Siege of Gondor - The vision

Inspired by the forthcoming Battle for Pelennor Fields starter set, I've decided to get a move on with my dream game. Assaulting the walls of Minas Tirith.

So, the plan is simple, recreate the whole of the Siege of Gondor in miniature form. It sounds simple, but when you start to sit down and plan, you realise that there are a quite a few hurdles to cross, such as how many models and what rules to use and perhaps the biggest, what to use as the walls of Mias Tirith, before you can get to the stage of putting the models down and playing.

Coming soon to a tabletop near me.

Thankfully, I work in Project Management, and so I can put my work skills into something a lot more useful. The first thing I need to do is define the vision or goal of the project. 

The goal is simple, play through the Seige of Gondor. I keep repeating this, as this is the goal.

Now that we've got the goal, we need to know what the game will look like and that means turning to the source material, the Return of the King book and movie.

The first thing we learn is that there are two distinct parts to Sauron's assault on Gondor.

First up, we've got Sauron's assault on the city of Osgiliath. Now, this is a lot of fun to wargame, a tabletop filled with winding streets, a large river, and lots of potential for ambush spots.

However, as fun as this, this is not what I want to do. I want to recreate the second phase, the siege of Minas Tirith. As I've alluded to earlier, I've recreated Helms Deep, in a large format and looking back at the photo's it's clear that it's this phase I want to do.

In fact, what drives me to do recreate the attack on Minas Tirith, and why I chose the above photo, is that I love the charges of the Rohan Something, that Peter Jackson captured perfectly in the films. Having got the goal, we need to define what events will happen in the battle.

For me, there are four distinct phases to this battle.

1) The assault on the walls of Minas Tirith

2) Ride of the Rohirrim

3) Charge of the Mumak

4) The arrival of the King.

 By defining these four phases, I have made my first miniature related decision. When we recreated the battle of Helms Deep, we did a blend of the Book and Movie. So, as an example, Haldir's Elves were found upon the walls, helping the weary defenders repel the unwanted attention of the Uruk Hai.

And as much as I like the moment where Aragorn jumps over the ship and charges the Orc horde, backed up by a horde of screaming ghosts, this is not in the book, and so the first decision made is that the Army of the Dead won't be seen upon this battle. Even if I'm getting more models in the new starter set.

So, I've got a vision, I want to play a game, where we have all four phases will happen. The next question is how do we do this practically. Phase one is a siege, which is not easy to recreate in a wargame. Phase 3 contains massive monster charging into the ranks of the horse lords, how will we use them. Well, in the next article, I'll be talking about what rules system we'll be using. However, next up a battle report or two.