The HOTT Misfits Tournament - Draw And Game 1

Back in December I ran an eight army knockout HOT tournament based around matched pairs from literature. I finished it a few weeks ago and the army of Helium, from Burroughs' Martian series won it.

Anyway, we've just started rewatching Doctor Who from its 1963 beginnings - lots of episodes and stories I've not seen before - and I was reminded that I had Dalek and U.N.I.T. armies for HOTT. As HOTT armies go they are not 'traditional' fantasy in nature, and it got me thinking of teh other unconventional armies I have. Let's call them Misfits. 

When my list got to eight I thought "Why not get them out and have another tournament?".

So that's what I'm doing.

The eight armies are:

Daleks and U.N.I.T
My three Weird WW2 armies - The Weird Reich, the Soviets and the Americans
Flash Gordon And The Warriors Of Mongo
Walkers Filibusters (From the 1986 Alex Cox film 'Walker')
The Cyber Samurai

All bar the last army have appeared here before. I don't think the Cyber-Samurai have had an outing since I emigrated. They are a sci-fi Samurai army that I bought many, many years ago, painted for my wife to use in a tournament and which have been mostly forgotten since. I should showcase them at some stage.

Anyway, I did a random draw for the first round of matchups and got the following brackets:

So the Cyber Samurai ended up in the first game, facing the might of U.N.I.T. under the heroic Brigadier and featuring a mysterious time-traveller in a blue box. 

Here are the Cyber Samurai: three knights (including the general), four blades, two shooters, a behemoth and two lurkers. 

U.N.I.T. defended with a hero general (the Brigadier), a sneaker (the Doctor), artillery, a rider and six shooters. 

With a lake in their deployment area the Cyber Samurai had to move forward and shuffle their line a little. U.N.I.T. advanced to bring their strong missile ability into play. 

U.N.I.T. mortars drove off the enemy's Oni battlesuits (behemoth).

The samurai kept advancing, and were soon in range. 

U.N.I.T. opened fire and broke up the enemy line. 

As is inevitable in situations like this, that was the moment that PIPs dried up for the Cyber Samurai. For two bounds they were only able to make piecemeal advances and attacks. 

Even so, their blades managed to push back the opposition. 

Unfortunately the samurai attacking the mortars were destroyed. 

And their line was broken up even more. The Doctor and some U.N.I.T. troopers on the right swung around to threaten the enemy flank. 

A rush by the samurai in the centre saw some U.N.I.T. troopers cut down. 

Unit sent in their mobile reserve in a Land Rover. 

And the loss of the blade on their left had left their general exposed. The Brigadier rushed forward and, supported by some troopers, destroyed the enemy general

So that was it. U.N.I.T. picked up a 4g-2 win. Not getting PIPs when you're within shooting range of an enemy is never going to be good, and that's what did for the Cyber Samurai, who were unable to exploit the strength of their blades to cut a hole in the enemy line.

So the Cyber Samurai are out of the tournament. But we'll hear from them again. And U.N.I.T. go through to the semi-finals. 

HOTT

I played a couple of games of HOTT with Darren last night. He's new to the game although has played a few games of DBA back in the dim and distant past.

As always I kept the armies relatively simple. Darren used the Ceidonians in his first game, choosing four spears, two blades (one the general), two knights, two shooters and a behemoth. I used my Fishmen, with a behemoth, four spears (one the general), two shooters, two warband, a lurker and some artillery. 

Darren defended and I promptly did an appalling setup in response, somehow matching spears against his knights and shooter facing his blades. 

Naturally these were the two points where the fighting took place. The spears survived the knight attack, but my shooters were steadily pushed back and destroyed by the Ceidonian blades. 

As is natural in such games the two behemoths met, with the Ceidonian tank being slowly pushed back by the fearsome sea-troll. 

On my right the spears fell back to give the artillery a clear shot at Darren's knights. It destroyed one of the elements. 

Darren had put his spears in an isolated block out on his right flank. I'd matched them with a couple of warband. After looking at each other for a while Darren charged. I rolled badly and both warband were destroyed. 

So I was now down two shooters and two warband, whilst Darren had lost a shooter and a knight. The behemoths continued to shove each other. 

Darren took a gamble and worked his blades into the rear of my behemoth. He ended up in a position where, if his steam-tank won its next round of combat, my behemoth would recoil over his general. Thus wouldn't have ended the game but would have made life difficult for him for what was left of it. 

Needless to say my troll won the combat and Darren's general survived. 

My general finished off the second Ceidonian shooter. 

However Darren's general could now make a proper rear contact, leaving my troll vulnerable to destruction. I responded by hitting the flank of the steam tank with some spears. Loss of my troll would lose me the battle, whilst loss of the steam-tank would put Darren close to defeat. 

I won the fight and the steam-tank was destroyed. 

I picked up the victory on my next bound when my artillery managed to destroy the other knight element. 

This was a 12-8 win for the Fishmen, but could have very easily gone the other way. 

For the second game Darren switched to some Dwarves, whilst I used The Spawn Of Tiamat. Darren fielded artillery, a lurker, a behemoth (another steam tank), three knights and five blades, one of which was the general. I had a magician general, a hero, four hordes, three beasts and three knights. 

The Dwarf line. 

Naturally I set up badly again and spent my early moves trying to bring my knights around in front of a wood so I could face the Dwarven knights. One of them was destroyed by artillery It was a bad day to be a knight facing artillery yesterday. 

Meanwhile my beasts and the hero charged the Dwarf blades, and a beast was quickly destroyed. 

My outnumbered knights put up a decent fight but were soon pushed back.

One ended up in the wood and Darren got to use his lurker. That saw the end of my knight. 

My hordes hadn't really got into the fight and I was 6AP down. However over on the right Tiamat herself destroyed the Dwarf steam-tank in a fight photographed so badly I wouldn't dream of posting it here. 

This gave me an open flank to play with. My surviving beasts, and the hero, charged. And Tiamat came in on the flank. That cost Darren a blade. The loss of the blade meant that my serpent beasts could slither into the rear of the Dwarf line, blocking recoils. First to fail was the Dwarf king. That evened up the losses. 

Then my giant frogs forced another blade to recoil, and it couldn't. That was enough to push the Dwarves to 10AP lost to my 8AP, and with the Dwarf general dead that was another win for me. 

Thanks to Darren for two very close games though. 

Get Yer Gothas Out!

After my Handley-Page bomber game from last week I had a request to get the Gothas out again. I'm always happy to het my big bombers out for an appreciative audience, so yesterday I ran the same scenario but with two Gothas bombing London (probably).

I used randomised defending aircraft as outlined HERE. The RFC would get three planes. 

I'm still tweaking VPs for this scenario. In addition I added a -2 spotting modifier because it's night. However when resolving anti-aircraft fire, if any dice score a 5 or 6 then the target plane is considered to be illuminated and the -2 modifier does not apply. 

There was something else I tried out as well, but I'll come to that later. 

Here's the Gothas heading across the darkened south of England, heading for London. 

The first RFC defender came into view - a Sopwith Pup. The two side spotted each other fairly quickly, but the Pup seemed to be a bit reluctant to close with the bombers. Poor manouvre rolls meant that it took ages to turn into the action. 

The bombers approached the first target, but one took a near direct hit from anti-aircraft fire and was very badly damaged. It kept on though. 

A second British plane was in play now though - an Armstrong-Whitworth FK8. It slowly got onto the tail of the bombers. 

The bombers attacked the first target as the first serious exchanges of fire took place. Both sides took light damage. 

One bomber got its bombs on target. I was playing around with VPs for hitting the target but also 1VP per target for the first time a bomber attempted a bombing run on it. This would encourage attacking both targets in order to to accumulate points. 

The bombers are quite close together and I think I may need to make some slightly larger circular target zones rather than these square ones. 

The bombers turned towards the second target as a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter joined the fight. 

The British defence seemed reluctant to close throughout the game. The Sopwith made the first truly aggressive attack, damaging the already damaged bomber. However return fire from the Gotha's rear-gunner killed the observer on the Sopwith two-seater. 

Both bombers missed the second target. But they got a point for trying. All of the British planes were now closing in though. Unfortunately this was the moment the Pup's guns jammed. The pilot couldn't fix the problem, so turned for home.

I wanted to try out a method of preventing the defenders harrying the attackers all the way to their home edge, as it's not an interesting phase of the game. I assumed that once teh bombers were heading home they'd be left to other interception units and that the on-table defenders would be more concerned with other bombers not depicted. 

What I did was allow the bombers to declare that their mission was over. From that point on they couldn't voluntarily move or remain within 6" of the targets, and couldn't drop bombs. They'd just head home. At the start of each turn each British plane would roll a D6. On a 5-6 it would be removed, having flown off elsewhere. 

Anyway, the Pup just headed home on its own initiative with a jammed gun. And the Sopwith two-seater went off in search of other prey. Only the FK8 chose to harass teh bombers on their run home. And now it was pressing them closely. 

The damaged Gotha couldn't take the sustained fire and fell apart. 

The FK8 closed in on the other bomber and its guns raked the fuselage. The front and rear gunners on te Gotha were both mortally wounded, but their last return bursts finished off the already damaged FK8 (it had taken a few flak hits).

The Gotha headed home with just a pilot. 

I gave 1VP for the first bombing attack on a target, plus 1VP for each bomb load that lands on target, up to a maximum of 2VP. So you can score a maximum of 3VP per target. In addition the Germans got 1VP for each British plane shot down (encouraging the defenders to possibly head for home when damaged). Meanwhile I gave the British 3VP for shooting down a bomber.  So in this scenario the Germans got 2VP for bombing attempts and 1VP for bombs on target. They also got 1VP for the FK8, for a total of 4VP. The British got 3VP for the downed bomber. So a marginal German win. 

The British breakoff didn't quite work for me, so I'm going to try something else. 

Memoir '44 In The Desert

We had a WW2 evening at the Wollongong Wargamers on Thursday. There was a small game of Bolt Action, and a larger game of Clash of Steel, which covered a tank action on the right flank of the battle of Bir Hakeim  (May 27th 1942). However I opted to play Memoir '44 with Geoff. And to get into the theme of the evening we played a scenario covering the flanking action at Bir Hakeim. So two games covering elements of the same extended action.

The Memoir '44 scenario sees the Axis with 21st Panzer and the Italian Ariete Division attacking the end of the Allied line. Facing them are the 1st Free French Brigade, solidly entrenched behind mines and wire, and the 3rd Indian Motorised Brigade, who are less well- defended. 

Geoff took the defenders in the first game. Whilst the Allied defensive line is fairly strong, it has a weakness on its left flank, and that's where I attacked. I was able to keep up a constant pressure there owing to some excellent cards, and when my forces started to suffer I was able to bring across Italian elements to assist. You can just see them moving across in the centre of this photo.

Anyway, ignoring the Free French in their entrenchments entirely the whole German attack hit the Indian Motorised Brigade. And they were crushed.

I won 5-2.

It's a tough fight for the Allies. They have good defences, but that also makes them somewhat static. The Free French are stuck behind wire and minefield, so not well positioned to move across as reserves. So  unless the Axis opt to lead with the Italians (and I can see that with a particular run of cards you might have to) the Indians in their entrenchments are doing all of the fighting for the Allies. And they have a vulnerable flank. 

Because scenarios in this game are often unbalanced we swapped sides to get an aggregate score. Geoff adopted the same plan as me, throwing the Germans at the Indians. 

The Free French and the Italians sat the whole battle out.

The end result was much the same, but this time the Allies put up more of a fight, and the Germans only managed a 5-4 victory - they came within a turn of possibly losing altogether. So I got a 9-7 victory overall. In both games the Commonwealth 'Stiff Upper Lip' rules played a big role; a couple of German attacks nearly came  unstuck because of the Allied counterattacks this allows. But they weren't quite enough. 

Meanwhile on the other table the panzers overcame the Grants to give the Germans another win. The next scenario in the Memoir '44 book is the same action, and I played it out a couple of times the day after. The Germans won both times.