We spent some time discussing what we're doing at Gong Con 2012 at the end of the month; we'll probably be running some games on the first day (including HOTT) and then, if we have the numbers, a small competition on the Sunday.
Then we got stuck into a 48AP HOTT game, using armies that were pretty much 'historical'. On one side were various Dark Ages troops commanded by Geoff and Caesar - a mix of Vikings, saxons and Normans, I think. Meanwhile Peter and I took some Late Romans ; Blades, Knights and Riders, supported by some Artillery and Warband.
Geoff and Caesar begin their advance. Geoff shows that bow-ties are, indeed, cool. John acts as an independent military observer.
The Roman left, under my command. The Dark Age Alliance we firmly entrenched on a hill, and I was wary about going straight in against them. You can see my Riders working their way around the flank though.
The Roman right - an aggressive advance from both sides led to some fierce fighting, which saw the Dark Age Alliance lose plenty of troops, but the Romans lose their CinC and therefore the game.
The hero of the game (from my point of view) - a Roman Artillery element that took out a Rider who'd failed to leave recoil room behind it, and then a Shooter that rolled badly (5 vs 1). It accounted for a third of the casualties the Romans inflicted on the Alliance.
I had to leave early to collect my son from a drama night at school, but the rest set up another 48AP with the same armies; here's Caesar planning his latest cunning strategy. I'm sure someone will let me know how the game panned out in the comments ...
UPDATE: Caesar has sent me an account of the second game:
The second battle was close – too close. I had some early fortune picking off some of Peter’s blades in broken ground with my shooters but that ended as his line closed in and the shooters ceased to be effective. Meanwhile Geoff, my allied general, was locked in a rugby scrum on his flank with opposing warband that pushed and shoved for most of the evening. Things got nasty as my rider C-in-C general was overrun trying to hold the flank against a sweeping manoeuvre by Peter’s riders. Luckily for us, we had lost marginally less points than Peter by that stage and I rolled well for PIPs on my next turn, keeping my side from demoralisation. Things still didn’t look good as a scattered handful of spears were all that held my flank as Peter’s riders continued to bear down and paying double PIPs made me very slow to respond. Amazingly they held out just long enough for Geoff to inflict sufficient casualties on Peter’s force to drop him below the halfway mark and a narrow victory was won by the good guys. I think we all enjoyed the semi-historical HOTT, a good honest battle which wasn't dominated by exotic troop types.
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