Medieval HOTT

Gary and I played a couple of games of HOTT last night. People have brought along their medieval DBA/HOTT armies, so that was the theme for the evening. In both games I used my Peter Pig 'classic' Arthurian army.

For the first game, Gary fielded a generic medieval setup, with a Knight lord and a small retinue, and a ton of peasant Hordes.

Gary's mob defended a hill, and I charged. I would have been rude not to.

Arthur and his trusted companions took the position of honour on the right, supported by Merlin. Merlin had a couple of goes at scaring off Gary's giant, but failed.

In the centre the lesser knights ploughed into and through the peasants. There was much slaughter.

Lancelot faces the giant.

The peasants were scattered, but Gary's lord had a seemingly endless supply of them.

(I brought Gary to the brink of defeat, then had two really bad PIP rolls and couldn't finish him off. He countered with two brilliant PIP rolls and pretty much brought back all of the Hordes he'd lost.)

Killing peasants no longer seemed a viable way of crushing Gary's army, so Merlin stepped in and, supported by some knights, took down the Lord himself for the victory.

In the second game Gary's lord decided to field no peasants, more knights and ...

... subcontracted a dragon for aerial support.

The dragon came on early. I pushed forward with my army, hoping to put pressure on Gary and make him spend PIPs on things other than moving the dragon. Merlin sat this battle out, being replaced by Galahad the Paladin.

The dragon ate one lot of knights, gobbled up Galahad and then went after Arthur himself. Arthur was having nothing of it, and lopped off the dragon's head.

Arthur and his heroes pushed forward.

Gary's Lord was pushed back almost to his stronghold, but his lesser knights came rushing to his aid. Arthur's knights found themselves pressed on all sides.

Foot soldiers cut down an other group of Camelot's finest to give Gary the win.

This was a closer game than the first. We went into what was destined to be the last round of combats with both of us 2AP away from breaking. Gary took down one of my knights, but a final combat could have seen his Behemoth recoiled off the back of the board, which would have broken his army as well, and edged me ahead by 2AP for a narrow win. Sadly I didn't manage the recoil.

Peter and Dave played DBA, using double-sized medieval armies. They used Burgundians and French. Dave picked up a win based, it appears, on Peter's appalling PIP and combat rolls.

I do like a nice game of basic 24AP HOTT.