Bilbo Comes to Nashcon (Along with a Few Friends & Enemies)

 The quest was epic, the journey was (almost) short, and the results were... a fun time.

Or to put it another way, this weekend I traveled about 40 minute north to Nashcon, the annual Nashville wargaming convention put on by the grand people of the Historical Miniatures Game Society Midsouth. There I was proud to present The Battle of Five Armies, Games Workshop's 10mm masterpiece based on the final epic battle of Tolkien's classic novel, The Hobbit.

I've discussed this battle and game before here, so I won't repeat that (but feel free to read at your leisure).

In a twist, I allowed some additional units to enter the game (one the principle that while the good professor did not mention such forces, they "could" have been present in small numbers unlikely to have been discerned by our diminutive narrator). These forces included:

A unit of elf cavalry (ithe Elfking travelled to Erebor on horseback, so a relatively small guard is fitting)

A unit of dwarven archers (implied in the battle's description and the behavior of Thorin & Co. throughout the book), a unit of giant bats (actually mentioned, at least as carrion creatures)

And a unit of hill trolls (okay, a stretch... but the sun was hidden by the massive cloud of bats, so why not?).

As it turned out, all four did next to nothing in the battle, and all but one were wiped out early on rather handily.

This battle took an early dark turn for the Armies of the Free Folk, with the Men of the Long Lake being obliterated by a charge of wargs and goblin warg-riders on the eastern side of the ford, and the elves stalling while the warg-riders seized the ford and crossed to charge the suspiciously combat-averse elves.

As the battle progressed the Free Folk struggled to make headway. Thorin attempted to rally the elves, but after initial success was overwhelmed and killed by the foe (as in the book, or close enough).

At that point, with a roll of a die, Beorn entered the fray, doing damage but not turning the tide.

The Free Folk were close to the point of breaking— one unit more lost, and they would be done.

And at that point, in true Tolkien fashion, the eagles arrived, and the battle turned. The goblins were scattered and the Free Folk had won a costly victory.

Behold the aftermath below:

The fields before Erebor, as the battle ended.

A grand fight and a fun time.

A note on my Lonely Mountain. I had carved a large piece of styrofoam, suitably painted, to be my backdrop mountain, but alas the heat and humidity of August does not allow for the spraying of even suitably foam-safe primer! 90°+F, 75%+ humidity = No foam mountain.

So inspiration hit— I would mimic Tolkien's illustrations of the Lonely Mountain. One piece of black poster board, rolled into a cone, one suitably "snowscaped" piece of white felt, some glue, and a silver Sharpie marker, et voila— Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, in the style of the master himself. (I felt that black would be more dramatic than white, and better suited for the daytime scene of the battle.)

My inspiration: Tolkien's illustration of the Lonely Mountain.

The rest of the convention I spent as a player (and shopper). But the above was my contribution this year— and who knows; this battle (or another) may well appear again.

— Howard Shirley, aka Parzival