Thursday HOTT In 28mm

It was a quiet evening at the Wollongong Wargamers this week, with only four of us turning out - possibly an effect of the schools' winter break maybe.

Anyway, Geoff and I played HOTT again, but this time we got our 28mm armies out. Mine haven't seen the light of day for a while.

In the first game Geoff attacked with his Dark Elves, whilst I was defending with my anime-inspired Sororitas Puella Armatura Mobilis. 

Things went badly for me when Geoff got his god on the table on the second bound, and swiftly took out my paladin

The god then went on to harass and destroy my fliers.

The Sisters are a fairly fragile army - two heroes, a paladin, four warband and a couple of fliers - so their best tactic is a bold attack; win big or die fast.

In they went, outnumbered and overlapped.

All things considered they did really well, slicing through the centre of the Dark Elf line. The heroes on the right flank got the worst of the combat results.

The Sister's general was flanked, but fought off the attackers. Proper hero stuff.

Anyway, Geoff's god wouldn't go away, but got bogged down fighting my last flier. I ran out of PIPs to launch an effective continued assault, but got an opening for my other hero to charge the Dark Elf magician general. I was already 8AP down, whilst Geoff had lost 6AP of troops, so whoever won this fight would win the game. It was a straight 50/50 die roll to decide the battle. Geoff rolled a '2' and I rolled ... a '1'! Curses! But a narrow victory for the Dark Elves despite the 12-6 score.

Both armies were looking a little depleted and scattered. But the god was still there.

I defended in the second game we set up. Geoff switched to some Nice Elves, whilst I got out my Dwarves.

I won the game on the second bound when Geoff, who had forgotten the results of Artillery vs Hero, saw his general decapitated by a shot from the Dwarves' organ gun - 'O Hercules, the valour of elves is at an end!'

That was a win for me. However we couldn't be bothered setting up the game again, so we pretended it hadn't happened and carried on. Geoff advanced his spear phalanx towards the Dwarven left, held by a couple of elements of knights and a paladin.

Meanwhile shooters and warband advanced on my solid line of blades, with supporting shooters.

And that's where the game ended again, as my blade general was destroyed by an Elven warband. So a win for Geoff.

Again, we pretended it hadn't happened and carried on. The spears charged my right ...

... and it all went horribly wrong for the Dwarves; both knights were destroyed with no difficulty, leaving the paladin in his solid anti-magic armour, fighting alone.

On the other flank the Elves found themselves accosted by some lurkers.

Back to my left where, despite being outnumbered, my paladin fought on; he just kept getting drawn combat after drawn combat.

He simply wouldn't die. We imagined him fighting off the spear-phalanxes from atop a mound of Elven bodies.

The odds caught up with him eventually, but it took several bounds, and bought the Dwarves tons of time elsewhere.

With the paladin gone Geoff turned his attentions to the troublesome artillery. Eliminating this would, in fact, win the battle for him. Instead the artillery blew away the spears attacking it.

The Elven hero charged some Dwarven blades. And they simply refused to die as well, holding up the hero for the rest of the battle.

The fight on my right; the Dwarves were slowly pushing the Elven archers back, and had eliminated the warband. The paladin and artillery bought them the time to do this. Eventually Dwarf axe won out over Elven bow, and the Dwarves picked up a narrow 12-11 victory.

So I won twice and Geoff won once. Not bad for a single battle, and overall it was one game each for us.

On the other table Darren taught Peter the fundamentals of Nimitz, using a couple of Italian squadrons in what was obviously a training exercise (or a weird civil war).