The Lost Dwarven Ring

The White Finger

“You hold out your hand to me, and I perceive only a finger of the claw of Mordor.” Gandalf, the Two Towers

Yes…. a White Finger. A finger held up in perpetual defiance. A finger of Uruk Hai, a dirty, grubby , long nailed finger, blood stained and scarred.

I enjoyed the Battle Companies campaign. The game is fun, the rules are easy to learn, at the basic level, but grow increasingly sophisticated as the warband develops more skills. It works well as a solo game which is great for lockdown and is a good introduction to the SBG rule system. Pretty much all the various races and their respective heroes and leaders are represented in the SBG Armies book which provides dozens of prospective enemies and numerous potential campaigns.

The Battle Companies book has an excellent narrative campaign for new good companies and White Dwarf recently published a narrative campaign for starting evil battle companies, the “Lost Dwarven Ring”. This supposes that Sauron has discovered some information that leads him to believe in the existence of an “eighth dwarven ring“ a ring of power.

He greatly desires this ring hoping to use it to tempt Dain Ironfoot to join his cause. Legends claim that the ring was consumed by a dragon long ago, never the less, Sauron sends word to Saruman to procure this ring. The dragon is said to have once roamed the Northern peaks of the Grey Mountains, a region little travelled in recent times, a region of mystery and rumour. The dragon has not been seen or heard of for centuries, if indeed it ever existed at all.

This is a perfect quest for the White Finger. They suffered greatly in the recent campaign, losing both lieutenants and sustaining various injuries. They had a turn of fortunes at the very last game tho with Ogzul, Ugbad and Gargul all promoted hero. They have acquired Gaakh the berserker and Maugak the Warrior and Gorluk himself has developed a few leader skills. At 6 characters, they are a concise, fairly tough company and with a rating of only 99 points suitable for a “starting campaign” where most first companies weigh in at about 99 – 110 points.

Gorluk is summoned before Saruman at Orthanc. “What do you mean, you did not have the luck? Fortune failed you? You have failed me! A simple enough task, find the halflings and bring them to me! An orcling would have prevailed! You drag your worthless hide back here to me to confess your abject failure and maybe the failure of all my desire, better that you had not returned at all! However, a suitable punishment for your inadequacy must wait for a more pertinent time. I have more pressing matters to deal with. And now, of all times, when all my army is on the march into the West Fold and my hold is desolate, I have need of a champion to send on a most important pursuit….well, luck or no luck, you will have to do!”

The campaign has 5 encounters marking the progress of the battle company from Isengard to the Grey Mountains. Each encounter can be fought 1-3 times enabling the warband to develop sufficient experience to deal with the last battle.

As it turned out I had seven encounters but more about that later.

The Campaign Trail