Trouble In The Garden

My final HOTT game in 2016!

A line of Garden Gnomes waits in the quiet of dawn.

The sun rises over a garden of rolling grassy knolls and forests of toadstools. The sound of the enemy's marching feet grows closer.

The army of Wonderland has arrived, led by its mad Queen, and assisted by a gigantic young girl.

The Army of Wonderland advances. Out on its right flank a horde of flamingos leads the assault.

The Gnomes advance their stone-throwers, and a shower of rocks strikes down the giant birds.

Another shower drives the Griffon and Mock-Turtle back into the cover of the toadstools.

Playing-card soldiers move up in support of the beleaguered creatures.

And the rest of the army continues its advance.

Alice leads some soldiers against the Gnomes' mighty molluscs.

But she flees in pursuit of butterflies - an illusion generated by the old Gnome magician sat behind their battle-line.

Cut off from the support of their own heavy infantry, the Gnome stone-throwers are attacked by playing-cards.

More troops are sucked into the fight from both sides.

The two generals watch each other warily, as their forces fight ferociously on both flanks.

The mighty molluscs gain a temporary advantage ...

... but are unable to exploit it before Wonderland's troops fall upon them.

Fighting continues on the other flank.

An overview of the battle.

The stone-throwers are defeated, and Wonderland is free to exploit the gap they have created in the Gnomes' line.

The mighty molluscs are mobbed ...

... and destroyed.

The remaining stone-throwers are attacked, with the Griffin and Mock-turtle coming out of hiding.

The fight rages to and fro.

But the Griffin prevails, and the Gnomish army breaks.

The Gnomes had a good defensive position on the hill in the centre, but their small army was prone to having its flanks overwhelmed. The magician was deployed as a mobile reserve, but when the crunch came there weren't enough PIPs to move him to where he could have made a difference. Wonderland had good open ground to attack across, and with nothing to directly threaten its Spears could afford to plod forward and grind the Gnomish army down in its own time.

For this battle I ran the Queen of Hearts as a Spear rather than a Blade, since one fewer troop-type makes the army easier to manage. It didn't really make a difference in this case. I'm still looking at the possibility of converting one of the playing-card Spear elements to Shooters, since the army is critically devoid of any way of engaging enemy aerials, but I'm loathe to start hacking around the rather fragile scratch-builds.

A fun and attractive game to end the year with, I think.