Thursday HOTT

Last night saw my first HOTT of 2025 and, indeed, my first HOTT for a while. Once again I was playing against Geoff, who used a Gondorian army. In the first game they were a load of spears, some shooters, a couple of knights and support from a pair of Eagle fliers.

I used my Wild Elves - six warband, a couple of magicians and a couple of shooters. Geoff defended.

The eagles came out boldly and fell foul of the Elven archers

Geoff switched them to the other flank where the elven magicians dealt with them instead.

Both lines looked a bit fragmented as Geoff closed on the Elves.

He quickly overwhelmed my left flank.

I attacked his spears in teh centre with my warband, but couldn't get the rolls to make that vital first kill. Warband are always a gamble in that respect.

One of my magicians was shot down by the Rangers of Ithilien.

Geoff closed in for the kill. On my left my general was looking vulnerable.

My magician general was overlapped and killed, giving Geoff a 12g-4 win.

So on to the next game. Geoff dropped the poorly performing eagles and added Gandalf as a magician. I swapped armies and went for Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo. This consisted of a hero general, four fliers, and airboat, a lurker, two warband and two riders. Geoff defended again.

The Hawkmen fliers were in a lump on my left. Not learning from the previous game I sent them straight into action with a vague plan of picking off some flank units before the rest of my army came up.

One of them got picked off my Gandalf but the others managed to mob an element of  knights, then draw them into bad going for a potential kill.

Unfortunately the knight fought well, and forced the flier opposing it to flee. I had to resort to the lurkers to finish the knight off and, in teh meantime, Gandalf took out another flier.

My main force was coming up on an enemy that was looking rather too well-entrenched for my liking.

Ithilien archers took out Prince Vultan. So that wasn't good.

I charged my meagre forces into the Gondor line.

On my right the Frigians managed to destroy more Gondorian knights.

But unable to make any headway in the centre, Flash was surrounded and, once again, I lost 12g-4

So two losses was not a great start to my HOTT playing year. We didn't have time for a third game; as the club meet started we had a (false) fire alarm and had had to evacuate the building, so we were late starting actual games.

Ruthless

With a set of gunfighters all ready to use Catherine and I used them in a game last night. Although the current plan at the wargames club is to use 'What A Cowboy', last night we had a got with 'Ruthless', a free two-page set of rules that are available HERE.

I threw down some terrain to break up movement and lines of sight. I do have a Western town, but it's in 15mm. However a couple of the buildings worked OK as small shacks. The scenario was a classic treasure hunt. Next to the four items towards the centre of the table are yellow counters. Each represents the place where a bag of gold might be hidden. A figure has to move adjacent to a counter and then spend an action to search it. On a D10 roll of 7+ it's the bag of gold. Otherwise it's a dummy. Once you find the gold it takes an action to dig it up, and then a side wins by getting it off their home edge. The other counters are considered to be dummies.

Distances in Ruthless are in inches. Because our table is a bit smaller than what I suspect is a viable playing area I scaled them down slightly by doubling them and converting them to cm.

Each of had a gang of three figures, two armed with a revolver each and one with a rifle. In Ruthless figures have a Toughness score, which affects their ability to react to adversity. Low numbers are best. we could assign Toughness values of 4, 5 and 6 to the figures.

I went with my Godless character pair of Martha and Webster, now both operating as Pinkertons. Martha had a Toughness of 4, and Webster 5. They were backed up by hired gun Gerard, with a Toughness of 6.

Catherine had the bad guys (and didn't deny it). Scar's gang consisted (left to right) of Susie (Toughness 4), Isabella (Toughness 6) and Scar himself (Toughness 5). 

In Ruthless both players get a hand of five playing cards, which are used to determine initiative at the start of a turn, but can also be spent to engage in fisticuffs or attempt to get a fast-draw jump on enemy gunfighters. Running out of cards during a turn can be bad (and, I suspect, if you have enough figures on a side, it's a real possibility if you opponent plays ... ruthlessly). When a side acts each of its figures gets two actions, with actions being such things as move or shoot. You can do a particular action more than once. Some cards give bonuses when played for initiative. An Ace or 4 allows unconscious characters to recover, for example, whilst a 7 allows one character to take three actions. So sometimes playing the highest card is not always the best idea.

I worked Martha round to the right. The plan was for her to try and cut off Scar's gang from their baseline in case they found the gold first. She ran into Scar and Susie (you can see her just behind the rock outcrop). Scar and Martha exchanged shots to no effect. At some point Susie popped out and fired, but Martha got the jump on her and sent her scurrying back and forced to recover from the fright.

It looked like it was going to be a short game. Isabella found the gold almost immediately. And Catherine was getting very lucky with initiative; I needed to beat her over the next couple of turns to stand a chance of catching Isabella before she got off the board. 

Webster had come on in the centre; he was my treasure-hunter. He got into an exchange of fire with Scar, and was forced to duck for cover.

I hadn't taken a picture of Gerard moving out to the left. With his rifle I thought he'd be perfect to cover the centre and take shots and any member of Scar's gang who was hunting for the gold. As Isabella ran for home, he fired a shot that caused a lucky hit, knocking her unconscious. The gold was up for grabs!

I took a gamble and ran Martha past Scar and Susie. If I could win initiative next turn I could keep going before they could react and maybe stood a chance of grabbing the gold.

I didn't win initiative. Scar shot Martha down, then went in with a knife to finish her off.

The only active figure I really had now was Gerard. He rushed towards the unconscious Isabella, firing a couple of shots at Susie as he did so.

Webster emerged from cover and lined up a shot on Susie who spun round ...

... and shot him, knocking him out.

So I really was down to just Gerard now. Scar and Susie closed in on him, guns blazing. He took a couple of minor wounds.

A view of the table as we entered what I thought would be the last turn.

Gerard grabbed the gold from the unconscious Isabella. Susie moved in and there was a brief brawl which saw Gerard injured but still fighting.

Limping Gerard moved for home. At that point Webster recovered consciousness, as did Isabella. The fight was still on! Gerard and Webster fired at Scar and Susie and caused both of them to go lily-livered and seek cover. Under certain circumstances you have to test against your Toughness. fail and you are forced to seek cover and stay there until you can Get Your Courage Up - this is an action that allow you to test against your Toughness again. Scar and Susie both failed tests against the odds.

Susie went for the cover of some scrub. She then fired a wild shot at Webster ... and killed him!

Gerard was slowly moving for home, hampered by a leg wound that meant he could only take one move action a turn. He was forced to duck into cover by a barrage of fire from the three members of Scar's gang, who were now all back in action and closing in.

He scored a light wound on Susie. If I could get initiative maybe an escape was still possible.

I didn't get initiative. Scar closed up and shot Gerard down.

So Catherine got the gold. And had all of her three gunfighters standing at the end, albeit with a few wounds here and there.

Gerard had a good go at winning it, and was definitely the hero of the hour. But I couldn't survive against Catherine's consistent good card draws; she played Kings for initiative three turns in a row. That means that she not only goes first but it also makes it harder to fire pre-emptive shots when targeted. To be fair had I survived one more turn both Scar and Susie would have emptied their guns, and I would have gained a turn's grace whilst they reloaded. And, had she closed for fisticuffs, I had a couple of cards that would have given me fight-winning low-blows.

Ruthless was an interesting set of rules and we'll probably give it another go. As with any set that's only two sides of A4 there are a few areas that are a bit fuzzy, and I can see a couple of small additions I'd make. For example, the Severe Wound knocks a character unconscious (and a second one kills them) but once they recover consciousness there's no lasting effect, which we found odd. All other wounds prevent you doing something once you take once. Weirdly it's not possible to kill someone outright with one shot. Also we weren't sure what happened if you failed a Toughness test whilst already lily-livered. We're inclined to adding a house rule that they stack, and each subsequent lily-livered makes it harder to recover. But the sequence of play was fun and forced some interesting decisions, especially with how and when to spend additional cards to do things.

Anyway, I got my new toys out on the table, and that's always good.

More Gunfighters

I finished another batch of gunfighters over the past week or so. Basically what I've done is options from one sprue from each of the Great Escape Games Gunfighters and Gunfighters II boxes. Each box contains two identical sprues, with five body and lower body/leg sections, ten heads and about twelve pairs of arms with various weapon options. So there's plenty  of variety (although some of the arms have distinctive sleeves so are intended to match with another specific arm on the sprue), and you can make five figures. 

This batch covered the last figure from Gunfighters - the kneeling one, as well as the remaining four figures from the Gunfighters II box, which are all women.

Here they are:

First up is the kneeling gunfighter. I hadn't done anyone with a rifle so far, so that's what I did with this one.

I also gave one of the female gunfighters a rifle (although it may be a hefty shotgun; I don't know enough about guns to be sure). She's photographed with a nicely-dressed lady with a silver-plated revolver.

On the left is a fairly standard gunfighter, with a couple of revolvers. She's the one figure in Gunfighters II not wearing a skirt/dress. The other one has a very posh skirt. I see her as some kind of outlaw widow and did her all in black. I also gave her a sawn-off shotgun. I'll add some standard shotguns into the next batch.

Here's the four female gunfighters together. They were all a lot of fun to paint.

With ten figures I now have enough for a game of some kind. If I can find some suitable animals (or dinosaurs) they'll even do for a game of Palaeo Diet.

New Year, New Gaslands

Our first club night of the year kicked off with Gaslands as the main game. As ever it was well subscribed so we took the step of running two games instead of one. Each game had four players. That way we could use 50 can teams and not worry too much about how many vehicles were in use; games with five or more players start to bog down if there's too many toys in play.

I ran one table whilst Caesar ran the other. Coincidentally we both rolled the Death Race scenario.

This time I kept the course small and simple - a start, two gates and then a run to the finish. It could have possibly used a final gate between the blue and brown containers, but that's something to consider for a future game.

The four teams were:

June - Two Slime vehicles - Both cars
Graeme - Two Warden vehicles - Both coffin cars
Bailey - Three Scarlett vehicles - He ran two drag-racers and a motorbike
Me - Five Warden vehicles - They were all  coffin cars each with nothing but a box of grenades and the will to explode.

Here's the start and the course.

Three of the teams had vehicles with rams, so the carnage started even before the first gate. Bailey got a drag-racer off to a great start, and Graeme went well too. Then June activated her first vehicle; a ram festooned lunatic that smashed its way through both Graeme and Bailey's cars to take a strong lead.

Back near the start I caused chaos by ramming my own vehicles in an attempt to destroy some of them whilst there were plenty of targets for the explosive collateral damage. Vehicle 1 did eventually explode, causing some damage, but not as much as I'd hoped.

Vehicles 4 and 5 hared off, lost control, crashed and exploded without damaging anything else.

But the mess near the start had thinned things out a lot. Graeme had lost both of his vehicles already and Bailey was about to lose his final drag-racer (out of shot to the right) to a complete lack of control. June's car, top left, was working its way around the course. I sent one of my cars, bottom middle, to intercept.

A crash and an explosion saw June's car badly damaged, but not destroyed.

I had now lost four of my five vehicles. The blue counters are the Audience Votes I now had.

At this stage there were only three vehicles left in play. In addition to my car there was June's (now making a run for the finish) and Bailey's respawned drag-racer.  The drag-racer had been destroyed by June's car, so he went after her in revenge.

In the dice-tray are the dice he rolled for one smash attack - around twenty of them. He had a ram, piles of hazards and Battlehammer and was going at full speed. The carnage was ... immense. Both his and June's vehicles simply ceased to exist.

This left my Vehicle 2 as the only survivor and, therefore, the winner of the race. That was lucky.

I like my explosive coffin-car team. It plays faster than you think as there are basically no perks or special rules to keep track off. Moves are simple and generally fairly obvious.

It should be noted that no-one fired a shot in our game; most people never got vehicles to the point where weapons were hot or, if they did, they never had any viable targets.

On the other table there were fewer vehicles; I think three of the four teams were one vehicle each. 

I ended with Caesar;'s Miyazaki car making a run to the finish whilst being shot to pieces by Stuart's Rutherford monster-truck. Caesar did a classic Gaslands finish, piling on hazards to flip over the finish line to destruction.

Two games worked well as a way of dealing with the large number of players we always get for Gaslands.I think I'd plan it for any game with six or more people. Five is kind of the worst number we can get; no sensible way to create two games, but pushing it for one game.