Saturday 23 June 2012

36AP HOTT

Although I've been playing HOTT regularly for more than 15 years now, until the other day I don't think I've ever played a game using 36AP. Rather than a 'big battle' it's really a 'normal' sized game, but with more elements.

The book doesn't have any special rules for how it should be set up and played; you only get one general, because you only have one full, 24AP multiple, and there's no additional PIPs. So strictly your PIPs have to stretch further, encouraging more reliance on group moves.

I know that one of the games played on Thursday used a slightly wider board - 3000p wide rather than 2400p. I played my game on a normal 2400p square board, and it didn't seem too cramped. In some ways it encouraged the use of a second line of troops - that great bugbear of many wargamers; a reserve. A large Hordes based army may find things tight, though, especially if they have a Stronghold too.

One thing we did do was allow a the general's element (or group) a free movement PIP, as with the CinC in a big battle.  This certainly helped me, with a Magician general, especially as my early PIP rolls were abysmal.

So, have you played 36AP HOTT? What changes or additions did you put in place?

4 comments:

  1. I've played it once. We used d6+1 for PIPs, but you still needed a natural six or natural one for things like heroes returning, dragons deploying or gods leaving. It took a lot longer, but maybe that was because I put a river across the board and my opponent was hesitant to cross it.

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  2. We played a lot of "big battles" using multiple commands with our "Great Hordes!" house rules. "Great Hordes" is basically HOTT with the addition of some "missing" troop types from DBA. We usually divided up our armies on game day into two points-balanced opposing forces and had at it. We had a points-value assigned for generals and so the number of commands per army was determined by points available, but roughly approximated commands the size of normal HOTT armies. Some specialized commands were possible using our point system - aerial strike forces led by Aerial Hero Generals were a part of all our armies for awhile. Our big games were great fun.

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    Replies
    1. There are no missing troop types in HOTT - DBA just overcomplicates :)

      We'd played big battles before, with armies of multiples of 24AP (I think 7 armies a side is the largest, but 96AP was the biggest, most conventional, game we've done). But this was the first time we've played with a large, single, command.

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  3. I presume you noticed "missing" was in quotes : )

    To answer directly then, we had not played with that many elements in a single, large command. I would think 36 points really stretched the limit of a single Pip die. . .

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