HOTT At MOAB

The HOTT tournament at MOAB has been and gone for another year, and I'm pleased to report that a member of Team Wollongong - John - came away with the first prize for the third time in the four years I've taken part in it.

Once again I took the Morally Ambiguous Elves Of Mantic - Spear General, 3 x Spears, 2 x Shooters, 2 x Warband, 1 x Hero and 1 x Magician.

I took some pictures, but they're poor quality phone shots so don't expect to see too much detail on the lovely armies in use.

Caesar sets up his first game:

John and Geoff play their first game, John using the forces of Gondor and Geoff using his Dark Elves. Geoff opted not to wear a bow-tie today ...

... the rest of us did, however. We're quite well-dressed. For Australians.

The Morally Ambiguous Elves faced some Renaissance Orcs, under Victor, in the first round. I lost. My army just sort of disappeared.

In the second round I faced new player Andrew, who was using an army of Teutonic Order knights. It was an epic, all-mounted army.

Meanwhile, on another table, Graham's gorgeous GW airboats were on display. Not the most practical of gaming models, but lovely to look at.

Back to the Teutonic Order. They charged into the Elves.

There was lots of fighting. The Teutonic Order lost.

My third game was against some kind of GW-based Imperial army. They had an Aerial Hero, so I wedged my army between tow woods, and played defensively.

My Magician nipped out from behind the lines, and zapped the Aerial Hero. The Imperials advanced, and there was much fighting up and down the line. My Magician killed a Rider. There was more fighting. The Magician got really lucky and killed a Behemoth. Game over for the Empire.

Meanwhile the Teutonic Order rode over the top of Geoff's Dark Elves.

My final game was against Graham's undead - my chance to kill one of those lovely Airboats in combat.

Let's look at the positions at this stage. John, Caesar and Graham were all in equal first place, with Graham slightly ahead on the tie-break. If Graham failed to beat me, the one of John or Caesar must win. If he did beat me, then he'd probably finish on top. If I beat him, then I would come second. So there was a lot to play for.

Getting a  '1' for about half of my PIP rolls was not the best way to secure a victory. But that seemed to be the strategy my army adopted. Luckily Graham adopted a strategy of not winning combats, even when the odds were in his favour, so the game settled into a long, frustrating but quite exciting slog.

I had a few kills to my credit when, in the last ten minutes, my PIPs came together. I used them to knock off a few more undead elements (never got one of the Airboats though), and as we went into the last bound, time having been called, I just had to kill one element to win. I was in this position:

Magician vs Knight. I'm on a +4, he's on a +3 with an overlap so down to a +2

I lost it.

The game ended in a draw.

This left John with a clear win, as he'd beaten Caesar. I finished fourth.

Thanks to the Southern Battle Gamers for another great comp, and for keeping it running in the face of sickness and disaster.

Finally, is this what they mean when they say Flames Of War is just wall-to-wall tanks? ;-)