After rolling our mission and with the two armies coming to grips being from Angmar and Lothlorien, I liked thinking that the story behind this battle was that the evil minions of Angmar descended upon Galadriel and Celeborn as they led a complement of their Galadhrim through the Weather Hills–probably journeying to the Elven Havens of Lindon. Why the Galadhrim would travel from Lothlorien (just south of the eastern entrance of Moria) to the Grey Havens on the western coast of Middle Earth by way of the Weather Hills (just north of Weathertop) is anyone’s guess. Who knows what lured the Elves of Lorien into the empty lands that were once the Dunedain’s kingdom of Arnor?

Before the game started, we rolled ‘Battle for the Pass’ for the game’s set up and ‘Seize the High Ground’ for its mission. This meant our objective was a ‘high point’ in the center of the table, and we were playing length-wise down the table—a board that had hills touching each table edge but nothing in the table’s center apart from some moveable rough terrain with some broken columns. So the game was less the fight for a hill in the middle of a mountain pass and more a fight for a rough patch of ground in the middle of a hilly causeway–possibly through some low mountains or tall foothills.