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 Lord of the Rings 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.