Minas Tirith vs the Last Alliance in Capture and Control. 650.

I was really excited to see Connor's Last Alliance coming together. The last time he and I faced off, it was pure Numenor and it was a heck of a great game! Connor had since added Elendil to his army, and as I am working on an Elendil model myself, I was so stoked to see him in action. 

My list.

Connor's Last Alliance list with the big man himself.

I am terribly sorry, but I was even worse than usual in capturing pictures of this game! As usual, we are using the veto system. Connor veto'd divide and conquer since he didn't want his elves and men separated, and I veto'd retrieval since I wanted to start a little farther apart to give my bolt thrower a chance. The mission remaining was Capture and Control.

As I mentioned, I was AWFUL at grabbing pictures this game, not remembering to do so until about turn 3. To summarize, Connor deployed pretty far forward, utilizing a Heroic March from his Captain to get in my face and capture most of the objectives. On turn three, I think connor had 4/5 objectives! I was playing a patient game, looping the majority of my cavalry around flanks, waiting to pounce. In the center, the lines clashed and got stuck in. I knew I needed to keep Elendil from getting into Hurin or Boromir; so was cautious to keep a buffer of bodies between them. Meanwhile, Boromir kept threatening Erestor with Heroic Combats on soldiers, forcing connor to burn might off Erestor to strike or risk Boromir charging into him.

I will say that pretty much from the get go fights were going my way. Barring one or two turns, Minas Tirith was giving more than we were getting. Boromir was chewing through soldiers. Elendil was, predictably, murdering my dudes pretty strongly; though had more than a handful of failures to pull off the Heroic Combat.

Towards the end of the game here, Connor's forces had broken and we were throwing everything we could into the center to keep them tied up as my Cavalry chased down objective markers.

Boromir cornered Erestor, now out of might (and played by Glorfindel), and burned the rest of his might to try to kill him with 3 wounds... but Erestor passed both Fate rolls and hung on by a thread. With both sides on the objective, it was neutral in the end.

Connor lost a crucial courage test leaving his backfield objective free to one of my Knights. 

And held one objective as the game came to a close.

I held 3 objectives and broke Connor's force for a total of 7 VPs. Connor held 1 objective for 2 VPs.

A strong 7-2 for Minas Tirith, although to be totally honest a few dice different, or a passed courage roll here and there could've really shifted this.

Closing Thoughts: It's a little tough to identify exactly where this went south for Connor, but luck was definitely on my side for most of the game. I do think connor approached without dressed lines which meant I was often able to get to the squishy Numenoreans and many of my early kills were from that. I won most priorities, and many of the roll offs. 

Elendil was held back from cutting loose too much (Connor's dice were my ally there), and Boromir and Hurin were pressing the flanks hard as my Knights moved into position to strike right at the end and grab objectives which did mostly go according to plan. Still, Connor was aggressive and set the tempo early, but his dice did not allow him to capitalize on that.

I've been very interested in seeing the Bolt Thrower without Rapid Reload in action. As with my previous game, it did very little in terms of killing... but it absolutely dictated how Connor reacted and moved his forces. It killed one elf this game... but the siege veteran's might came in handy for a move off to try and bleed Elendil's might!

Anyhow, huge thank you to Connor for a fun, clean game and I really look forward to facing him again!