Introduction


With the re-release of Middle Earth SBG, I think, after many years of dreaming, I may now be in a position to at last embark on a re-telling of the story of the One Ring and the downfall of Sauron via the medium of miniature table top gaming.  A feat involving over a hundred scenarios from the Battle of the Last Alliance right up until Frodo casting the ring into the fires of Mount Doom.  A campaign requiring a vast model collection and terrain, covering every battle field imaginable, from the depths of Kaza-dum to the glittering spires of Minis Tirith, all will be rendered in plastic, resin, cardboard or when desperate pringle tubes.
There are plenty of others who have attempted this and documented it on the internet but none better than this: 

If we can achieve anything close to what this guy and his friends have done I will be a happy man.

My partner in jewellery destruction storytelling, Liv, has jumped in on the Middle Earth saga and between us, over many years the campaign will motivate us to paint lots of models, build up our terrain/model collections and overall have a great time telling a story whilst playing highly themed narrative driven games.  My 9-year-old son, Elliot, is coming along for the ride as well, he will probably be shaving by the time we finish.  There will also be involvement from other friends along the way.    

Each game we will do our best to make it as good looking as possible, as a minimum no unpainted models, we will use proxies, but they will be good proxies that don’t break the theme too much (for example we are going to use Liv’s Minis Tirith models to represent Numenor) but we aspire to have great looking boards and scenery.  It will be a slow process.
We plan to document the whole thing here as best we can. 

We don’t want to map the whole thing out in its entirety since there are a range of sources to use for scenarios and Games Workshop, as I write this, are on the cusp of releasing a sourcebook for Gondor at War which will contain 29 narrative scenarios.  There will likely be more of these which may change what we use as we go along.  So initially we are going to start with a quick trot around the pre-history of the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings:

·       The Battle of the Last Alliance (2nd age 3441)

·       Disaster at the Gladden Fields (3rd Age Year 2)

·       The Destruction of Fornost (3rd Age 1974)

·       The Fall of Kazad Dum (3rd Age 1981)

·       The Destruction of Dale (3rd Age 2770)

·       The Sack of Erebor (3rd Age 2770)

·       The Battle of Azanulbizar (3rd Age 2799)

o   Part1 (Death of Thror)

o   Part 2 (Charge of Thrain)

o   Part 3 (Thorin rallies & Defeat of Azog)
All of the above scenarios (apart from the disaster of the Gladden Fields) will be taken from the new up to date versions released with the re-branding to Middle Earth SBG.  These will likely take all of 2019 to complete, we will then move into the Hobbit story and then the Lord of the Rings itself.

It is tempting to use some of the optional campaign rules so that each game effects the next, but I think that could slightly break the narrative experience, especially if Sauron wins the first game, so we will take each game in turn. 

Some of the big set piece battles we may switch to the War of the Ring system, or even do it in addition to the SBG version. 

Projects that need doing:

·       A painted Minis Tirith army to represent Numenor and garrison of Dale

·       The River Anduin for the Gladden Fields scenario

·       Painted Dwarf Army

·       Painted Smaug

·       Dwarf scenery, pillars and statues

·       Fornost Ruins

·       The town of Dale

·       East gate of Moria
That should keep us busy for some time to come. 

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