Under The Suns Of Tatooine

John and I played 25mm HOTT last night. He wanted to try out his new Star Wars Sand-People army, so I took the 'Sororitas Puella Armatura Mobilis' into battle with them, as it's the only vaguely sci-fi themed army I have in that scale.

Here's the first game - the Sand-People defended. The consist of four Shooters, three Warband, two Beasts, one Hero and a Blade general. The Sisters were four Warband, two Flyers, a Paladin and two Heroes, one of which is the general.

The Sisters have one tactic - charge and kill. It's a small army and needs to move fast to avoid being outflanked or caught in a slogging fight. So here they are making their first strike.

Saint Rachel took on the Beasts but got caught up in a draw.

The first game ended with the Sand-People being pretty much cut to pieces over a couple of rounds of combat - the Sisters' Heroes hit some Shooters with enough support to take them out and the Sand-People line collapsed from that point.

This was the second game. John took the Sand-People again, and defended again. The Sand-People formed a strong line, and their Shooters took out one of the Sisters' Fliers early on. I was left with one option - charge!

I lot a couple of Warband, and one of the Heroes, and we pretty much traded element for element. But the Sisters prevailed. Just - 12AP to 10AP.

The third and final game. We swapped armies, but the Sand-People still defended. I was a little more free-wheeling with the Tatooine natives, mostly because half of my army ended up with no opposition.

I lost - 12AP to 0AP. I did have a viable stab at the Sisters' general, though. An element of Beasts hit her in the flank:

When she turned to face the Beasts had to be pushed back to make room, nudging them into some bad going. This left them one factor up - +4 to the general's +3. And the general had nowhere to retreat to.

But I lost the combat. Oh well.

So, three games for the Sisters. They are a tough, hard-hitting little army, although the second game showed that they could be vulnerable in a sustained fight.

On the other table Geoff and Ralph played Cold War Commander, running a test game based on the 1973 Vale of Tears battle between the Israelis and the Syrians. There were a small number of units in play, but it seemed to give a good game, and they had time to play it through twice, swapping sides. I think the Israelis were victorious in both games, but only just.

Syrian tanks advance. Note the minimalist terrain.

Burning command vehicles. Ralph's, of course.

Israeli Centurion tanks.