HOTT Matched Pairs

I took a pair of my HOTT matched pairs to the Wollongong Wargamers, and played a couple of games with Bailey.

The first pair was my Australian Aboriginal pair. Bailey chose the Horrors Of The Dreamtime, whilst I had the heroic warriors. 

Bailey ended up with an impassable crag blocking his deployment area, but which also forced me to split my forces.

I sent my fliers off down the left flank to harrass the behemoth on the end of Bailey's line. The army's god soon joined them.

The god and behemoth fought, with the god supported by the fliers. The behemoth - the mighty Wulgaru - fell back, crushing some hordes in its path.

Marmoo, the Evil One moved out to engage one of my lone fliers. In earlier incarnations of the army he was a flier general, but for this game I experimented with dropping him to a basic flier, and transferred command to the Goose Women magician element. This makes their general easier to support and less prone to being picked off by enemy aerials, which is normally what happens when this matched pair meet.

Baiame, the god, saw the behemoth fall back and decided that his work here was done. The Goose Women's magic got rid of the supporting flier.

Meanwhile the heroic Winjarning Brothers had engaged the Great Whowie. It was backed up against the crag, so a win would see it slain. 

Instead it was teh brothers who retreated, pursued by the monster. They entered some rough ground and were ambushed by a bunyip. The two monsters made short work of the two heroes.

I was now one element away from breaking, and in desperation sent in the dingoes. As beasts these would be destroyed if they lost to the Whowie. But they didn't; they forced it to recoil into the bad going and it crushed the bunyip.

The dingoes kept fighting ...

... and killed the monster!

Things were looking good for my warriors.

That was, until Marmoo destroyed my second flier. That was enough to break the army.

So I lost that one 5-13. Not a good start to the evening.

Here's a shot by Ralph showing me deep in thought as I ponder how to salvage a game that was rapidly going down the pan.

For our second game we switched to my Boxer Rebellion pair. Bailey took the heroic Chinese whilst I took the evil Foreign Devils.

The Boxer's flier is currently on my painting table undergoing repairs, but I have elements to offset this, so long as you're happy playing lots of warband. Which Bailey was. Seven warband, a shooter, a behemoth and a magician, to be exact.

Bailey had set up a lot of his troops in a town, and I didn't fancy going into it after them, so I sent the Royal Navy (warband), Bengal Lancers (knights) and Italian and American troops (shooters) on a sweep around and through some woods to attack the Boxer right. Naturally Bailey shifted troops over as well, and it was here that the fight took place.

You can also see 200 year-old devil-prince Bishop Favier (hero) sneaking around the edge of the wood to the right.

The Boxers closed up on the woods and were met by plenty of rifle fire that drove them back but did little more.

Both sides organised a solid line, but Bishop Favier swept in on the flank of the Boxer line, engaging the mighty Peking Boxers (behemoth)

The Boxers' retreat saw the loss of a warband.

The fight swung back and forth and at various points both elements were flanked and in danger of being destroyed. But eventually the Bishop prevailed. It was a close-run thing though.

This left the Bishop free to rampage through the Boxer position. Bailey was reluctant to use magic on him because his magician was already one bad roll away from becoming a frog. Plus the magic-disrupting naked women (cleric)  were also close up and covering the Bishop.

The magician fell to an attack by the Royal Navy landing-party and the Bengal Lancers.

Bishop Favier destroyed another warband to give the Foreign Devils a 12-0 win.

So two fun games, and thanks to Bailey for giving HOTT another go, having only played once before.