My Scouring of the Shire playthrough sputters along with a big one, The Battle of Bywater. Drop on by if you're interested and see whether the hobbits can overcome the evil of Sharkey's Rogues.

http://davetownsend.org/Battles/LotR-20200208/

Another great write up and I was eagerly anticipating this one since it is the culmination of the book but it sounds like this is an average scenario overall and not quite the satisfying conclusion we might have hoped. I know this scenario has a couple of different versions that exist already and those were highly praised by The Green Dragon Podcast so it does make me wonder if all the tinkering with the scenario here really benefited us. I'd be curious to see what impact playing the full campaign has on this scenario too. Perhaps that could help balance things out a bit more? Regardless, it has been great reading through all the Scouring scenarios and I am very curious to see what you decide to tackle next in your battle reports!

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A shame this didn't go as wanted, but a nice battle report nonetheless. I agree that it's not fun to rely on the good will of both players to have a balanced play of a scenario and it's particularly disheartening if the scenario favours the opposite of the 'historical' result. Though it does sound like Good had some pretty terrible luck this game.

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Full Lord of the Rings campaign: https://aiwendil.net/

I don't quite understand the reasoning that more Ruffians can arrive during the battle while more hobbits can't. Seems contrary to the book. I was looking at the Lord of the Rings Army book at the mounted hobbits (Sam, Pippin, Merry) and the movement is the same as if they were afoot? But Bill the pony can move twice as fast? Edit: read wrong, if mounted can move twice as fast as it on foot.

My first thought on your battle report was to have the hobbits tie the ruffians down while the heroes on ponies move around and engage Sharkey, but unless I'm reading things wrong, that won't work.

I think this scenario needs some home rules (besides having Sharkey stay stationary) and try it again. I don't like seeing the ending of your Scouring of the Shire reports end so disappointing.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks for the comments, folks. I'm sorry to have taken a few days to respond but I was away from my computer on vacation. As always, I really appreciate the feedback.

This won't be the last Scouring scenario that I tackle. I haven't doing the scenarios in order due to the varying availability of models and terrain. So still to do is The Burning of Woody End, for which I still have to complete a fifth hobbit hole. Maybe in a few weeks, as I've barely started on that.

Plus there are the three "bonus scenarios" at the end of the book that I'd like to do to complete the set.

Although I don't keep detailed notes, I do agree with Voyager360 that Good's luck appeared to abandon him at some key points. Note also that my Good play was probably not optimal; those with more experience are welcome to chime in with some suggestions on how to play better. (It won't hurt my feelings, honest!)

I do think the Evil strategy of rushing the Good models regardless of losses is probably pretty close to optimal. The hobbit warriors get some nice Fight value boosts, but in the end they are only on par with the Ruffians, not superior to them. So in any 1:1 engagement, there's now a 50% chance the hobbit wins (whereas in most/all other Scouring scenarios the Ruffians win all the ties). But that still means 50% of the time the Ruffian still wins, and he's better at Wounding.

What about banners, you say? True, Frodo effectively means that hobbits within his banner range are rolling two dice. But Sid provides the same benefit for the Ruffians ... so the odds are still the same in a 1:1 fight,

I'd guess that Good's hefty Might advantage and some of the heroes' special rules are supposed to tip the scales enough in Good's favor to make a good game. But in my one data point that didn't seem to be the case.

I wonder how much the exact terrain layout affects things? Based on the scenario map in the book, GW's hobbit holes are much smaller than mine. Since I had bigger terrain features, my layout was probably more constricted than the playtest games at GW were. I don't know if an open layout really helps the hobbits much, though. Perhaps they'd get an extra turn of stone throwing/archery? I can't think that would be make a very big difference, though, what with the dead Ruffians returning.

And I'm definitely in agreement with Mapper's comment about how things seem backwards from the book. In the book, the Ruffians run into an ambush. They desperately lunge for the hobbits are and mown down. To me, that feels like the /Ruffians/ should be the ones with time pressure to win quickly, not the hobbits.

I do want to say that I don't think it's a outright bad scenario. It's just ... disappointing. Especially based on the reputation the version in the old SotS book has.