Gandalf and Escape from Goblin Town

I have now finished Gandalf, the last unpainted model from the Escape from Goblin Town set, which I had resolved to get done before the end of the year.  I used the Tale of Painters tutorial, but changed the order of things to suit me more.  See the link here.

I have added in picture of the Goblin Town set, showing the dwarves in particular as well.

Bifur, Bombur and Bob(?)

Balin and Dwalin

Goblin King

Oin and Gloin

Nori Ori and Dori

Fili and Kili

Break now until the New Year when I have a fair bit of accumulated Flames of War to paint.

Revisiting the Hobbit SBG - Tactically Limited?

For the first time since around February this year, we got in a game of The Hobbit SBG (formally know as LOTR SBG).  The setting was somewhere in Mirkwood forest, and Thorin's company (without Gandalf) were coming up against some goblins, warg riders and some of Saruman's Uruk Hai (who had wandered unknowingly into the wrong movie).

We wanted to get a feel for the rules again and see what we thought of the mechanic.  I am deciding whether to pay the astronomical price for the new models (see Scott's post here) and wanted to see whether the game is worth it.  Here are some pictures of the game:

The Battle line and where the game was played out

Marauding Goblins a little lost in the forest

Are you sure we should be here?  Don't we appear in the next films?

The Dwarves about to be taken out by Goblins and Uruk Hai

My view of proceedings

Our thoughts after the game were that the SBG game is tactically limited.  All our games end up being focused on a small part of the table with combat roll offs, going across the line and picking out the casualties.  Once the forces lock into combat, that is really it until the end of the game.  Terrain and tactics seem to have little impact, from that point of first contact at least onwards.

This might have been due to a decision to choose few ranged weapons and not to play magic (for simplicity reasons), but even when we have played with magic and more ranged weapons, the same outcome occurs - a clumping at one point and an epic dice roll off to the death.

Might Will and fate do add to the game and these are nice tactical options to have, as are the heroic actions available, which have been expanded in the Hobbit.

Playing Thorin's company is also difficult with all the special rules applicable to each dwarf, so I accept we may not have been getting all we could have out of the game - but back when we were more on top of these things and playing normal warbands of one hero and 12 warriors, the same outcome eventuated.

I wouldn't mind seeing what other's thoughts are on this, and if our experience are the same as others.  Lovely models and all, but just not particularly challenging tactically at all.