War of the Dwarves and Orcs - Middle Earth with Midgard Heroic Battles

 I finally managed to get Mark over to try out Midgard with some of my Middle earth forces. mark and I have substantial Middle Earth armies and have played with various rulesets over the years. We were both disappointed with Oathmark and I have been nagging him to try Midgard for some time.

We fought an encounter between an orc horde and a dwarf host, fought sometime during the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, following the murder of King Thrór by Azog the Orc-chieftain of Moria. Mark took the orcs and I took the dwarves for our game and the orcs were the attackers.

As this was Mark's first time using the rules I stuck to just small 300 point armies for both sides.

The orc horde prepare to deploy.

The dwarf battle line seems puny by comparison.

TURN ONE

The main orc force advances. The orcish heroes/champions used up most of their Mighty Deeds in this first turn to keep the line together.

Except for the snaga dross on the flank, where one unit refused to move at all!

On the far side of the table the warg riders start an outflanking manoeuvre.
The dwarves mainly stood their ground, except for the skirmishers on the flanks, who both advances and took pot shots. The left flank missed, but the right flanker scored a hit on the leading snaga unit.

TURN TWO

The orcs kept moving forward (mostly) and both skirmishers were charged, but evaded.

However, that left the left flank skirmisher vulnerable to the warg riders, who took the opportunity and caught the dwarf archers on the hill, wiping them out. First kill to the orcs!

I took advantage of the dwarf king's With Me trait, and threw the dwarven centre forward to crash into the orc mass. They pushed the orcs back with heavy loses, but only one of the orc units broke. Mainly due to Mark not having used the Orc commander so far, so that he was able to use his Mighty Deeds to re-roll failed command tests. The surviving dwarf skirmishers kept up a dance around the hapless snaga unit, inflicted a second hit, but failing to cause them to break.

TURN THREE

Not a lot the orcs could do in the centre, except continue with a slugging match, which they kept on losing, one unit breaking under the pressure. The snaga tried to charge the skirmishers, but failed. 

On the other flank the warg riders charged a dwarf infantry unit and successfully forced them back off the hill.

The collapsing orc line had revealed the trolls behind them, so I charged two dwarf units into the big beasties, hoping to overwhelm them by sheer weight of numbers. It wasn't a success, the trolls threw both units back and pursued the nearest one.

On the far side the warg riders and over-reached themselves. After two rounds of melee (all be it successful ones), they were now fight at half effect. Up against dwarf axemen, this wasn't pretty and the unit was cut down to a man (er orc/warg).

At the end of turn three, things were looking really bad for the orcs, as their reputation was down to  1!.

TURN FOUR

Now the dwarves started to suffer the effects of prolonged melees. Weaken by the previous fights, now they were facing trolls and fresh units of orcs.

In the centre an epic clash between elite black uruks and dwarves, each side fought each other to a standstill. Just out of shot the trolls destroyed the unit facing them.

The battered dwarf hearthguard were charged by an orc unit. Despite inflicting heavy losses on their attackers, the dwarves were finally destroyed, although the dwarf king survived.
The skirmishers hit the snaga again, pushing them back. As the snaga are classed Brittle, this forced a command test, which they failed and promptly ran away!

The end of turn four was the end of the game, as the orcs were now reduced to zero reputation. But it had been a very close result in the end.

A great game and a lot of fun. This is what I like about Midgard, things can dramatically change around in no time at all!

I was really pleased with by dwarf skirmishers, well one of them anyway. Dancing around the larger, more ponderous unit, keeping just out of reach until their morale broke, classic skirmishing tactics, which the rules reflected well.