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My 12 year-old niece has long been in love with certain aspects of the game. From that fateful unattended lavender-ization of my wargs at the tender age of 4, she's been a fan. With Battle Companies, I decided she was finally ready for some of the other rules, as a smaller game makes it easier to remember new rules.
For some reason, she's smitten by the bad guys from the original Mines of Moria set and likes to play Goblins. Maybe not the best choice, but the only other army I had was Dwarves, and despite their pink undershirts, she was not swayed. She gave them names from the Warrior Cats series of books, which sounded more Dwarven; I named mine for family members. She chose to play scenario twelve. This scenario involved my force guarding some supplies (dice, in our case) from being set on fire by her goblins. We didn't have buildings, so she suggested the pillars from the boxed set, an excellent idea considering we were probably fighting in Moria anyway.
Our biggest mistake was that we didn't have anything to measure in inches. Yeah. Despite being a British Company, GW switched to inches only with the new edition and our faithful old blue measuring sticks are metric only. We switched the increments to centimeters, which made for a very slow first few turns. It really benefited her, as her archers are terrible anyway. For some reason, every time I play dwarves they can't hit the broad side of a barn, either. Due to the measurements and the scenario, there was comparatively little shooting going on anyway. K especially liked the theatrics of "poking someone in the eye with a bow" on a point-blank shot. (She's been to camp and shot a bow and knows how silly this is in real life.) Our table is also round and probably 2' across at best. Our games tend to involve more fighting than probably other peoples'.
K knew her greater numbers were her biggest asset, as she's played goblins before in a kind of football-type get the treasure scenario I made so she could learn basic rules. She attempted to flank me, and she did succeed on setting a few crates on fire while I battled the bulk of her forces. I knew I would never be able to keep her from setting crates on fire, as I had too few guys, and told her my plan was to slaughter her forces. It was a bloodbath, she lost half her force, including her spear hero, and I lost no models.
This was the first time we'd used courage, might, will and fate in our games. I wrote them on cards and helped her to use them when it was good tactics to do so. Both our sergents hacked away at each other and might and fate points were spent. Despite using his will point, K's general fled the table with his remaining forces the turn after the army broke. Contrary to being too complicated to grasp, she loved the new hero aspect.
The game length was about right, she got bored with our first game as it had too many minor guys in it for her liking. The post-game part wasn't at all interesting for her, she let me make a few choices for her and ultimately chose 2 poisoned swords for her heroes. The heroes seemed to be a big hit and K hasn't given up on her goblins. She really wants to play a game with monsters next, and seeing the look on her face when she meets the boxed set troll as an ally will be priceless. Once she masters him, we'll try the Balrog and see if she can wipe out the Fellowship or my hated dwarves. She loves how goblins swarm my poor dwarves, so having goblins face anything faster would wreck them for her.
She has chosen Rivendell for her next match-up, as she is taken by the models. She really wants to field girl heroes, so my trinity of Eowyns will probably go under the brush for a Christmas match up. I might even find an excuse to use that free bottle of Reaper Breast Cancer Awareness Pink. She also liked the idea of horses, and there are a few broken Rohirrim that she could paint up all for herself. She also liked the Mordor force.
As for me, I guess I need to pick an evil force if she's going to field elves... Maybe my Hobbit warg riders will finally see the light of day.
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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers
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