More HOTT

Geoff and I played more HOTT this week. He brought his Greeks and Romans, whilst I grabbed a random box which turned out to contain my Mythological Irish and my Orcs.

So the first game saw the Greeks take on the Irish, with chariots on both sides. The Irish chariots were a couple of knights and a couple of heroes. Those of the Greeks were riders.

I pushed the heroic chariots and warband forward, whilst the lesser warrior hordes held back to block the Greek chariots.

Geoff had included a god in his army - Ares. And he turned up.

Unfortunately he also had Achilles as a hero general, whilst the Irish had a a group of satirists, bards and magic-users as a magician. They composed some pretty biting lines about the Greek general, and he fled the field in embarrassment, giving the Irish a win.

We played a second game with the same armies. Or, at least, mine was the same. Geoff dropped the hero and the god, switching to a spear general (always a safe option) and adding two Indian ally chariot knights and a manticore dragon.

Both armies pushed forward rapidly this time.

The one flank was going to be a big chariot fight, although I had trouble with PIPs making it harder to get mine into action since the magician chose to join them.

Chariot Fight!

The Greeks lost an ally chariot, and their others were pushed back, but the Irish then struggled to exploit their advantage.

By now the manticore had appeared and was moving in on the flank of the Irish foot.

Both Irish warband were cut down by the now supported Thracians.

Meanwhile the Irish chariots had got their act together, had finished off the Greeks on that flank and were turning on the Greek spears.

Geoff sent over the manticore to fight one of the lesser Irish heroes (a knight), but it lost and fled the field, giving the Irish another win. In fact this one element of Irish 'knights' accounted for 10AP of the 12AP the Greeks lost.

For our third game Geoff switched to his Romans (with an elephant and the heroic bridge-defending Horatius), whilst I used my Orcs.

The orcs got off to a great start, sweeping away the Romans' auxiliary cavalry and infantry

In the centre the Romans chewed through the orc hordes.

The orcs stabilised things with a reserve of wolf-riders, and their Black Rider general soon had some Roman blades in trouble on the hill. The orc gradually surrounded the Romans and eventually made enough kills on top of their initial successes to pick up a win.