Thursday HOTT

Daniel was the latest club member to want to try HOTT , so on Thursday we had a couple of games.

I'd had a rough week at work, so brought along a few whimsical armies for my own amusement. The box also included some more conventional choices, so we had a nice mix of possibilities.

In the first game Daniel attacked with Camelot. The option for this army is Merlin or Lancelot, and he went for Merlin - a bold move using a magician in your first game. I used the Garden Gnomes, who also have a magician. 

Daniel attacked in two groups, Merlin and Galahad leading on on his right, and Arthur leading another in the centre. My Gnomish magician cast magic to entice Galahad into a trap, but didn't succeed.  

Or not at first, anyway. Eventually Galahad was enticed into captivity in the Gnome stronghold. This was a bold ploy so early in the game; for 6 PIPs Daniel could free the hero from captivity and attack my stronghold, giving him a good chance of a win. It was a risk I was willing to take. 

The battle split into two parts as Daniel attacked my left and centre. On the left some knights rode down some Gnome spears, whilst in the centre we both lost an element. 

My snail-riders polished off Arthur's foot-soldier in the centre, and slithered into the knights beyond. The left flank stabilised, with neither side doing much. 

I was now 8AP up, and thought I'd take a risk. I attempted to ensorcel Merlin. If I lost I'd be down quite a few points, but if I won ... well, I'd win the battle. 

The magical duel was a draw. 

The snail-riders weren't making much headway in the centre. 

Merlin drove one back with magic. 

Meanwhile I was looking for a less risky win on the left, consolidating my general and another spear into a two-rank block. 

An attack on my magician by some knights saw them fall into a magical trap and their total destruction. 

This allowed me to turn on the surviving knights on the flank and destroy them, to give the Gnomes a 12-6 win. 

In the second game Daniel defended with some Wood Elves we found lurking in the same box as Arthur and his knights. I attacked with the army from Wonderland. 

We pretty much lined up and smashed into each other in the centre. Daniel had two shooters out on a wide flank march, whilst I had two lurkers, so I had a single element edge over him. I explained that in clashes like this there'd be a few turns of pushing back and forth. 

My fearsome card-soldier phalanx led the attack. 

And the 'few turns of pushing back and forth' turned into a series of lucky rolls completely destroying Daniel's right flank - two riders and a behemoth were simply impaled by my advance. 

This left Daniel's Elves somewhat outnumbered. 

He swung his hero general into action. A tough foe, but now exposed to a flank attack.

And here's the flank attack. But that hero was made of strong stuff, and fended off every attempt to destroy him. 

On my right the Elf archers kept up a steady fire on Wonderland's beast elements, but couldn't destroy them before the fearsome flamingos charged home and swept some archers away. 

This now left Daniel terribly exposed. 

Flank attacks all round saw some Elf spears destroyed as well. This broke his army. But the hero survived, and we got so excited by that we forget to end the game. 

Some archers took out the flamingos. 

And the hero, assisted by the surviving spears destroyed some card-soldiers. 

At that point we came to our senses and realised that the game had ended two bounds earlier. The actual score was 12-0 to Wonderland, but by the end the Elves had at least brought it up to 12-4. 

Despite losing both games, Daniel is such a glutton for punishment that he wants to play again next week. 

1918 Bombing Mission

We played the game of Spandau & Lewis that was postponed from last week yesterday. This saw the debut of my new late-war French aircraft in the form of a bombing mission by three Salmson 2 two-seaters, escorted by a pair of Caudron R11s. They were being attacked by a trio of Albatros DVs and a single Fokker Dr1. 

Stuart and Jack took the French, whilst I ran the Germans. 

Here's the French approaching the target, and the Germans stalking them. 

The Germans attack. How great a start they made is shown by the red marker, which was a reminder that the plane had temporarily jammed its guns. 

The French zoomed past the DVs and headed for the target. I had foolishly sent the Triplane off on its own and as the French approached I saw just how silly a thing that was to have done. There's a lot of guns pointing in my direction there. 

The Salmsons organised themselves for their bombing run, whilst Stuart sent the Caudron escorts forward, one of them engaging the Triplane. 

Lots of pointing as things got a bit tight. As the French went in over the target the Albatri swooped in. And did very little damage. That said, one French plane failed to cross the target at all and another saw all of its bombs miss. 

The third Salmson did manage to get its bombs on target though. It was the one with a novice crew as well. It also got shot up by an Albatros. 

One of the Albatros fighters took an engine hit that slowed it down. 

And Jack used a Salmson aggressively to hunt down and finish off the Fokker Dr1 and its ace pilot. The Dr1 had been chasing the damaged Salmson and completely failed to shoot it down. 

As the bombers spread out a little after the target I managed to organise some attacks. Two of my fighters made heavy weather of attacking the one that hadn't dropped its bombs yet. 

But a shot killed the pilot and down it went. 

Sadly at the same time my damaged Albatros was shot down. 

Everybody looked at heading for home at this stage, but one of my fighters hung around just long enough to get shot down by a Caudron, just so Stuart could have a kill. 

So the Germans lost three out of four of their attacking planes and teh French got one load of bombs on target. The Germans shot down one French plane. It was a decisive French win.

Jack and Stuart kept a tight formation so they had loads of firepower pointing in all directions. I then attacked it piecemeal and paid the price. 

Back In The Air

I've been pretty ill the past few days, the victim of a particularly nasty bug. It meant that I missed my regular wargames night on Thursday (which shows how serious it is), when I was going to debut some of my new French aircraft in a game of Spandau & Lewis.

Today I felt recovered enough to consider pushing a few miniatures around a table, so I decided that if the new planes I had plans for weren't getting their outing, at least one of the other might. So I decided to run my basic patrol scenario using a French Morane N. I came up with a list of ten possible encounters and assigned them to playing cards, then created a deck as described in some earlier post I've lost the link to and which I don't have the enemy to find right now. 

Here's the teeny tiny Morane N on patrol. In terms of quality I rolled twice and took the best roll. It ended up with an experienced pilot. 

I used my experimental rules for early mounts. So whilst it counts has having a fixed gun it can only count one roll of 5 as a hit. This makes it better then a single pivot gun but less effective than a properly synced and sighted synchronised gun. 

The first aircraft encountered was an AEG GII. These were basically bombers, but in mid-1915 seem to have also been used to escort reconaissance aircraft on the grounds that they had a gun at both ends. I used one of my Friedrichshafen bombers as a stand-in, which is why it has a later war camouflage scheme. 

A tough nut to crack, but it had a green crew so I went for it.

Of course at that point a Fokker Eindecker turned up. With an ace pilot. Not good

I survived a first pass of the opposing aircraft, but things weren't looking hopeful. I'd quickly decided that running for home was my safest bet. 

Attacked by the Fokker my best strategy was to face it head on where at least the poor deflection would be some defence. We exchanged shots and between us I think we scored a hit with every dice. So the Fokker was damaged. But so was I. Badly.

I turned for home. I might just make it if the Fokker couldn't score any more hits. 

It scored a long-range hit and my Morane was forced down. 

I set the whole thing up again, with a new deck of encounters. First out of the deck - an AEG GII!

I got the jump on it and scored some damage. I would have scored more had I remembered the positive firing modifier for shooting at a large target, but I can't even remember a set of rules I wrote myself at the moment. 

I turned and chased the big German plane as it fled into a cloud. 

And the next encounter? Another Fokker! This one didn't have an ace pilot, but once again I was stuck fighting two enemy planes that were gunning for me big time. The AEG temporarily left the table though. 

Whilst the AEG was temporarily inconvenienced I chased the Fokker, damaging its engine. 

The AEG came back and a long-range shot returned the favour; my Morane's engine started spluttering. 

I finished off the Fokker.

But turning to escape brought me within range of the AEG again, and a long-range shot took me out. 

An Albatros C-type actually turned up at one point, but basically flew well out of the action so I eventually ignored it. 

Anyway, that was two singularly unsuccessful outings for the French air-force there.