Battletech: Let's Paint a Magistracy Army

I'm delighted that Catalyst Game Labs, who currently publish Battletech, are standing up against bigotry. I also enjoyed painting my first ever mechs and trying the game. So I bought some more of them from Iron Wind Metals. Iron Wind used to be Ral Partha, a name I definitely recognize from way back!

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To start with, how was I supposed to not get myself some Badgers (AR20-744)? They're cute little vehicles and the models are quite decent quality. I'm actually enjoying working with metal models again, believe it or not. Here they are in the colors of the Magistracy.

I also got two Vedette tanks: more products of Bordello Military Goods, Inc.

And a Mobile Long Tom self-propelled gun, which strongly reminds me of the G.I. Joe Thunderclap.

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The vehicles are all very cute, and they give me flashbacks to Space Marine. I also wanted to try some Inner Sphere Standard battle armor, i.e. power armor dudes, from Ral Partha.

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I haven't entirely forgotten about mechs! Since there is a Venom, I had to have one.

I also painted a Shockwave, mostly because the model is cool, but also Shockwave.

I also got myself a BJ-1 Blackjack (20-880), because if I recall correctly, it was the mech you started with in the Battletech video game.

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Mechs and vehicles and so on are all well and good, but you can get those in other miniature wargames as well. Very few of those, however, have submarines. Behold the MCS/m Venom (11)!

When I found out that Battletech had submarines, I simply had to get one.

Mind you, that's just the surfaced version. The Neptune blister also comes with a submerged version, and that one's quite a bit more interesting.

The submerged Neptune has a little metal stand to hold it up, but frankly, it looks flimsy and I can do better. I've got some small Games Workshop flying stands and those Ral Partha hex bases. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the base, filled the base with Vallejo putty, and stuck in the flying stand to make a properly shaped hole. Here's what it looks like after spray-painting.

And this is the whole thing! I think it's wonderful.

Here they are side by side.

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Dipping into Battletech has been fun! I've really enjoyed working with metal miniatures again, and I thoroughly appreciate the absurdity of the submarine. I may have to look into some infantry and artillery. And hey, this is the closest I can get to Epic. Or so I thought!

LotR LCG: A long-expected quest

He waited for an opportunity, when the talk was going again, and Tom was telling an absurd story about badgers and their queer ways - then he slipped the Ring on.
- The Lord of the Rings, book I, chapter VII

Now that my Tolkien-reading project has gotten well into the Lord of the Rings, it's about time we got started on those saga expansions as well. Each of these saga quest posts will go through two adventures, incorporating the standalone scenarios that fit into the campaign; this post, for instance, deals with the first quest in the Black Riders expansion, as well as the Old Forest standalone quest.

John Howe: The Black Rider, 1985

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A Shadow of the Past

In the very first quest of the campaign, Frodo flees Bag End, and everyone gets stabbed by Ring-wraiths and dies; the end.

In practice, you have to quest your way to Bucklebury Ferry while avoiding the Nazgul with Hide tests. It's the same as the Escape tests in the Dead Marshes, back in the Mirkwood cycle, i.e. an extra round of questing, and to be honest, it wasn't a great mechanic then, either. Here you have to quest, have questers in reserve if you need to take a Hide test, and in case that fails, defend a Nazgûl twice.

We tried this with three players, and it was not easy. The Ring-wraiths aren't impossibly tough, but when you have to defend multiple attacks by them, and somehow at the same time put together a fair bit of questing and hiding, it's a lot to do, especially when not really running ally-heavy decks. I guess a Leadership/dwarf swarm deck would find this much easier going, and I can kinda see why they were so popular back in the day.

I do want to say that the location cards are, again, absolutely lovely. But after several attempts, I don't really see why people think so highly of this quest.

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The Old Forest

In the first of the standalone quests that can be included in the saga campaign, our heroes get lost in the Old Forest.

Basically this is the Hills of Emyn Muil, but with trees; you cycle through different quest stages until you've gathered enough victory points to advance to the last stage, where you have to quest while being attacked by Old Man Willow. Sometimes Tom Bombadil can show up.

I thought this was a decent quest, but I feel it's let down a bit by the enemies being kinda boring, and by being a bit arduous, especially in the last quest stage where your threat is skyrocketing and you're defending constant attacks from trees. The Old Forest is one of my favorite parts of the Lord of the Rings, so I really wanted to like this quest, but it's not really something I see us returning to any time soon.


So, in all kind of a mixed bag to start the Lord of the Rings saga; one quest we definitely weren't impressed with, and a slog through the Old Forest. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it feels like the saga quests have been hyped as the best thing ever for so long, and I really feel quite underwhelmed by the first two.

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As long as we're playing saga quests where Fellowship Frodo is around, I'm definitely adding at least one copy of ally Sam. Given how kickass his hero incarnation is, ally Sam is a bit of a disappointment, but the Frodo discount makes him a one-cost ally with two willpower, which is one heck of a bargain.

Back when we played The King's Quest in the Wilds of Rhovanion, I was very disappointed when traveling to Lost Armory let us search for a weapon or armor attachment, and I didn't have any! I decided I have to fix this, so I'm bringing a Ranger Bow for Idraen.

Also, now that we're on the subject of hobbits and searching for attachments, I've had ally Bilbo in my deck for quite a while, but I've never had a pipe he could fetch! So I've decided to see whether Dúnedain Pipe would be a more fun way of getting card draw than Ancient Mathom.

56 cards; 29 Spirit, 22 Lore, 5 neutral; 22 allies, 12 attachments, 18 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 28.

Arwen Undómiel (TDR)
Idraen (TTT)
Rossiel (EfMG)

Allies: 22 (15/6/1)
Jubayr (TM)
Northern Tracker x2
Súlien (TCoC)
Elrohir (TMoF)
Lindir (TBoCD)
Rhovanion Outrider (ToTD) x2
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Galadriel's Handmaiden (CS) x3
West Road Traveler (RtM) x3
Elladan (TMoF)
Gléowine
Mablung (TLoS)
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Gandalf (OHaUH)

Attachments: 13 (4/8/1)
Unexpected Courage x2
Light of Valinor (FoS) x2
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Cloak of Lórien (CS) x2
Dúnedain Pipe (TBS)
Ranger Bow (AoO)
The Long Defeat (TBoCD) x2
Magic Ring (TCoP)

Events: 19 (8/8/3)
Flight to the Sea (TCoP)
A Test of Will x3
Elven-light (TDR) x2
Heirs of Eärendil (TDoCG) x2
Leave No Trace (EfMG) x2
None Return (AtE) x3
Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3
Keen as Lances (EfMG) x3

Side quests: 2
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)

Lord of the Rings saga expansions with Fellowship Frodo when the hobbit deck isn't around sideboard:
Sam Gamgee (TTitD) x1

The most beautiful Magic: the Gathering cards

Now that I've returned to Magic, I want to take a moment to talk about the cards. Especially in an era of digital entertainment, part of the appeal of any card game is having the actual physical cards to handle, shuffle and look at. With Magic, this is what my high school history teacher would have called a double-barreled sword. On the one hand, I have to be honest: in terms of overall looks and design, getting back to Magic has strongly reminded me of how well-designed the cards of the Lord of the Rings living card game are. They are just lovely in a way that I think Magic cards have never been. But what Magic has going for it is sheer scale. With over 15 000 different cards, several with multiple versions, there's a huge library of cards to discover and rediscover, and whole boatloads of art. Some of it is, frankly, incredibly good.

To start with, here are some of our favorite contemporary(ish) Magic cards. We're great fans of Magali Villeneuve from her work on the Lord of the Rings card game; Arwen and Éowyn are staples of our decks and simply gorgeous cards. She's been doing more work for Magic lately, like the spectacular Wildfire Eternal for Hour of Devastation:

Her women are on another level altogether, though; Dulcet Sirens and Scrapper Champion are particular favorites of mine, but the best of the lot is surely Titania, Protector of Argoth.

Another fantastic current artist is Cynthia Sheppard, whose Shadow Alley Denizen is simply beautiful.

Dark Salvation is also a favorite of mine.

Mike Lim aka Daarken is another prominent exponent of these darker themes, with lovely cards like Shipwreck Singer and Bloodhusk Ritualist:

Looking at these images, it might not be entirely unfair to guess that he's a bit of a Luis Royo fan. That's okay, though, so are we. Here's a Barony Vampire:

For whatever reason, vampires seem to get some of the best art, but so do their opposite numbers, so to speak; as a theologian I'd be remiss if I didn't post at least one angel, so here's Avacyn, the Purifier by James Ryman.

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The above, I think, are fair examples of some of the best of the current line of Magic cards: almost hyperrealistic contemporary fantasy art of fairly uniform quality. Of course, this wasn't always the case. In older Magic sets, the quality and nature of the art varied wildly. You could get comic book art or an impressionist painting; it might be brilliant, and it might be awful. This is where you find the ugliest cards, but in my opinion, also the most beautiful. Rather than giving you a practically photorealistic depiction of what the card was supposed to represent, the older art often left you with a lot more room for imagination.

I talked about my enduring love for lands in my last post on Magic, and I think this is why I'm so fond of them. There are lots of great examples, but one that particularly stuck with me was Academy Ruins by Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai.

There are lots of other lands I could mention, like Brian Snoddy's take on Urza's Power Plant, John Avon's Lantern-lit Graveyard and Submerged Boneyard by Chris Childs, and many others. Of the two-color lands that are a prominent feature of Magic Duels, I think my favorite is Highland Lake, by Florian de Gesincourt.

While I think these lands are very beautiful, none of them really stop me in my tracks. For that, we have to go back all the way to Urza's Saga, which came out in the fall of 1998, when I was starting high school. It included what I genuinely think is one of the most beautiful and evocative cards of all time, Lingering Mirage by Jerry Tiritilli.

This card has everything for me: the boat, the dramatic swell of the ocean and the wonderful range of blues in the water, from the greenish water in the distance to the dramatic dark blue in the foreground. The massively exaggerated curve of the horizon gives the picture an air of unreality, reminding you that this isn't just a painting of a boat, but a Magic card. And it really is a painting printed onto a collectible card.

Of course, this isn't a feature restricted to older cards: one of the most beautiful Magic cards ever, Seek the Wilds by Anna Steinbauer, is from the Battle for Zendikar block.

This is where my bias in favor of the older cards really shows up, though. I think Seek the Wilds is a fantastic card with wonderful art. But compared to some of the older art like Lingering Mirage, Seek the Wilds leaves less room for the imagination. It feels, perhaps paradoxically, like a more direct representation of its subject than the older, more organic images. Lingering Mirage invites me to stop and look at it closely and think about it. Seek the Wilds is just a really cool picture.

While we're on the subject of old cards, by the way, I do have to mention a card that may not be the most beautiful piece of art you'll ever see, but is by far the most kickass depiction of a badger ever: Rysorian Badger by Heather Hudson.

That is literally a badger playing a drum solo on someone's skull with their bones. You just don't get art that awesome any more. Heather Hudson also did the art for Lonely Sandbar, an amazingly beautiful card which returns us to our nautical theme.

I make no apologies for featuring ships and the sea so prominently here; having grown up by the seaside, I love them, but I also genuinely feel that for whatever reason, disproportionately many of the most beautiful Magic cards I've ever seen have featured both. A case in point is what I'd nominate as the second-most beautiful card in all of Magic: Exploration, by Brian Snoddy.

One of the particular charms of Magic has always been that it isn't tied to a particular setting. Not only does this mean that designers have a very free hand in inventing new settings and themes, but also that cards don't necessarily have to be in any way tied to any of them. They can even represent completely abstract concepts, like Exploration does. Here the combination of the title and image, but also just the image alone, suggest a story, but they leave it to your imagination. In my opinion, that's what makes truly great card art.

Finally, it's time for what I believe is the most beautiful card ever created for Magic: the Gathering. All the way from Fifth Edition, it's Reef Pirates by Tom Wänerstrand.

Everything I said about Exploration is true here, and then some. The flavor text is also pretty good, and works with the image and title to give you the idea that this is a snapshot from a much bigger story that you're free to fill in on your own. But the art itself is simply wonderful. The sky is simply amazing, and a perfect contrast with the brilliant emerald water. And the sails! Look at the sails! For me, this card has everything, from story to craftsmanship.

So yeah, I still feel that the Lord of the Rings living card game has better quality cards in general. But when it comes to individual cards that make you stop and think and feel, you'll find them in Magic.

Let's Read Tolkien 26: In the House of Tom Bombadil

The four hobbits stepped over the wide stone threshold, and stood still, blinking.

Last time, the hobbits got lost in a forest and were nearly eaten by a tree, only to be rescued by what appears to be a wandering magical hippie. In case any young people are reading this, I want to make it very clear that the official position of this blog is that if you are in a forest and you meet a strange man singing his own name, do not go with him to his house. Because adventuring hobbits have approximately as little sense as adventuring dwarves, however, Frodo and company do exactly that.

Arriving at Tom's house, the hobbits meet Goldberry, the River-daughter, nowadays Mrs. Bombadil, who inspires Frodo to freestyle about her beauty. The exhausted hobbits get a chance to freshen up before enjoying a vegetarian meal with lots of singing, after which they and Tom retreat to what almost gets called a drawing-room for a little postprandial rest and chat. It's almost cute how Tom initially appears in the story as a bizarre magical hippie, only to lead the protagonists to such a gemütlich reception that it ends in armchairs with little footstools, and slippers. In the Hobbit, the decidedly modern and bourgeois Bilbo Baggins was contrasted to the archaic dwarves with great success, and the same device is used at times elsewhere in the Lord of the Rings, but here it's just odd.

That night, Frodo dreams of a white-haired figure pacing atop a dark tower, while Merry and Pippin have nightmares of their ordeal with Old Man Willow. Only the simple Sam doesn't get a dream, instead sleeping like a content log. In the morning, heavy rainclouds are rolling in, giving the hobbits license to spend the day at Tom's instead of moving on immediately. In a repeat visual from the previous chapter, they again find themselves on a hilltop that appears as an island in a sea of mist, soon to be replaced by a steady rain. If river-crossings represent a sort of symbolic transition for Tolkien, fog also plays a liminal role: the crossing of the Brandywine and the entry into the Old Forest were accomplished in a blanket of fog, and now fog and rain momentarily isolate Frodo and company from the forest around them.

In the strange world of Tom Bombadil, rain means it's Goldberry's washing-day, which in proper patriarchal fashion means that all the men in the house hide away from the work and loaf around telling stories. Tom tells the hobbits all about the Old Forest and its inhabitants. The woods are a remnant of the huge forests that once covered a far larger area, populated by trees that remember when they ruled and resent the two-legged usurpers. Willow-man is apparently their chief, dominating most of the forest. Tom tells the hobbits about the time when men came and built their little kingdoms, which fell into ruin and left only their haunted barrows behind. Having come this close to the present, he then talks about the very beginnings of time on Middle-earth, prompting Frodo to ask him who, exactly, he is. The only answer Tom has to that is his name, but he does venture some biographical information: "Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn."

After a whole day of story-telling, Goldberry serves supper, and after they've eaten, Goldberry sings for them. Apparently, being the daughter of the river is a pretty shit job. Afterwards, the men retreat for more conversation, this time Tom asking the hobbits all about the Shire and themselves, all of which they gladly tell him about. Tom even goes as far as to ask for the Ring, and Frodo amazes even himself by simply handing it over. Tom clowns around with the Ring for a bit, even putting it on and failing to turn invisible.

Eventually Frodo gets his Ring back, and he decides to test it. While Tom is busy telling a story about badgers, Frodo puts the Ring on and starts to sneak out of the room. Merry is shocked to find he's disappeared, proving that the Ring does still work, but Tom sees him and calls out. Frodo pretends he was just playing a joke, and the conversation next turns to the hobbits' journey. Tom advises them to head north, avoiding the Barrow-downs and the worst of the forest, and teaches them a song to sing so they can call him to their aid if they fuck up. "If", you're thinking. With that, the hobbits are off to bed for their last night in the house of Tom Bombadil.

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Who is Tom Bombadil? As much as I like Robert Foster's characterization of him as "a Maia gone native", this can't be squared with his own words in this chapter: "He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside." The Dark Lord here is not Sauron but his master of old, Morgoth, and the Valaquenta tells us that "Melkor too was there from the first". If we take Tom at his word, he was on Arda before the Valar ever descended on it. For those of you who like the fan theory that Tom is Eru, i.e. God, not only has Tolkien expressly denied this, but there's also Tom's reply to Frodo:

At last Frodo spoke:
"Did you hear me calling, Master, or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?"
Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. "Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear: I was busy singing. Just chance brought me there, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine [...]"

This is Tolkien's theology of luck again; simply put, nothing less than divine providence sent Tom to gather water-lilies just then. Note, however, that divine providence was no plan of Tom's, so Eru Ilúvatar he ain't. Because of the strong influence of Finnish on Tolkien's elvish, by the way, I keep thinking his creator god is female because of that -tar suffix. If only!

There's a good discussion in Shippey's Author of the Century on the idea of Tom Bombadil as a genius loci; in Tolkien's words, "the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside" (Letters, 19). In other words, Tom is a sort of avatar of the Old Forest, if not of a wider area. Shippey sees Tom's singing as an analogue to the Kalevala. I agree, but given that he's just mentioned the way Tom "catches" Goldberry, I'm surprised he doesn't mention the other striking similarity between Tom and Väinämöinen: their aquatic predation of women. To me, the mention of Tom catching Goldberry in the river immediately brought to mind Akseli Gallen-Kallela's striking triptych Aino (1891).

Väinämöinen is less succesful in his endeavours, as Aino drowns herself rather than be the wife of a dirty old man like him. Like countless other Finnish schoolchildren, I was exposed to the triptych at a tender age in the name of nationalism, and always found the spectacle of a beautiful nude woman escaping a senior citizen in a watercraft both visually compelling and disturbing in its evident lechery. While the otherwise earthy Bombadil doesn't seem to share Väinämöinen's proclivities in this direction, both of them are basically wizards who overcome their enemies with song, and have been around since the world was made.

By contrast, unlike Shippey and others I can't really see many similarities between Väinämöinen and Gandalf. To me, Gandalf has always been a clear Merlin figure, who occasionally takes a hand in the action but is mostly content to point the mythical king in the right direction. The only real connection between them is that both of them take a boat to the land of the dead when no longer needed, sparing Gandalf Merlin's fate (below: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Väinämöisen lähtö, 1906).

I've never thought of it in those terms before, but Tom Bombadil and Gandalf are basically desexualized versions of Väinämöinen and Merlin respectively. That's Tolkien for you!

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So in a sense, Bombadil is something like the insufferably rustic mascot of a country fair. But why is Tom Bombadil? What function does he serve in the story? Is the adventure of the Old Forest superfluous to the Lord of the Rings, easily and sensibly omitted in favor of more gripping stuff? Tolkien himself explained Tom in a couple of different ways in his letters, first as an "enigma" (Letters, 144):

And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).

Tolkien repeats his insistence that he doesn't do allegory, but later in the same letter, he takes up the subject of Bombadil again. Noting that "Tom Bombadil is not an important person - to the narrative", Tolkien explains his as a "comment" representing something he feels is "important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely".

I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control, but if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war.

Whew. I will never feel bad about the length of my sentences again. Just typing that out crashed my browser. But if we take this at face value, then the joke I started this post with is spot on: Tom Bombadil is a hippie before hippies. An urhippie! In fact, he seems to be an... allegory.

As many Tolkien fans know, he was very vocal in his opposition if any and all allegorical readings of his works. The best-known example is the angry denounciation of a parallel between the Lord of the Rings and the Second World War in the preface to the second edition. There's also a particularly excellent letter (229) in which Tolkien eviscerates the introduction to the infamous Swedish translation to the Lord of the Rings. The translator, incidentally, went on to claim that the Tolkien fandom is a Nazi occultist sex cabal, so that project seems to have gone well. One of the least silly presumptions quoted by Tolkien is the suggestion that Sauron represents Stalin. Tolkien rejects this, quite reasonably pointing out that "the situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution", which I think is true, and continuing: "Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought".

Given what he said about Bombadil in 144, though, is it? With reference to Tolkien's views on politics, which I discussed in connection with the first chapter, in letter 154 Tolkien refers to his conception of evil - the Machine - as "Sarumanism". So the ethical dilemma set out above, which is in a sense central to the whole work, could be phrased as Bombadil versus Saruman. Certainly no allegories here! I could quote innumerable examples from Letters, like 190, which escaped me earlier, where Tolkien directly states that the Shire is a parody of rural England. To say nothing of the way in which several aspects of Tolkien's mythos, from Eärendil to such slightly obscure things as the precise dating scheme of the Lord of the Rings, are directly intended to prefigure Christ, in the way Christians have wanted to see him prefigured in the Old Testament, or in the sense that the Tribunal Temple maintained that the so-called "good Daedra" anticipated the Tribunal. Is Tolkien's rejection of allegory inconsistent, then?

In the foreword to the second edition of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien draws a distinction between allegory and applicability: "the one [applicability] resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author". Intuitively, this makes sense, but what's the real difference? Tolkien consistently insisted that the Lord of the Rings is a Christian work. Surely this, if anything, is the purposed domination of the author, laying down the terms in which his text must be interpreted. In practice, though, I at least managed to read not only the Lord of the Rings but the rest of Tolkien's legendarium as well, and come away with no notion whatsoever of a sensus spiritualis. Intent is not magic; the plans and purposes of the author aren't recorded into his words. There is only the text and the reader. On its own terms, Tolkien's distinction is false; applied to his work, it's a double standard that lets him both insist that he has no message (e.g. Letters, 208) and that he has a profoundly Catholic message (e.g. 142).

My feeling is that when Tolkien decries allegory, what he means is a kind of reductionism. This is just my hypothesis, but to Tolkien, allegory in the negative seems to be the idea that the allegory is just a simple substitution: Eärendil is Jesus, Tom Bombadil is pacifism, the Ring is nuclear weapons. In a scheme like this, there would be no reason for the Lord of the Rings to exist, since it would just be a retelling of the Second World War, but with orcs instead of Germans. I'm reminded of Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, which fell flat because the story was topical and powerful as an allegory, but made no sense whatsoever on its own terms.

If this is what Tolkien means by allegory in the negative sense, then what he's saying makes sense. The difference between allegory and applicability would be that in allegory, there is one obvious and intended interpretation; to take a completely random and entirely unrelated example, Aslan is Jesus. Applicability, on the other hand, suggests several references instead of trying to dictate a single one. In the Silmarillion, Eärendil in many ways suggests Jesus: he's part human and part divine, he bridges the gulf between time and eternity, and he achieves a reconciliation between the gods and their creations. However, in certain crucial ways, Eärendil is not Jesus. For starters, he's not sent down from heaven but makes his way up from earth, which would be a Gnostic heresy if he was just intended to be a word-substitution for Jesus. But this is the point: he's not. Saying "Eärendil is Jesus" would give someone unacquainted with Tolkien a completely misleading impression of the character. Eärendil is Jesus, but he's also more than that. In general, Tolkien's characters and settings are very rarely direct, reducible analogies. Theologically, Eärendil anticipates Jesus, but is a distinct character; in many ways, he's also St. Brendan the Navigator, and in others, purely a Tolkien creation. In this sense, Tolkien's rejection of allegory isn't necessarily dishonest, just poorly phrased.

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To return to the chapter at hand, in letter 153, Tolkien presents another allegory for Bombadil: science. "He is then an 'allegory', or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are 'other' and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with 'doing' anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture."

So here we are, then: according to the author, Tom Bombadil is an embodied spirit of the English countryside, an enigma, an analogy for pacifism, and science. Which is it?

In keeping with my interpretation of Tolkien's attitude to allegory, the answer is all of them, and then some. Like Eärendil, Bombadil is an older creation of Tolkien: "In historical fact I put him in because I had already 'invented' him (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine), and wanted an 'adventure' along the way" (Letters, 153). The story about badgers is a reference to this previous appearance. So one answer to why Tom Bombadil is in the story is simple: because something had to happen between Buckland and Bree, and Tolkien had a character ready. Anyone who's ever run a role-playing game will recognize this! As for being an analogy of this or that, I think the crucial point here is that Tolkien seems to have attached quite a number of ideas to Bombadil, from Berkshire to science and pacifism. None of them are the one correct answer to the who and why of Tom Bombadil. At the end of the day, I think Tolkien's simplest answer is the best: Tom Bombadil is in the story so that the hobbits can have an adventure on their own before they get fully caught up in the greater drama of the Ring. In that sense, there's no particular reason why the adventure of the Old Forest should include Bombadil at all; it could easily have been something completely different.

Personally, though, I like the Old Forest and old Tom, and I do think they have a part to play in the Lord of the Rings beyond providing the hobbits with an adventure. To quote again from letter 153:

But I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out. [...] Also T.B. exhibits another point in his attitude to the Ring, and its failure to affect him. You must concentrate on some part, probably relatively small, of the World (Universe), whether to tell a tale, however long, or to learn anything however fundamental - and therefore much will from that 'point of view' be left out, distorted on the circumference, or seem a discordant oddity. The power of the Ring over all concerned, even the Wizards or Emissaries, is not a delusion - but it is not the whole picture, even of the state and content of that part of the Universe.

Of all the interpretations Tolkien gives in his letters of Bombadil, this is the only one that resonates with me. It's characters like Tom who are such an integral part of why Tolkien's world-building is so succesful. Bombadil is important precisely because he doesn't, in the brutally mechanistic language of script-writers, "advance the plot". Instead, he builds the world of Middle-earth. Bombadil is a reminder that Sauron and the Ring aren't the only things that matter in Middle-earth. From Bombadil's perspective, even Sauron is an interloper; an ephemeral figure in the long tale of the hills and forests. Bombadil is, in a way, a parallel figure to Beorn in the Hobbit: both are singular, almost atavistic characters living out in the sticks who offer the protagonists a vegetarian meal. Both of them could be said to represent an older world than that of the main story.

This, to me, is the fundamental "message" of the adventure of the Old Forest, and of Bombadil. He gives the story a wider alternative context; he makes the world in which it's set have a life of its own. Willow-man isn't an agent of Sauron put there to capture the Ring, nor is Bombadil a proxy of Gandalf sent to look after them. In a sense, the hobbits have stumbled out of their story into someone else's, and a thing of incalculable importance and deadly peril in theirs is an amusing bauble in the other. So while I completely understand why Tom and the Old Forest may seem pointless and ridiculous to many people, to me, the whole book would be much poorer without them.

**

One final question: what are we to make of the Ring having no effect on Bombadil? First, one misconception has to be dismissed: the Ring is not, strictly speaking, a ring of invisibility. It made the hobbits who wore it invisible, and judging from Gandalf's version of the story in the second chapter, Isildur also. But these ringbearers were all ordinary mortals. Certainly the Ring didn't make Sauron invisible! Nor was invisibility the power that Gandalf feared would corrupt him. The Ring is far more powerful than that. So the simple fact that Bombadil doesn't become invisible might not be significant at all.

It's Tom's attitude to the Ring that makes all the difference. He treats the Ring playfully, as an amusing bauble but nothing more. It seems to have no power over him whatsoever. The various analogies of Bombadil all suggest different reasons for this. If Tom represents pure science, a curiosity in things as themselves, then the Ring is just another object of study. If he represents a pacifism that renounces power, then power holds no temptation for him. However, there's also a theological interpretation. In Tolkien's theology, the Ring is the ultimate Machine, produced by the Fall as an attempt to conquer death. Bearing in mind what Bombadil said about remembering the night when it was fearless, i.e. before Morgoth, should we see Tom as a representative of nature before the Fall? Is he, in fact, unfallen? This would explain why he has no interest in the Ring: it's simply completely foreign to him, an irrelevant artifact of another world. In this case, his benign playfulness and unproblematic relationship with nature would represent nothing less than Paradise. Tom would be a sort of counterpart and antithesis of the Lilith of Jewish folklore. This is downright suspicious if not damn near heretical from a dogmatically Christian standpoint, but applying Tolkien's theological scheme here does suggest it, at least to me.

**

That ended up being a bit longer than I expected! I should say that although a full chapter of a woodland eccentric telling stories doesn't exactly sound gripping, this is a far better chapter than I remembered. Moving on, stop me if you've heard this one before, but next time, the hobbits leave their place of refuge and set off across the Old Forest, only to end up in desperate trouble, crying out for some mysterious inhabitant of the enchanted wood to rescue them.

LotR LCG: The mines of Moria

There must have been a mighty crowd of dwarves here at one time and every one of them busier than badgers for five hundred years to make all this, and most in hard rock too!
- Sam Gamgee, in The Fellowship of the Ring

The first deluxe expansion released for the Lord of the Rings living card game was Khazad-dûm, and since we not only kind of like the idea of going through these in roughly chronological order but I also wanted Arwen in my deck, it was also the first deluxe expansion we bought. Moria! The dream of every dwarf and Minecraft player! Deep, dark mines long abandoned by dwarves, now infested with orcs and trolls and haunted by a Balrog. Wait, why did we buy this expansion again?

Into the Pit - DL 5

The first quest sees our heroes sent to Moria to make contact with Balin's lost dwarven colony. In a nice touch, we're entering the Mines from the opposite direction as the Fellowship of the Ring did, so the quest starts with East-gate as the active location. This comes with the special condition that enemies can't engage you nor you them, which can mean that as soon as you clear the gate, you get swarmed by a horde of goblins - or that the threat in the staging area gets so high that you never even clear the first location. If you do, then it's on to the First Hall and across the Bridge of Khazad-dûm with you!

There are lots of awful locations in Moria (*cough*Zigil Mineshaft*cough*), and as an additional interesting wrinkle, you're given a Cave Torch to help clear them.

In practice, the Cave Torch adds an element of randomness: if you're unlucky, using it will summon up a horde of enemies; if you're obscenely lucky, you'll be discarding horrible encounter cards while placing progress on locations. The mechanic of taking bigger risks for more progress is thematically excellent, but I'm not sure I'm overly fond of the wide range of randomness that comes with it.

The scenario itself is quite tough, with three very different quest stages. You need to move quite quickly to avoid being overwhelmed by locations with nasty threat-increasing synergies, and, of course, hella goblins. Our first three-handed swing at this ended in massive location lock. I've since beaten it both solo and with another player running a Leadership/Lore deck, with Northern Tracker unsurprisingly playing a key role.

My first two-handed attempt together with my partner's revamped Tactics deck was a pretty intense emotional rollercoaster. First, of course, we struggled mightily to even get past East-gate. This really is the only quest I've seen where it's perfectly possible to fail to clear the first location! We were lucky to get Dreadful Gap at this point, though, sparing us from ever having to travel to it. Things looked a bit grim until Gandalf stopped by to nuke the Patrol Leader in the staging area, and I got a Northern Tracker into play. We were also quite lucky with our Cave Torch use, getting no extra enemies in play. Still, by the time we raised our threat to travel to the First Hall, with no progress on the quest card yet, it was high enough for Goblin Scouts to engage both of us. I'd also lost one of my two Galadhrim's Greetings to a Fouled Well earlier, which didn't make our lives much easier.

Eventually we cleared First Hall as well, and Northern Tracker saw to Bridge of Khazad-dûm; we were really inside Moria now! I'd played a copy of Elrond's Counsel on myself and a Galadhrim's Greeting on my partner, but both our threats were already well over 40 by the time we hit the second quest phase. To be honest, I didn't think we had a chance in hell. We were both fighting several goblins at this point, giving me ample reason to be grateful for both Arwen's defence boost and A Burning Brand. In order to buy at least a little time, and because we needed so many of our characters to fight, I played Gather Information: completing it got me Dwarven Tomb, which I used to retrieve a Galadhrim's Greeting, and my partner Secret Vigil. They helped!

We managed to thin out the goblins, both got a much-needed wizard intervention to lower our threats, and made liberal use of our torch to blast locations from the staging area. I also started getting a sizeable questing force into play, with our torch luckily discarding several treacheries that would have wiped them out. Where I'd be without West Road Traveller, I don't know. Finally we had amassed enough questing and dispatched all the goblins, so that when Legolas killed the last Patrol Leader standing, we fulfilled both victory conditions for the second quest phase simultaneously! But at grave cost: Boromir fell in battle against the orc horde.

Despite our heavy loss, we moved on to the last stage, where there was nothing left to do except quest like hell, and against all odds, we made it! This was one of the most harrowing experiences I've ever had in the game; at one point, my threat was 48 at the end of the turn, meaning a single treachery in the previous staging would've knocked me out. On the one hand, we were lucky: our cave torch use mostly discarded treacheries rather than summoning enemies, and we were able to avoid some of the nastiest shadow effects. Hell, even the Patrol Leaders took damage almost every time. On the other hand, if so much as a single Warden of Healing or Hasty Stroke had showed up in my hand, Boromir would have made it.

So it could have gone better, but it could also have gone much worse. This is what I mean by the cave torch introducing a wider range of randomness: if we'd been hitting more enemies when discarding encounter cards for it, those treacheries would also have been hitting us in staging.

This is a pretty good quest, though. The combination of location lock and hordes of goblins can destroy you in the beginning, if you even manage to get past East-gate, and the last stage of the quest has a nice little twist to it as well. The whole experience is also thematically strong: there's a definite feeling of despair at the horribly creepy underground locations and the constant threat of orcs. After the hopelessness of East-gate, you'll feel lucky to have gotten in, only to begin to suspect you're never going to get out again...

**

The Seventh Level - DL 3

Here's a real mystery for the ages: as far as I know, this is the only quest in the entire game with a difficulty level between 1 and 4. Why that is, I have no idea. Admittedly this is a fairly straightforward quest, but there are even more goblins, they're tougher and they surge; you have to quest pretty hard and fight them off. My initial solo attempts ended in complete failure, so if there is some point of view from which this is easier than Hunt for Gollum and considerably easier than Dead Marshes - or indeed Into the Pit - I don't share it.

Having barely managed to get into Moria in the previous scenario, we recruited a third player to run a Leadership deck (Core Aragorn, Théodred, Prince Imrahil), which you'll find at the end of this post, and made a three-handed attempt at The Seventh Level. Suddenly all those Goblin Swordsmen don't seem so tough any more, and I can kind of see where the difficulty level of 3 comes from. To put it simply, if you can handle a constant stream of goblins, this quest is easy. If not, then you can't beat it. It's almost like the exact opposite of Emyn Muil. With the Leadership and Tactics decks smashing goblins left and right, the quest was a total walkover.

In fact, it was so easy we decided to move on to the last quest in the expansion. I mean, how hard can it be?

**

Flight from Moria - DL 7

Four hours and one Balrog later...

We got a pretty good notion of what we were in for when revealing encounter cards for the scenario setup. We drew Fouled Well, and our Leadership player decided he liked his opening hand so much he was going to refuse to discard anything. So Fouled Well surges into Massing in the Deep, which raises our threats and reveals three more cards, one of which is Cave In, which has no progress to remove, so it surges... You get the idea.

So we kicked off the quest with a pile of locations and a horde of goblins in the staging area, not to mention, well, Durin's Bane. I quite like the way they've depicted the Balrog in this quest: we never fight it directly, but are instead trying to run away from it as fast as we possibly can, while its threat constantly grows. It's an excellent mechanic that leads to a truly nail-biting quest.

There was nothing to do except get down to clearing the staging area and getting some progress on the quest. While we were still more or less busy getting some of the initial cards sorted, poor Boromir was defending an attack from a Goblin Swordsman, who drew Chance Encounter as its shadow card; since my partner was the first player, and Boromir was already wounded, we lost our first hero. It didn't get much easier from there.

I also need to remember to write this one down for the history books: I used West Road Traveller's Response! We drew Dreadful Gap, which immediately became our active location. With our Leadership deck amassing its army of allies, we'd never manage to clear that damn thing ever - until my West Road Traveller swapped it for Plundered Armoury.

Somehow or other, we made it to the second quest stage, down to eight heroes. The second stage is quite clever as well: instead of a single quest card, there's a quest deck, consisting of a whole bunch of second quest stages, all with identical 2a sides, and they only get flipped over to reveal the business side when staging begins, so even as you're committing characters to the quest, you don't know which quest it is! Only when you find one of the quest cards that represents a way out can you win the scenario.

By this time, treacheries like Undisturbed Bones and Dark and Dreadful were taking a steady toll on our allies, including the only Warden of Healing I'd managed to draw. Galadhrim's Greetings, Secret Vigils and Double Back were barely keeping our threat manageable as the looming shadow in the darkness grew and grew...

We struggled through several quest stages looking for an exit, to no avail: we piled up quest stages and even a Great Cave Troll in the victory display, but all we seemed to be able to do was raise the Balrog's threat. Both Thalin and Eleanor were lost to A Foe Beyond, leaving us with six heroes standing. My partner soldiered on with just Legolas and Radagast, but when we finally reached a quest stage that promised us an exit and set Prince Imrahil to digging our way out, a horrifying combo of several enemies and Orc Drummer put over thirty threat in the staging area, which knocked my partner's threat well over 50. The rest of us managed to hang on for a few more harrowing turns while we dug our way out, barely escaping with a horde of orcs at our heels.

So we won! But what a victory. Nine heroes went into Moria, five came out. One more setback would almost certainly have destroyed us completely. This really is one hell of a quest: finishing it took hours, and we were physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end. But it was worth it. I especially like the way in which the quest ramps up the difficulty constantly, rather than by throwing huge enemies with massive stats and card immunities at you. Even when we draw a truly dismal initial staging, we still had a chance to beat this, unlike something like Return to Mirkwood where drawing a gigantic spider, or two, or two and a Hill Troll in the first couple of turns is pretty much the literal equivalent of revealing an encounter card that says "You lose". Top-notch work, this, and absolutely brilliant in terms of theme. The whole expansion is thematically strong, and Flight from Moria is especially awesome. This epic three-player saga is one I doubt any of us will soon forget.

**

So, why did we buy this expansion? Well, like I said, so I could get Arwen in my Amazon deck. We got that, but what we also ended up with is an excellent deluxe expansion. I'll admit I'm biased: the chapters in Moria in the Lord of the Rings have always been among my favorites, so I'm kind of a sucker for this one. But it really does deliver. I love the fact that the first quest in the Khazad-dûm expansion is a hopelessly desperate effort to get into Moria, and the last quest is a far more hopeless and desperate effort to get out again. To me, the quests and encounter decks in this expansion do a great job of conveying the feel of Tolkien's Moria. The second quest is quite uninspired and either frustratingly overwhelming or trivially easy, but Into the Pit is excellent, and to date, Flight from Moria is my best experience playing this game. Even if you don't care for the dwarf-themed player cards at all, this is worth buying for the quests alone, especially if you get to play multiplayer.

**

I'm serious about the player cards, by the way. Literally every one of them in the damn thing has something to do with dwarves. I'm not complaining; in fact, I think I'd complain if Khazad-dûm cards weren't heavily dwarf-themed! But as it happens, I don't now have, nor do I think I've ever had, a single card from this expansion in my deck. Back in the core set days, I did use some dwarf cards, and I have nothing against them, but since Arwen is a pretty key ally in my Amazon theme, I feel it'd be thematically better to not mix elves and dwarves in the same deck. For what it's worth, my notion of some kind of fluff explanation for my deck is that Arwen has come south via Lórien, bringing a contingent of elves and Dúnedain with her, who've met up with Éowyn and Eleanor's Rohan-Gondor bunch. To me, dwarves don't fit in here. That's why I skipped doing any card spotlights, too: we're not using any!

In cards we do use, we continued our foray into the Angmar cycle with Escape from Mount Gram, netting the excellent Spirit side quest Double Back. I wish I could include more of the victory display trickery from that expansion in my deck, but I can't think of much anything I'd be prepared to part with to make room for them. I really do have to build that Rossiel deck!

After my latest experiences both solo and in multiplayer, I also decided to dispense with Gléowine's services. The minstrel of Rohan's been around since the very beginning, but to be honest, I've kept finding better uses for my Lore resources. If I regularly pick the same card to discard to Éowyn's ability or Protector of Lorien or whatever, I think that's a sign to consider leaving it out altogether. This may be a mistake based on getting lucky in drawing Unexpected Courage early in several games and attaching it to Beravor to maximize her card draw; I'll have to see how this works out! With Gléowine gone, I added a copy of Double Back.

The biggest change to our card pool during our Moria adventures was my partner's acquisition of a second core set. This put me in a bit of a quandary: I'm actually quite happy with my deck right now, but at the same time I'm painfully aware that the optimal solution is to include three copies of non-unique cards. Since we're not playing the game competitively (hell, we never even keep score!), there's no reason in the world why I should care about this, but there it is: I do. Given that I've got Eleanor and A Burning Brand, and despite my experiences in Moria just now (!), I'm going to take a chance and stick with only two copies of Test of Will and Hasty Stroke for now. I instead added a third Northern Tracker, a second copy of Unexpected Courage, Henamarth and Dwarven Tomb, and a third Galadhrim's Greeting. To make room, I dropped both copies of Westfold Horse-breaker, Radagast's Cunning and Secret Paths. None of these cards had seen much use lately, even though both Radagast's Cunning and Secret Paths can be very powerful at the right moment. That's the thing with deckbuilding; only rarely will a card be so obviously terrible that you can leave it out of your deck with no compunctions. I like this! I also swapped one copy of Over Hill and Under Hill Gandalf for the core set Gandalf.

We also qualified for a discount at our retailer, having collectively spent quite a bit on boardgames and this LCG, and used that to grab a copy of On the Doorstep. I have high hopes we'll finish our Hobbit saga by the time my Let's Read project is done!

For now, here's the current incarnation of my Amazons:

The Amazons

52 cards: 29 Spirit, 18 Lore, 5 neutral; 3 heroes, 23 allies, 9 attachments, 14 events, 3 side quests

Éowyn
Eleanor
Beravor

Allies: 23 (12/8/3)
Elfhelm (TDM) x2
Northern Tracker x3
Arwen Undómiel (TWitW) x2
Escort from Edoras (AJtR) x2
West Road Traveller (RtM) x3
Haldir of Lórien (AJtR)
Mirkwood Runner (RtM) x2
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Henamarth Riversong x2
Gandalf (Core) x2
Gandalf (OHaUH)

Attachments: 9 (2/6/1)
Unexpected Courage x2
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Athelas (TLR) x2
Protector of Lórien x2
Song of Wisdom (CatC)

Events: 14 (12/2)
The Galadhrim's Greeting x3
A Test of Will x2
Dwarven Tomb x2
Hasty Stroke x2
Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3
Infighting (AJtR) x2

Side quests: 3 (1/1/1)
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)
Gather Information (TLR)

Solo sideboard:
swap one Warden of Healing (TLD) for Resourceful (TWitW)
swap Gather Information (TLR) for Will of the West
swap Infighting (AJtR) x2 for Forest Snare x2

**

Here's my partner's Tactics deck:

Team Boromir

53 cards; 49 Tactics, 4 Neutral; 3 heroes, 22 allies, 14 events, 13 attachments, 1 side quest

Boromir (TDM)
Legolas
Thalin

Allies: 22 (18/4)
Beorn
Descendant of Thorondor (THoEM) x2
Eagles of the Misty Mountains (RtM) x3
Bofur (OHaUH) x2
Honour Guard (TWoE) x2
Winged Guardian (THfG) x3
Vassal of the Windlord (TDM) x3
Dúnedain Hunter (TLR) x2
Gandalf (Core) x3
Radagast (AJtR)

Events: 14
Feint x3
Quick Strike x2
Goblin-Cleaver (OHaUH) x3
Foe-Hammer (OHaUH) x3
The Eagles are Coming! (THfG) x3

Attachments: 13
Support of the Eagles (RtM) x2
Dwarven Axe x2
Blade of Gondolin x3
Horn of Gondor x2
Secret Vigil (TLR) x2
Black Arrow (OtD)

Side quests: 1
Gather Information (TLR)

**

And finally, this is the Leadership deck we ran the last two quests with:

59 cards; 53 Leadership, 6 neutral; 3 heroes, 25 allies, 11 attachments, 19 events, 1 side quest

Aragorn (Core)
Théodred
Prince Imrahil (AJtR)

Allies: 25 (19/6)
Erestor (TLD) x2
Faramir x2
Ingold (TWoE) x2
Longbeard Orc Slayer x2
Dúnedain Watcher (TDM) x3
Silverlode Archer x2
Veteran of Osgiliath (EfMG) x3
Snowbourn Scout x3
Gandalf (Core) x3
Ranger of Cardolan (TWoE) x3

Attachments: 11
Sword that was Broken (TWitW) x2
Celebrían's Stone x2
Dúnedain Cache (TDM) x2
Steward of Gondor x2
Dúnedain Warning (CatC) x3

Events: 19
Grim Resolve x2
Dawn Take You All (RtM) x2
For Gondor! x2
Campfire Tales (THfG) x2
Second Breakfast (CatC) x2
Sneak Attack x3
Valiant Sacrifice x2
A Very Good Tale (OHaUH) x2
Parting Gifts (AJtR) x2

Side quests: 1
Gather Information (TLR)