Middle Earth HOTT

Geoff and I played a couple of games of HOTT last night. He brought his vast collection of Middle Earth troops. I'd planned to borrow from those, but took my new Wood Elves as well and, in fact, used them in both games.

In the first game the Elves were attacking Geoff's Army of Mordor. Geoff put down some large areas of bad going, so I anchored my flanks on them and waited for him to come to me. Which he did.

My archers cut down some hordes on his left, but his centre quickly closed into melee.

On my left I surrounded some Orc warband with lurkers and destroyed them. The lurkers spent the rest of the game doing a sterling job covering that flank.

In the centre, Geoff's Uruk Hai blades (which included the general) were pushing me back, but the bad going protected me from the worst of it. Mordor's trolls battled the Elves' ent.

Mordor's general broke through the Elven line.

The troll steadily forced the ent back towards the Elves' baseline.

But the Elven archery was taking its toll; Mordor was slowly running out of troops that weren't hordes (Geoff was sensible enough to bring any of those that were lost back into action).

The ent was forced off the board by the trolls.

But the Urk Hai general was destroyed when he was shot at and his recoil was blocked by some Elf archers.

The Elves picked up a 10g-8 victory.

In the second game Geoff switched to a Gondorian army with a mix of spears, blades, knights and shooters. The Elves defended. I set up a few woods to hide in.

Gondor's archers found themselves exchanging fire with Elves well hidden in the trees. But they stood their ground fairly well; the Elves didn't inflict as many casualties as I hoped they would, despite the real advantage that shooters get for being in woods when there's an exchange of fire.

Geoff's centre just charged straight in, risking knights against shooters. It was 50/50 - he lost an element of knights and I lost one of my archers.

I kept shooting and Geoff kept attacking, and casualties were about even. But I lost my general to a flank attack to give Geoff the win in this game.

With one win each we called it a night.