While Frodo is away the Nazgul will play: Gaming Stories

We were in the early 2000's, back when lord of the rings movies had swept the world. Then, out of the shadows of Mordor an RTS came out that rocked my world. Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Eart 1 and 2 with is expansion took us lord of the rings nerds by force.

It was a game in which you could actually pick one of the iconic races/nations of the world based entirely on the films and fight each other in standard RTS goodness. It was around that time that me and a couple of buddies got into net cafe lan gaming. Back then stable, reliable and quick internet for gaming was not something we could afford, so the next best thing was to go to an internet cafe, where all the games were already there, with better PC's and play our favorite games.

Usually we went for things like Dota and Counter Strike, but considering how many of my friends were RTS people like me, we were never -that- good at it, and when Battle For Middle Earth showed up in our go-to place, we just -had- to try it.

So, we split up into two teams of four, me and my bestie at that time George split up into seperate teams considering we were the only ones with any experience on the game, to balance it out, and the rest were going to dive into the game for the first time.

Keep in mind they all had experience with RTs's but the particular kinks of this one, were new to them. So, with two teams led by me and George, the largest open map we could find, the pieces were set and everyone was eager and excited for the rampage.

So this was before we were good enough to do Good VS Evil matchups, so everyone picked their preffered faction to begin with and we were off. Me and George decided to go with something new, to equalize the playing field a bit. So I got the Goblin faction and he got the Elves.

From the start of the game, things hinted at how downhil this match would go. Elves were freakishly expensive but they had the best archers in the game. Period.
This does not seem such an issue, until you realize that Archers in this game are OP as -fuuuck-
On the other hand, goblins were the weakest units imaginable, but they were ridiculously cheap, they had poisoned blades, and they could scale walls, which means that you could potentially win a war of attrition just by sending waves upon waves upon waves upon hordes upon waves of goblins at the problem. As Magic The Gathering has said very wisely "Throw enough goblins at any problem and it should go away. At the very least, there’ll be fewer goblins."

So naturally we agreed via shouting at each other across the Net Cafe that we would take it easy. So, I just went on focusing on building my base, my economy and taking my sweet time to read about what the goblins had to offer.

Surprisingly, the goblins had an extremely neat power spike in the late game, where they could enlist the best siege unit and a very powerful spider rider unit. So I decided to wait and focus on making those units in bulk after a respectable amount of time went on

Considering how people told me that only me and George were veterans and he was standing right across him, I figured we would be the ones that would instigate the fight. So, I relaxed, let my guard down and focused on things like "having two barracks" and "maximizing all researches" etc

There I was, minding my own bussiness, and there they were. The sounds of battle. The cries of fear. The red ping of DEATH. I scrolled up to see what was going on in the northern border, and there they were. Two orc archer battalions scrolling around my base like its nobody's bussiness.

John stopped existing, Plachatruf the goblin warchief was born. Things got into a haze as I scrambled to spawn goblin after goblin, heroes, giants, spider riders to eradicate the two orc archers. I heard George say something, but between my headphones, the chaotic trance I was in and the Net Cafe's music all I heard was a mumble. My army marched upwards to establish norther defences, but they were met with enemy Orc buildings, farming and creating materials, with a ragtag garrison of a couple of orcs waiting there.

Those sons of bitches were already starting an attack without telling us!

Goblins, my friend who was responsible for this attack, Denis, expected. But giants? trolls? spider riders? No. The march was on, and we were sweeping north, eradicating all in our path with effectivenes and precision never before seen in middle earth. Plachatruf was not to be fucked with

George however, was ready. With the combined forces of the other four players on his back they met with my legions in a river, next to a dock in the center of the map. My goblins fought valiantly and fiercelly, but four armies were a bit too much, and the tides were starting to shift. Until, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted riders of Gondor and Rohhirim come to my aid. Finally my human ally had answered the call and came to bolster my defences.

Like a machine, I placed all the gathering points of my military structures to send units in the front lines, and I immediately resumed training. With an endless wave of goblins and trolls on their way, and the combined might of my other two allies, we mangaed to start push back.

At this point we noticed that two of the players were locked in a defencive siege on the other side of the map, so they were unable to help anyone. It was a brutal 3v3 in front of Denis's fort. But with five hill giants raining rocks on his buildings, making quick work, it was over. 3v3 turned into 3v2, and despite their attempts and the heavy casualties of our Alliance's army, we started to push back, beyond Denis, who we promptly executed, and went on to the others.

At this point I left my murder trance and started paying attention to the various frustrated shouts from my friends, and noticed my buddy George staring at the screen, with utter despair and melancholy.
"Whats up?" I asked
"THEY WERE JUST SCOUTS!" Denis shouted, still recovering from the panic of having his two scouts murdered before legions of goblins swarmed through his lands
"I tried to tell you but you were a bit too into it" George said, as I started to recall the past events a bit clearer.

As it turned out, Denis, not knowing the game that well, decided to use two archers to scout my lands. When I started swarming him and went up north, he would just send people to defend his land, while the others just sent all they could towards me, since apparently nobody was ready to do anything.

After nervous chuckles, apologies and a soda to calm down, we all sat down and established our ground rules. No attacks prior the 20 minute mark.

This would not be the last match we played in Battle For Middle Earth, plenty of epic sagas were written in the pixels of that game, as well as good memories.