Lannisters and Wildlings

In between waiting for the paint to dry on the bases of one in-progress HOTT army, and printing troops for another I played a quick game of HOTT. I trawling around various 'Game of Thrones' HOTT lists on the 'net, I realised that without their steam-tank the Ceidonians were pretty much a generic Westeros army. They're even in Lannister colours - sort of. So I decided to rebrand them as Lannisters and put them up against my Wildlings. After all, the Wildlings have never faced an historical opponent before.

The Lannisters defended, opted for minimal bad going and plenty of hills to defend. This would give their knights - four of them - chance to ride down the Wildling warbands in the open. The Wildlings ended up attacking from between two woods.

The Lannister left flank.

The Wildling centre.

A group of Lannister knights moved out on their right flank ...

... and was swiftly overwhelmed by Wildling skin-changers and some cavalry.

Lannister missile troops cut down the skin-changers and drove off the horsemen.

With a giant bearing down on their left flank knights, the Lannisters opted to redeploy, rapidly rearranging their line as the Wildlings advanced across the field towards them.

They managed to position their spearmen opposite the giant, but failed to close up a huge hole in their centre.

The best defence - a bold attack!

It didn't go too well; some spearmen were destroyed and the Lannister commander fell back.

The Wildlings charged in. At this point the battle became one of those where both sides kept rolling '1' for PIPs, meaning that it became a desperate engagement as individual elements were thrown in wherever viable, and without a coordinated plan.

The Wildlings broke through the line in the centre, but couldn't exploit their advantage.

The Lannisters threw their knights in again and again.

It really wasn't looking good for the Lannisters, but in fact casualties were mounting on both sides at about an equal rate. The Wildlings had the better position, but lacked the command rolls to exploit it.

The giant was surrounded by spearmen and slain.

And in the centre the Lannister commander charged again. In the background the Lannister missile troops had been slowly advancing, and as they did so they cut down the cavalry they'd driven off earlier. This loss was enough to break the Wildlings' spirit, and their army fled.

As I said, both sides suffered from a lack of PIPs in the crucial mid-game. At one stage the Lannister general was completely isolated from his own army and could have been surrounded by warband whilst the Wildling commander charged in from the front. But a PIP roll of '1' meant that the warriors from beyond the Wall were content to watch their commander try to win the fight on his own.

And now ... back to the printing and painting.