Epic Multi-Player HOTT

(Apologies - I uploaded the photos for this post, and then hit 'Post' rather than 'Save' before heading off to work. That's why you may have seen this with no text or title.)

Last night we played a spectacularly huge game of HOTT, off the back of our excursion into 36AP games. We fielded three 36AP commands on each side, giving a total of 108AP. To add to the epic feel we used Geoff's 15mm figures on 60mm frontages.

The armies were Da Vinci Renaissance Italian vs Mythical Greeks (with some Carthaginian allies).

This was the table setup, via the magic of my selfie-stick. You can just see my left eye at the bottom of the picture.

I didn't get too many pictures during the course of the game. Here's an angel assisting the Italians.

I had the Italian's right-flank command, which had a strong force of aerials, as well as artillery. I used the artillery to take ineffectual pot-shots at Caesar's troops opposite, whilst the aerials went off on various missions designed to harass and annoy the enemy.

This was the other flank; Ralph had the Italian knights and was facing Johns Carthaginian allies.

Caesar had a dragon in his command, and it proved a battle winner, with the Italians unable to mount an effective defence against it.

I lost a lot of my aerial force to that dragon, as well as both pieces of artillery.

In the end it was a close win for the Greeks. Both armies had a command break on pretty much the same bound - Dave's central command for the Greeks and Ralph's left-flank command for the Italians. Dave managed to hold his demoralised troops together for longer before they fled, so that the Italians were the ones to finally break from accumulated losses. With army break-points of 54AP, the Italians lost 55AP, and the Greeks were wavering on about 48.

Playing with 36AP is proving popular, although it doesn't favour certain styles of armies. I did OK with a lot of aerials, which shouldn't have been the case, but in fact it was because Caesar played a waiting game before my other troops, so I didn't have to spend PIPs on anything else. Had my ground troops been engaged I wouldn't have had any PIPs to spare for the fliers and airboat.

Thanks to Geoff and  John for providing figures and to Caesar for organising the game.