Pulled a win in Contest of Champions

I played a warmup game with Wyn today - the Errand vs. a Dwarven horde list with Balin (no axe), a Dwarf Captain with shield, and 46 other dwarves, including a few Iron Guard and a scattering of Khazad Guard. The scenario was Contest of Champions, Gandalf vs. Balin. The board was the old pre-molded Fellowship of the Ring demo board that GW gave to stores carrying the very first game - no cover, but a few rocky patches.

Things started rough - I killed two dwarves with archery, but Wyn in turn gunned down Ecthelion on TURN 1!!! Remember, always put heroes a couple ranks back, always put heroes a couple ranks back... I caught up quickly once Gandalf was within Blast range, racking up two kills with the wizard in short order. As the lines closed, I also managed to kill a couple more dwarves with archery, picking on the D6 archers. I found the numbers starting to equal out, and more of my troops were in the fight than his due to spear support. The turn the lines hit, I decided to use Gandalf to Immobilize Balin - I threw 1 die and got lucky with a 6! Wyn chose not to resist it and Balin took a little break.

The game fell into the lines crashing into each other, with both sides suffering occasional casualties, but nothing amazing. Balin shook off the Immobilize and won a Heroic Fight to kill off one of my Rangers and Gandalf with lots of support was shoved back by a shielding dwarf. We were running out of time, so we decided to just skip everyone else and fight out the champions' combats. Wyn played for the win, with Balin calling a heroic combat with his last point of might against two spear supported rangers and Gandalf blowing his last point of might to bump the die roll of a Blast up to a wound, thus scoring his third kill. Alas, Balin had an attack of the rubber axe syndrome, getting defeated by the rangers, and Galdalf failed to slice up his opponent, so the game ended 3-1 in Gandalf's favor.

Main lesson here: Never, EVER put your hero in the front rank of an advance! Being able to be picked out by bowfire SUCKS. Also: Gandalf is the bomb. Boom.