Riders of Theoden vs The Iron Hills in Divide and Conquer

 

John and I played my final league game- he was running Iron Hills and I, of course, my Riders of Theoden. As usual, we rolled 3 scenarios- all 3 of the maneuver scenarios! John vetoed Reconnoiter and I vetoed Storm the camp. That left Divide and Conquer.

John's Iron Hills list

 

My Riders of Theoden

Deployment. Just barely cut off from the "North West" is John's Goat Riders. For me in the North East is Theoden and Eomer's warbands.

Dernhelm and Gamling ride hard to try to cutoff the Goat Riders.

War Pig on the March.

Forth Eorlingas!

The Goat Riders are in danger of being swamped and surrounded- they attempt to link up with the main Dwarven lines.

The dwarven battle line marches on turns 1 and 2 to push the center. Check out those new objective markers!

The Goat riders take every throwing spear in the Rohan list... to no avail. Rohan dice started cold... but that's about to change.

The lines prepare to clash over the central objective! NOTE- I remove the marker with a flat marker since they don't count as terrain and John needed to move his guys over top of it.

Throwing Spears again do nothing, but Eomer and Dernhelm ride down the trailing Goat Rider. First blood to the siblings.

The charge is devastating. John plays it smart, and rallies around the objective marker. He sends his goat riders to tie up my flank troops... but in the center all 4 Rohan heroes charge and Theoden calls DEATH!

The result is crippling. 8 Dwarves fall to no casualties to the Rohirrim.

After the initial charge, the next turn sees Rohan swamping the Dwarf defenders. Dain gets off a cheeky heroic combat, slaying a Rider and slamming into Theoden. Theoden manages to survive on a clutch fate roll. 

With that, turn 4 sees the Dwarves broken. We play turn 5- Eomer de-pigs Dain and Rohan continues cleaning up. One more rider of Rohan falls, but on the end of turn 5 the game ends with the dwarves broken.

In the end Rohan scores all 3 objectives (3 for the center, and 2 for each wing objective). They also broke the enemy for a total of 8. The dwarves put a wound on Theoden, for a total final score of 8-1 for Rohan.

Honestly? My dice went very hot. I only lost a handful of fights in total. Even crazy defense falls hard to charging cavalry with 4 dice to wound. I do think John was in a tight spot from the getgo with the scenarios we rolled, and I really don't think he made any mistakes. In fact, I think he played very well!