cliffs.

 On the main beach there was little progress. The defenders unleashed a Panjadrum (you may have seen something similar in Dad's Army)

 

The mountain troops were making good process and nearly overwhelmed the bunkers before reinforcements appeared from a nearby house.

 Local volanteers including armed Land Girls prepared to face off against my Fallschimjager. We had correctly guessed which house had been fortified and our Stuka raid had damaged it, but it didn't collapse. There were also a number of bunkers.

 With all my surviving troops in one place I attempted to put our plan into action, but after a succession of terrible movement rolls through the small wood we decided the fight at the cliffs would be over before I got there. Instead I would move to the main beach to support the landing there.
First I needed to deal with the bunker. While the firing slits were facing the other way there were a lot of Land Girls ready to defend it.

 One of my squads drove the defenders in the wood back with casualties, while the other stormed across the bridge ready to assault them and then the bunker by the back door. However another double turn and a single Lewis gun wiped out half the squad and routed them.  With several units and most of my leaders dead my force morale was extremely low, and any further action was likely to break them. I moved my troops back into the wood to try to last out the battle.

I had been under sniper fire and I knew Carol had moved her sniper a couple of times though I didn't know officially where it was. There were only two buildings that he could be in though and I sent a pioneer team over the bridge to enter one of them and set fire to it. With hardly any dice to roll they were unable to move away and the sailors killed two before assaulting them. The last one surrendered and that took my force morale to zero, broken.

 The volanteers now headed en masse towards the beach where Brian had reached the defences at last but a mine sent them back to the waterline. With my force broken, Matt's mountain troops locked in a long tussle over the bunkers and Brian unable to advance under under fire it was clear that the attack had failed and Britain would remain free, or this seaside town at least.