Arnor Project - Battle of the North Downs

Harl the Helmless led what was left of the fleeing Arnorians towards the North Downs after their defeat at the hands of Angmar's vanguard (see HERE). 

The Orcs were moving faster than their quarry and caught up with them at the very feet of the hills. The Downs Guard, regular soldiers of Arnor, could see the two forces from their earthwork defenses.

Men of Arnor turn to give fight

The Orcs, once again led by their fierce Captain ('Orrible 'Ornblower), rushed forward and battle ensued.

The heavily outnumbered Arnorians fought bravely but slowly gave ground, falling back to the more defensive position and the fresh soldiers guarding the Downs.

The Arnorians finally reached Exhaustion Point, but were at least now uphill of their enemy and able to defend themselves. The Orcs fought on but they too fell at last to exhaustion.

The battle of the North Downs was over.

Next time, attention turns to the main force of Orcs whose passage West has bypassed the hill country and now begins to progress South towards the City of Fornost.

Arnor Project - First game

 

Yesterday evening witnessed my first game set in J R R Tolkien's Lost Kingdom of Arnor. It was not a great success as I wasn't happy with the rules I was play testing (an adaptation of the 3x3 PW). Still, I'm not one to waste stuff if I can help it, so here are a few pictures of the action.

A large Army of Orcs has been sent by the Witch-King of Angmar to ravage and plunder the lands beyond the North Downs. The leading elements have encountered, and pursued, a retreating band of Arnorians led by Harl the Helmless. 

 Harl's rearguard warn him that the fast moving Orcs are almost upon his column. The men of Arnor, mostly farmers and herdsmen, turn and make a stand on a ridge, with their backs to a wood.

Men of Arnor

Advance of the Orcs

Wolf Riders about to hit the Arnorian flank

The end of the beginning

Having been whittled away by the overwhelming strength of the Angmar force, Harl and the surviving men of North Arnor escaped into the forest, and made their way towards the Downs, picking up stragglers on the way...

Random

 A recent discussion on Bob Cordery's blog, regarding generating random layouts for Portable Wargame boards, led me back to an idea I had some years ago for using MS Excel's conditional formatting function to do just that. Put simply, when a condition is met by the content of a spreadsheet cell, another cell will automatically be populated, say by a coloured fill. This enables a PW Grid to be randomly populated with colours representing scenery. 

The following demonstrates this using a 6x6 grid, a system I'm currently trying using 3x3PW rules.

Two identical grids are made, one contains a random number generating function, in this case set between 1 and 20, though this can easily be altered. The other has the conditional formatting set in each corresponding cell.

The sheet I have generated will populate the squares using the above values - I put two possible options for wooded/forested squares which I may edit. The hills and woods are universal across all 36 of the grids; the lakes are restricted to the middle two rows, and the Built Up Areas are restricted to the centre 4 squares. This was just a preference for my own purposes. The type of terrain to be generated can be tailored by the settings of the formatting.

Following are a few random examples that were created with the above settings:

Adding other features such as roads or rivers automatically is currently beyond the scope of this spreadsheet, however Lakes need to be fed by a water feature and settlements usually have some sort of track/road going to them, so these can be added as makes some sort of sense.

 

Having generated a number of boards, these can be brought together to be used as ready made battlefields for a Mini-Campaign in the style of Bob's Hare & Hounds game plan.