Mordor vs Army of Thror- To the Death

Connor and I got in a league game over a nice weekend of gaming! He's running Army of Thror with all the "Th"s. Thorin, Thrain, and Thror. With so many dwarves, I was pretty scared to get into combat and just watch poor sweet orcs die horribly.

We rolled up Contest of Champions (I Veto'd that REAL quick), Hold Ground (Connor veto'd this but shouldn't have), and To the Death (which we did). 

And if you don't remember... my dumb list with the not-so-great Beast.

 

At this point, I will share, that I knew I could make this an awful game for Connor and play for a draw at the least, or a patient break with ranged attacks and spells. With my drum and an 8 inch moving beast I could kite him all day long, and with no board objectives... there was no reaoson not to do so except I couldn't commit 2 and a half hours to doing so. Dumb!

THAT BEING SAID, I also wasn't going to rush headlong into 3x might-3 heroes... so I kited for a bit and softened him up some...

Dwarves are all sorts of scattered keeping his D7 in the front, making my bow shots bad.

Just drumming and casting single die black darts. 

I'm sure Connor was getting tired of this, and again- I probably SHOULD have kept it up. It was playing to my strengths, and fighting is playing into his.

So finally... we fought. It went real bad for the orcs. I do manage to take down a good bit of dwarves, but there's no way my battle line can contend with his heroes.

All of the weaknesses of the Great Beast came to fruition. He was kept tied up with a single dwarf each turn... and I was completely ripped apart by three generations of Dwarven Kings.

In the end, Connor beat me strongly. He killed my leader, quartered me, eliminated my banner, etc etc. BUT I did manage to break him so it wasn't a total loss!

Closing Thoughts: In the end it was an 8-3 for the Army of Thror, and a lesson/ethical question for me. Is having a shot at pulling this out worth 2.5 hours of playing like an absolute turd? I made the call not to, and don't feel bad about that in the end, even if it cost me a big loss!

The Great Beast has not been doing it for me. It's NEAT but just has far too many drawbacks. 

Connor played smart and is such a gracious opponent! Looking forward to many more games with him!