Over the past year and a half, I've played in a few campaigns and one day narrative events ranging from Warhammer Fantasy to Forbidden Psalm and most recently Cauldron. While I have hosted and game mastered many RPGs, I've never run a campaign for a miniature wargame.
A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my studio and organizing my miniatures. During that process, I found my case of all my Lord of the Rings miniatures from college. Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game was one of my first wargames along with Warhammer Fantasy. As an elementary student I was introduced to the world of Tolkien. His name kept popping up with association with CS Lewis as I was reading the Narnia books. Then the movies released! I remember watching Fellowship of the Ring at my neighbor's house and being completely inthralled in the story. From there I beg my Mom to buy me a copy of Fellowship of the Ring, which was way higher then my 6th grade reading level. It took me all of middle school but I finished it. Luckily, I had the aportunity to do a book report on the Hobbit in between reading the first book. In High School, I read the other The Two Towers and Return of the King along with all the other stories of Middle Earth. When I got to college, I finally had the chance to play some wargames that I had seen growing up. A friend wanted to play Middle Earth Strategy Battle game and that provided me the opportunity to start collecting. I picked up a few different factions but mostly collected Rohan. Back then all the Hero characters were metal and cost less then 15 bucks! Those days are long behind us with miniature prices. I remember playing many matches on the floor of my first apartment with my sister, Rohan VS Gondor since neither of us collected evil.
But after college, I packed up my miniatures for the most part. Sometimes I would break out my Rohan soldiers and paint them a bit when I was feeling low. But with out regular games, I lost steam on painting miniatures all together. After all, I was trying to build my illustration career and also working full time. It didn't leave me a lot of time to play games. But I still kept my miniatures, shuffling them from college, back to my parents then to my first apartment post college. While I worked on an unfinished space orc army and other warbands, my Lord of the Rings model sat in the corner. After clearing out my Middle Earth case recently, I was determined to 1. Finish painting my Rohan army and 2. run a mini campaign for my friends.
The army was not the crazy colors I paint now, it was much more in line with the box art. Originally I was determined to paint my army to fit into the Middle Earth color story. After painting one foot soldier, I was not happy with the result. I felt like I was fighting my natural instinct and went back to my usual painting style. Over the past week, I painted my entire Rohan army, I have still have more minis to go but I am happy to have completed my second army this year.
With the idea of a campaign swirling in my head, I began to jot down ideas of when and where the battles will happen. I decided to start out with Battle Companies to allow players in the campaign time to paint armies. This also will help introduce the rule set to the players and if they don't enjoy the system, it was only a few miniatures and a smaller time commitment compared to an army. Over 4 games of Battle Companies, a narrative will build to a full army battle. This campaign first and foremost will be about the narrative. Each match will be good vs evil, with the winner and loser affecting how the narrative will play out. It will change who a more advantageous position in the next match. I already have plans for creating a campaign packet with the general rules everyone will need to reference along with a lore for why the scenario is is playing out. My hope is that the last match of the game will involve all the players running a small army in a giant battle to capture the grand battles in the Lord of the Rings.
My plan is to start in January at the first Jersey Girls meet up. We'll sit down and plan our Battle companies and maybe get in a practice match for players new to the system. While I personally remember the general rules, I'm sure there are many changes from the first time I played 15 years ago. Over the next 6 to 8 months, I'll be starting narrative battle reports. Meanwhile, I have lots of terrain to paint along with an army of goblins and small collection of Heroes who may or may not show up to aid the players. With Howard Shore's soundtrack blasting, I'm going to have lots of fun creating for Middle Earth.