My MESBG journey started in 2004 when 12-year-old me used up his lawn mowing allowance to purchase The Return of the King box set. I read through the rules at a 7th grade reading level and played a few games with the neighbor kid now realizing how we were playing was totally wrong (you do not add the fight values all together when in combat lol). Regardless we had some fun rolling dice and collecting some additional sets, the metal dwarf warriors and the Mines of Moria set to name a few. The models eventually got put on the shelf to collect dust. Fast forward about 12 years later to 2017. My very good friend Nick and I had gotten into collecting board games. One day I brought out my old MESBG models to show him and I had the full intention to sell them to buy additional games. When I took them out to show him, he was extremely intrigued by them. It was as if I had just handed him The One Ring. We discovered GW was releasing a revamped set of rules in 2018 and I once again found myself playing and collecting MESBG. I moved to Nashville in 2020 and with Nick four states away in Wisconsin it was hard to continue gaming. I have since picked the game back up with a fantastic group in Nashville and discovered that one of the largest MESBG tournaments in the US, Adepticon is now hosted in my old stomping grounds of Milwaukee, WI. With this news Nick and I knew we had to make the doubles tournament happen this year! In order to brush off the cobwebs and get Nick back up to speed we have turned to Tabletop Simulator to get some practice in for Adepticon.

The List

Below is the Defender of Pelennor list that we settled on as we practiced it the most and Nick wanted to us some of his old Minas Tirith models. It is not very optimal but we wanted to keep it lower model count and have one warband a piece to keep it simple. The idea was to give the high defense front line ghosts with blades of the dead fight 4 support from the Minas Tirith Warriors while whittling down our opponents might and using Aragorn’s late game free might to continue getting cavalry charges off with Gandalf and the Knights. The rest of this post will now go through our three games at the Adepticon Doubles tournament.

Game 1 Domination vs. Defenders of the Hornburg

We were fairly out-number in this one. Our opponent had 33 models spread between 3 heros. We deployed both of our warbands along the center line with our opponent across from us just on the cusp of charging range. Turn 1 our opponent got priority and opted to back up to get some shots off as they had a good number of bows and throwing spears. We were feeling pretty good about board control at this point as we moved forward as Gandalf casting blinding light and two warriors retreating back to secure the two objectives on our board side. However, even with blinding light our opponent was able to do some early damage a ghost was killed by a strength 2 bow and a Knight was dismounted. Turn 2 we were able to get our line into combat while also casting a transfix at Helm who had to spend all his Will and one Might point to resist. However, our dice were not great this turn in combat as Aragorn used his free army bonus once per game heroic combat against two warriors but failed to kill both. We killed a few of our opponent’s warriors but we took some warrior losses as well. Over the next few turns we went back and forth going kill for kill winning a decent amount of heroic moves to be able to transfix Helm and whittle down more of our opponents Might, but the outnumbered situation was not getting any better. By turn 5 we started to get flanked on our right side. Helm was transfixed and Gandalf called his free heroic combat against two warriors to try to bolt to save our right flank. Gandalf won the fight knocking them prone and having EIGHT dice to kill them, however each strike was 1's and 2’s! and the heroic combat failed :( Pictured below is our right flank crumbling. We were able to keep Aragorn and Gandalf alive but we ultimately broke then got quartered and only had 2 objectives slightly contested this resulted in a loss of 11-0.

Game 2 Hold Ground vs. Wraiths on Wings

We felt good about the scenario and matchup. It was maelstrom deployment our opponents, Antoine and Josh picked where Gandalf’s warband would be placed on the eastern board edge, then Aragorn rolled a 5 and was able to join very close to Gandalf. We were able to split up the 4 wraiths as they all rolled for us to be able to place them opting not to spend their limited might. We called a heroic march with Aragorn to try to get to the center of the board as fast as possible as the wraiths advanced towards us. See photo below of the end of turn 1 movement. Over the course of the first 2 turns Gandalf was able to get fortify spirit off on himself and Aragorn which was very helpful to have those extra resists against a cast happy bunch of Nazgul. Turn 3 Aragorn was able to resist all magic thrown at him which allowed us to trap the Witchking and flash kill him early on. Turn 4 Gandalf channeled a Banishment spell that took all the fate off of one of the Nazgul and Aragorn used his free heroic combat to finish the wraith off. Over the course of the next two turns we stayed close to the middle of the board and finished off tabling our opponent for a 20-0 win! Antoine and Josh were great sports.

Game 3 To the Death! vs. Legions of Mordor (aka Guritz White and the Seven Trolls?!)

That’s right folks our opponents list was Guritz using a Galadriel model painted as Snow White and seven Mordor trolls dressed as the Seven Dwarfs using the three trolls sculpts! This game was against Julian who ended up winning the whole two-day Grand Tournament on Saturday and Sunday and Evan, who I am now calling “THE EVIL QUEEN” more on that in a second! Turn 1 we call a heroic march with Aragorn having no idea how we were going to attack this literal monstrosity. Turn 2 5 of the trolls stayed put hoping to get off some stone throws and boy did they!!!! We continued our advance and Gandalf casted blinding light. I am going to stop here quickly to show you a photo of our opponents Grumpy and Dopey, who both turned into Happy really fast after this next sequence.

As suspected the 5 trolls hurled stones all into Aragorn needing 6’s to hit. Evan turned to us saying here comes five 6’s… and with a look into the Mirror on the Wall he was right!! Hence his new name “THE EVIL QUEEN” this was one of three occasions that his dice predictions came true during this game. Photo below for proof! The good news is Aragorn shrugged them all off, but exhausted all of his fate. I won’t bore you with the rest of this fairy tale, but ultimately we were not the Fairest of Them All. We retreated Aragorn and our banner as they would have gotten hurled to death by Dopey who apparently is the most intelligent troll ever by not failing a single intelligence test. Gandalf was out “Whited” by Guritz and was unable to secure a wound on him. We were quartered and lost 9-4. THE END lol.

We finished in 39th out of 70, not quite the top half as we were hoping for, but we had a ton of fun! I had not been to Adepticon before so I cannot compare it to the old venue, but we loved the new venue. There was a ton of space and we were so glad to see one of, if not the largest MESBG gathering in the United States hosted in Milwaukee. It was a well ran tournament and the Tournament Organizers were great! We will definitely be back next year! Thanks for reading!

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