Thursday HOTT

'Thursday HOTT' is becoming a common post title here, because it's a nice standby game for a club night when I don't have any other game arranged.

Anyway, Geoff and I played HOTT again last night. Geoff brought his various Middle Earth armies. I just brought a box with some armies in and left what I had as a surprise (even to me).

First up were Geoff's Orcs (a mix of just blades and hordes) against my Wainrider barbarians (knights and warbands, mostly, with a hero general).

Here's the point of contact. The Wainrider knights were fighting the blades, whilst the warband were making heavy weather of Geoff's hordes.

Mixed fortunes in the combats. A theme of this game was the sheer number of sixes Geoff rolled in combats. I rolled OK, but nothing can best a string of sixes.

I did break through Geoff's lines with a chariot, and dispite him bringing back hordes I was able to attack his stronghold. But the odds were very much in Geoff's favour. Plus he rolled sixes, as I think I may have already said.

Unfortunately the rest of my army didn't fare so well. My hero general did manage to break the blade line in the centre, but losses elsewhere were mounting, and when a second attack on the stronghold saw my chariot destroyed, it was game-over for the barbarians.

We set up a second game. Geoff defended (again). This time he used an alliance of Elven archers and ents. I pulled Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table out of the box, and went with the Hero/Hero/Paladin option.

I ended up having to deploy in a chunk of bad going.

Geoff's army advanced quickly whilst I ended up mired in what was possibly a mire.

A particularly big ent attacked Arthur at which point Geoff rediscovered that mounted elements fighting an enemy in bad going also get a -2, even if they themselves aren't in the bad going. 

Geoff's line recoiled as he found out that he wasn't going to get the easy kills he thought he would. Unfortunately he now commanded the hill with his archers, and there was no way that the lesser Knights of the Round Table, who has said that they'd happily charge archers, were going to happily charge archers on a hill.

There was lots of scrappy fighting in the centre, whilst on Camelot's right the blades were pushing back the archers facing them

The knights before the hill fell back out of range, hoping to draw the Elves off the hill. But the Elves weren't falling for that one.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Galahad killed one of the ents, only to fall to some archers, and then Arthur got surrounded and killed, giving Geoff a 8g-4 win.

The final game. Geoff defended (for the third time) and I swapped Galahad the paladin for Merlin the magician. This time Camelot was facing some undead, mostly a mix of behemoths and warband. And a hero general.

I failed to ensorcel the hero general with a long-range magical attack, but got him when he decided to take the fight close and personal. Don't mess with Merlin!

And that was a 4g-0 win for me.

Update: A bonus picture from Ralph, of me having my arse handed to me on a plate by Geoff.

'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' At The Pub

The title says it all really. Our regular Monday evening trivia-night wasn't on this week, so we walked down to the local pub instead for a meal and a drink. We always take a game, and this week I packed a few gladiators.

As it was we only ended up playing one bout.

Ellenikos the hoplomachus faced Satornilus the thraex in a lengthy bout, mostly due to us getting a lot of draws and push-backs in combat. I managed to wound Catherine's thraex with a spear-throw, but in the end she managed to defeat me with an adrenaline-fuelled counter-attack.

Gaslands At The Illawarra Plastic Modeller's Association

This weekend was the annual show for the Illawarra Plastic Modeller's Association and, as regular readers of this blog will know, our club gets invited along to put on some demonstration games. We were quite ambitious this year, putting on four different games over the two days (two on each day). On Saturday some members put on a big game of Bolt Action on one table, and a game of Nimitz on another. I was involved on the Sunday - one table had a Team Yankee Game set during the Iraq War, whilst Caesar and I put on a demonstration game of Gaslands.

This was the setup. We decided on a nine car Death Race, with no sponsors and each car built to 20pts. You could choose perks from one class.

The course was a loose figure-of-eight - from the start a straight run to Gate One, then a crossover to the other side of the table to Gate Two, back across the far end in a curve to Gate Three, then another crossover to Gate Four. From there it was a clear run to the finish.

Most of the terrain was the stuff I've been painting for the past couple of weeks, although the lovely gates are Caesar's.

And here are the racers. 

Front row (from the left)

Fat-Bottomed Girls - Motorcycle w/Sidecar - Minigun (Sides), Headshot, Loader, Grenades
Welcome To The Machine - Car - Ram (Front), Armour
Perfect Day - Performance Car - Delicate Touch, Fenderkiss

Second Row (from the left)

Fantastic Cat - Performance Car - Tracks, Caltrops (Rear)
Bulls On Parade - Car - Grabber Arm (Sides), Boarding Party
Bad Blood - Car - HMG (Front), HMG (Rear), Loader

Third Row (from the left)

Natural-Born Killer - Car - Tracks, Ram (Front)
A Farewell To Kings - Car - Flamethrower (Front), Molotov Cocktails, Road Warrior, Powder-Keg
Mr. Bean - Buggy - Bazooka (Turret), Schaudenfreude

We ran activation from the front row to the back, left to right. If the vehicle with pole position passed a gate then it was automatically passed to the next vehicle in sequence. This kept the sequence of play simple; important when two of us were running nice cars by committee.

The first gear phase saw a fairly orderly run from the start.

Perfect Day started off the more complex moves, mostly due to some bad skid dice rolls.

Welcome To The Machine and Fat-Bottomed Girls were first to reach Gate One and get active weapons.

Welcome To The Machine edged ahead and shot up the bike with handguns.

Bulls On Parade finished off the bike with a tailgate attack.

Fat-Bottomed Girls crashed and exploded. The explosion did little damage, but even at this early stage the blast effect was enough to cause a couple of vehicles to wipeout, front-runner Welcome To The Machine amongst them.

The other vehicles jostled to get through Gate One. Natural-Born Killer ran a slow and steady race, tailgating anything that got in its way with its spikes.

The early stages. The two lead vehicles were wiped out and currently immobile, whilst everything else was working its way through the first gate.

Bulls On Parade made aggressive use of its grabber arm, throwing Fantastic Cat to destruction, and clearing a path for some of the other vehicles.

This gap allowed A Farewell To Kings to make a break for it, and take the lead.

Natural-Born Killer continued to bulldoze forwards.

Welcome To The Machine was now in second place.

With a new turn Fantastic Cat got back into the running, but almost immediately fell foul of Bulls On Parade, who also took out Bad Blood ...

... throwing it into the path of Natural-Born Killer.

Welcome To The Machine was active now, and rammed A Farewell To Kings, but did surprisingly little damage.

The halfway mark! A Farewell To Kings played a safe game, driving steadily and without any tricks and maintaining its lead. Welcome To The Machine took a risk and went up to top speed in order to close the gap. This made maneuvering the big vehicle quite hard, but the risk was worth it.

Natural-Born Killer, whilst the slowest vehicle in the race, edged into third place, mostly by surviving.

Perfect Day had wiped out and Bulls On Parade was bearing down on it.

A disaster for A Farewell To Kings as steady handgun fire from Welcome To The Machine saw it wrecked. Fortunately it was late in the turn, and it also crossed Gate Three as it wrecked, keeping it in contention once it respawned.

Bulls On Parade was wrecked, whilst Fantastic Cat, now back in the race for the second time, sowed some caltrops in order to slow down the leaders

If anything happened to the front-runners, these would be the contenders - Bad Blood was now in third place, Natural-Born Killer was in fourth and Fantastic Cat was being blocked into fifth.

Bulls On Parade got back into the race just as A Farewell To Kings did. The respawned leader wasted no time spraying Bulls On Parade with its flamethrower. Bulls On Parade burned and crashed again.

A Farewell To Kings was still in the lead, but was approaching Gate Four at too sharp and angle to clear the support so had to swerve across the width of the gate.

Bad Blood, Natural-Born Killer and Fantastic Cat were in hot pursuit.

But it was Welcome To The Machine that was able to exploit A Farewell To Kings' first driving failure of the game. It took the turn into Gate Four perfectly, spinning into a clear and straight run to the finish to take the win. A Farewell To Kings moved first, but finished just short of the line - a wipeout with a flip, or a slide would have seen it take the victory. So it was a close race.

The winners!

The also-rans. Of the other four vehicles, the bike Fat-Bottomed Girls was still negotiating the back turn, whilst the other three were wrecked and awaiting respawn. Two of them had yet to pass Gate Two.

What with chatting to the public and a few breaks it took Caesar and I all day to run the game, and it was fairly tiring. But well worth it. People loved what they saw; there's no denying that Gaslands is an attractive game. Here's a couple of shots from Ralph of Caesar and I in action.

The 20 Can format was perfect for a demo game; it moved quickly without too many special rules, and allowed us to have an interesting variety of vehicles in play. We thought that, having got pole position, the bike would shoot ahead and get an easy win, but it was stymied at the first gate, and never really got back into the race. The two performance cars were also tipped strongly to finish well, but neither was able to fully exploit their capabilities, and make a break for it. As it was the race was won by two fairly conventional cars  that just drove in a safe and steady way.

Palaeo Diet On Two Continents

I took Palaeo Diet along to the club last night, since a couple of people were interested in trying it for the first time. Caesar decided to play as well. I sat out the first game to run it for the others, so Stuart, Bailey and Caesar ran two hunters apiece in my Australian megafauna setup.

I gave them a group of five kangaroos and three Diprotodons to hunt; they needed six Bulk, so that would be three roos or two Diprotodon, or a combination thereof.

Baily complicated things by selecting a hunter carrying fire.

They players decided to concentrate on the roos at the start, wounding one early on. The presence of fire startled them into a stampede which took them away from Bailey's hunters and towards where Stuart and Caeasar's were waiting.

They killed one, but the fire made the others very flighty, and the hunters couldn't easily get in close enough for further attacks.

However they did manage to kill a second, and it looked like we were in for a short game, since they only had to finish off the wounded one to win.

However the roos really did scatter across the board, and the hunters had to run to not only keep up with them, but also prevent them from leaving the table altogether. One of the kills got caught up in a fire. I ruled that whilst it wouldn't be destroyed it would lose one Bulk, so now the group had to kill something else to reach their target.

The Diprotodons got caught up in the general chaos.

One of Stuart's hunters was injured by an angry, car-sized, wombat, which then ran off. Meanwhile Caesar inflicted a hit on one of the other roos.

Bailey added more fire to the mix, and by now all of the roos were injured. The Diprotodons were proving tough to hunt, so the players concentrated on keeping the surviving roos in play and finishing one off.

Finally once of them got a killing blow; four roos were down, one of which had been lightly cooked, so the group got seven Bulk for one hunter injured. It was a messy, but successful hunt.

We had time for a second game, and switched to the northern hemisphere. This time we played the Men Who Would Be King, a competitive scenario in which individual hunters are vying to lead their tribe by proving who is the best hunter. I took part in this one. 

There were two small groups of grazers (some birds and some horses) as well as a cave-lion. Whoever struck the killing blow on the cave-lion within eight turns would be chief. If no-one had managed that, then the chief would be whoever had killed the most grazers.

Stuart too a club-armed hunter. He moved onto the board and startled the grazing birds, who ganged up him, attacked him and, in a display of unlucky die rolls, killed him.

And then there were three.

Bailey and I had hunters with missile weapons. Bailey shot at a couple of horses, wounding them and causing them to run towards Caesar's spear-armed hunter. Caesar killed one, but all of this activity had attracted the cave-lion, who attacked his hunter. But Caesar managed to seriously wound the lion as well!

With Caesar looking close to a win, Bailey and I made lots of noise to antagonise the predator, which caused it to attack Caesar's hunter with great ferocity, killing him.

And then there were two.

You aren't allowed to directly attack other hunters in this scenario, but you can put them in harm's way. I drew the lion after me, then ducked behind Bailey hoping that it would attack him. It chose to stand and roar. Bailey's hunter backed off and finished off the lion with a lucky shot.

So Bailey was the new chief!

Both games were great fun, and very lively and I think the new players enjoyed their sojourn in our prehistoric past.