HOTT At The Gong Garage Gamers

It's been a while since we played HOTT at the club*, but Geoff suggested it and I was happy to oblige. He brought his generic Medievals. In the first game I opposed them with some Elves I have in my collection. They're actually Cei's (he won them many, many years ago when he was still a wee lad), but now he's left home anything that's left in my cupboard of figures is mine by right of conquest.

So here we are, all set up with Geoff defending. He had lots of knights, shooters and spears, backed up with a paladin and a behemoth. I had a mix of knights and shooters supported by a hero and a magician.

Armies advancing.

Preparing to charge. Geoff's spears are based for ADLG, so are on double-depth bases with loads of figures. Each of those blocks was run as a single spear element, in the same way that my Swiss blocks are with six figures are run as a single warband or blade element when I use them for HOTT.

The armies meet. Geoff decided to match his behemoth with my magician general, and the paladin with my hero. They're probably not choices I would have made, but he felt they were viable.

The paladin died (to be fair he was a point up in the combat, so the odds were in his favour), and the behemoth fled. But my knights were falling back

Knights fighting on the flank.

The elven archers cleared their opposing numbers from the other flank.

The behemoth returned to the battle, and faced the magician again. This time it was destroyed and this was enough to push Geoff's army past its breakpoint, so I picked up a win. I'd lost a few elements, so it was a decent game and not a walkover.

I defended in the next game, using the same army. Geoff ditched the paladin, and added a cleric (as the general) and an airboat.

The airboat was swiftly dealt with, when my magician, casting a spell outside of the zone of influence of teh cleric, forced it to flee off the table edge

On the other flank Geoff's bowmen swiftly dealt with everything before them. My army was already racking up some losses.

The fight in the centre involved knights pushing back and forth and the hero and magician supporting my efforts. On the flank my archers were in hand-to-hand combat with Geoff's spears and holding their own.

Whilst I was losing heavily on my right flank I had a good position on the other flank, but after taking out one spear couldn't get the kills.

My magician general got attacked by a phalanx, and recoiled into Geoff's marauding archers. So I lost this game.

In the final game Geoff defended again. I switched to my Redwall army.

Geoff's army faced some shrew lurkers in the first bound, but drove them off.

Geoff had ditched the airboat and replaced it with some artillery. I had an army which relies on two heroes being pushed to the fore. Needless to say one of the heroes died pretty quickly.

My cunning plan was to close quickly to avoid being shot at by the artillery more than necessary.

To be honest the advance was a bit piecemeal. Still, I soon had elements stuck in to the fight.

Redwall's abbot himself led an attack on the gun. He's a horde general, so a little vulnerable, but with the army's sparrow allies providing support the attack wasn't a total disaster. The gun was soon dealt with,

Surprisingly the plucky animals of Redwall held their own and soon Geoff's army was starting to break up. Spears fell to persistent warband attacks, whilst the archers were outshot by their Redwall opposite numbers.

As the animals regrouped for a final push, Geoff decided to bring some knights across from his left to his right.

Unfortunately they blocked the recoil of the cleric general and Matthias the hero was quick to exploit the opportunity.

So a win for Redwall in what I think was their club debut.

I really enjoyed playing HOTT again.

*Eighteen months, apparently!