The Black Gates of Mordor

Alright, I promised I would go through the final amazing mission of BFME (the good campaign) and here it is.

The mission starts you out with all of your troops amassed before the gates, like they are in the movie. The first thing I did was to organize my army and set the different heroes and groups to hotkeys. The cavalry I moved to the back, because if left alone the cavalry often charge stupidly into oncoming pikemen and get themselves spitted. They were kind of like my reserves, ready to come riding in to crush infantry if the others needed help (which I did occasionally, see this pic for a visual).

Then I put my heroes in the front to blunt the assaults, with Gandalf smack dab at the head so his magic could be most useful. Behind them were my infantry, with the 2 divisions of archers on either side of them to fire in on the center. It was a good setup, and I recommend anyone doing this mission to try it as well.

While I was still organizing my men the first wave came charging out of the gates. These were weak orcs, meant more to distract me in my organization than to stop me. My archers and heroes slew them easily without my needing to issue any orders.

But what followed was a bit tougher: a horde of massive trolls, among them the feared, armored battle trolls. This second wave had the potential to mess up a lot of my weaker troops, so I had to head it off before it could reach my normal troops. Gandalf's amazing powers did the trick pretty well, especially his Word of Power, which sent trolls flying in every direction with its massive blast radius.

For the third wave, the enemy decided to up the difficulty even further, by sending in its Haradrim army, complete with a half-dozen of the formidable Mumakil beasts. I should have saved my Word of Power, it could have reduced the heavy toll I took from this group.

But through a combination of counter-measures I managed to take down the monsters before they could completely ravage my infantry ranks. The storm of arrows from archers and heroes like Legolas did a lot of the work. Gandalf also was important, using his beam of light and lightning attacks to take down the beasts. And finally, I used Aragorn's coolest ability, summoning a small army of the dead to re-enact the scene from Return of the King. With these combined attacks, the Mumakil were dead within a few minutes.

Just as the last of the Mumakil went down, my greatest weapon became available. I summoned my strongest ally units, the full Army of the Dead. They washed over the trolls and orcs like they were made of paper, swarming with their fluid ghostish movements. After clearing every single unit on screen, I sent them up through the Gates themselves, into the far corner of the screen where the enemy was coming from. There they wiped out the enemies before they could even appear fully on the screen. But eventually their time ran out and they dissapated, allowing the enemy to regroup for the fourth and final assault.

First came the Nazgul, flying ominously through the skies as they prepared to swoop down and maul my troops. Four of them came at once, enough to cripple any unprepared army. But before they could even attack, I had Gandalf use his long range magical beam attack to destroy one of them. My archers unleashed a storm upon the others, and faster than I could have hoped the ariel demons were eliminated.

On the tails of the Nazgul came the last constant stream of enemies, trying to destroy me before time ran out and Frodo reached Mount Doom (a clock showed me how much longer I had to hold on, to distract Sauron while Frodo finished the deed). I repelled this group with my units and heroes, all of them fighting bravely as the endless foe started to pile up amongst them. When it seemed like my troops would be completely overun, Gandalf's Word of Power was finally recharged. I activated it, causing the massive blew glow and explosion that killed almost everything on screen (see the pics for the awesome effects of this super-weapon).

The streams of enemies kept coming of course, but Gandalf's attack had bought me the breathing room my army needed, and had bought me enough time for more of my summoned allies to be ready.

And so, as the clock chimed off its final seconds, I threw all of my summoned allies against the long orc column. Rohan cavalry charged through them, Ents ran over them, and Gandalf sent out one last beacon of light. With all the hosts of Mordor poured out against me, Sauron had barely managed to dent my army. I was victorious, and Middle-earth was saved!

To reward my brilliantly executed campaign, I was given the status of "Total Victory" with my final score. Now that was a satisfying RTS campaign mode. Props to the guys from EA who made this masterpiece.

~ Lady ~