HOTT 52 - Week 46 - Wonderland vs Ophidians

I was supposed to be playing Gaslands this Thursday evening, but it fell through at the ast minute leaving me with a potentialy game-less Thursday evening. So Catherine thought it would be a good time to get in this week's HOTT 52 game, and who am I to refuse an offer like that?

I grabbed a couple of boxes of armies, and from them Catherine selected the Ophidians, somehow enticed by their three magicians. I selected my Wonderland army.

I defended, and ended up on a hill with two large areas of bad going on my right flank. Catherine put her magicians in the centre, opposite my spears and the Queen of Hearts general, and massed her warband warriors opposing the woods on my right, looking to rush in and attack me from the bad going.

She advanced her army steadily. I moved forward to a better position on the hill, and spread out my beasts in the mushroom forests. I also had a couple of lurkers waiting in the wings. I was confident I could hold or defeat the warand with them, and I had a Plan.

The warbands charged in!

Catherine was content to hold the rest of her army at a distance and cast the odd spell, none of which had any effect aside from threatening a couple of her magicians with a long life as a frog if they rolled any more one.

The warband pushed into the woods, but were ambushed by the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and some were so confused that they ran off never to be seen again.

With the warband now committed against the woods I could implement my plan - a full-frontal assault on the Ophidian line. My spears are vulnerable to warband, so I wanted to steer clear of them, but once they were committed to a long fight on my right I could advance my infantry and go for a quick win in the centre. Alice and the spears on my far left advanced first; they were least under threat from the warband so had edged forward eralier in a kind of feint attack.

One of Catherine's magicians turned itself into a giant mushroom, and never returned.

The rest of Wonderland's army advanced.

Alice overran some Ophidian archers, but in their one success of the battle an Ophidian magician banished her back to the real world, never to be seen again. 

On my right the Ophidian warband were triumphant; the flamingos were the only survivors of the action there, but most of the warband were well away from the action and well out of command. They wouldn't take any further part in the battle.

In the centre my spears pressed forward and turned the Ophidian right flank.

Catherien closed up her line, and one warband managed to attack the Queen of Herats (a win there would have lost me the battle).

Wonderland's apears behacved admirably, driving all before them. More archers fell ...

... and then one of the magicians, pushing the Ophidians over their break-point and giving Wonderland a hard-fought win.

I lost 10AP to Catherine's 14AP, so came close to losing myself. I'd accepted I might lose a few element in the bad going, but hoped I'd take some warband with me. I didn't, and the loss of Alice was rather unexpected, leaving me close to defeat before I'd really got my main attack in place. But I kept up a steady pressure, and Catherine's loss of a magician to a rogue bespelling roll helped me a lot as well.

We also played some more Blood, Sweat and Cheers, but I may save that for another post.