24AP HOTT

Last night we played some games of vanilla, straight out of the book, 24AP HOTT. This is something of a rarity in these days of 36AP or big-battle games, and made a welcome change.

I'd like to say that I took lots of pictures, but I didn't.

I played a couple of games, in both cases using armies I haven't had out of the box in a while. In my first game I used the Army of Rama, and faced Gary with a force of Dwarves.

Demon-ally chariots and minions of the monkey-king Hanuman held the one flank

I advanced bears and the two hero elements on the other.

The bears attacked ...

... and the Dwarves counter-attacked.

I couldn't marshal enough PIPs to make the bold attack I wanted to on that flank, and Gary was able to bring troops over to reinforce it. It became the main battle. The bears fell, as did Hanuman.

On the other flank, Hanuman's monkeys surrounded and killed the Dwarves' hero. But it was too little, too late. I was left trying to take down the Dwarves' giant ally using knights and warband, and we all know how that ends.

I face Dwarves again in the second game, a different army run by Geoff. I used my Peter Pig Garden Gnomes, which have some claim to being my first ever HOTT army.

A big fight developed over a hill in the centre.

Meanwhile dwarven cavalry tried to turn my left flank. The Garden Gnomes are a small army, in more ways than one, and were stretched to cover the width of the board. A single behemoth and a magician did what they could to cover this move.

I nearly ended very badly. The Gnomes lost the magician, and also lost their other behemoth. But a flanking move by their stone-throwing shooters on the other flank helped even the game up a little. The final result was very close indeed, but a Gnome behemoth rolled over some Dwarf cavalry to clinch the final victory.

Dave, Geoff and Gary played some games between them that I didn't get pictures of, using my medieval Ceidonians and heroic Malians.

Gary and I also talked about possibly running a simple, mapless Hott campaign one Sunday, using this system, which could be fun.