Thursday HOTT

I went for some HOTT at the Gong Garage Gamers last night; I haven't actually played a game for a couple of months, so felt it was time to go back to what is a perennial favourite. Geoff was up for a game, as was June, who hasn't played before.

June's bus was delayed so Geoff and I set up a game to get the evening started. He used his Haradrim, whilst I used my sadly-neglected Garden Gnomes.

June turned up part-way through, just in time to see the spears holding my left flank get overwhelmed by Haradrim swordsmen. That left my general exposed.

I tried ensorcelling one of the mumakil to drive it off, but failed, then lost one of my terror snails to another mumakil. At that point my general was surrounded and killed. And easy win for Geoff who lost one rider.

We then sat June down for her first game. I played her whilst Geoff assisted. I selected my High Elves for her to use as they have a few basic troop-types with the option of some of the specials if you feel daring. June opted for four spears (including the general), four shooters, two riders and a behemoth.

I used my Tuatha De Danaan, with heroes, knights, warband, a magician and some hordes. There were a lot of rough fields in play. June set up between two of them and I attacked there, covering my right flank with the hordes.

June's position was a tricky one to attack, with strong archer support on the one flank and a nasty-looking behemoth on the other. I went for the latter with my heroes and hopes for luck elsewhere, pitting the knights against the spears and the warband against her archers.

I lost a chariot knight and some warband to the pesky archers.

Charge! The behemoth was driven back by Lugh of the Long Arm, whilst I got very lucky in the middle and rode down a double-ranked group of spears with a chariot.

June did some fine element shuffling to defend against the inevitable flanking attack on her general, but it wasn't enough. Although the odds were in her favour when the Irish magicians attacked, a loss on her part would be fatal. And lose she did. I lost 5AP (warband, knight, horde) whilst she lost 8AP (four spears), plus her general.

We set up another game. June wanted to try another army so I offered the army of Rama - two heroes, knights, warband and beasts. Impetuous, small but often quite effective. I used the army of Daenerys Targaryen in a low-dragon iteration (they were represented by a single flyer).

A lot of the fighting centred around a hill on June's right defended by some monkey warband. I sent Dothraki riders against it, backed up by the dragons. And got driven back.

I'd not been paying attention in my enthusiasm to get the riders and dragons into action, and missed June's bears in the wood. They charged out and attacked the Dothraki, putting them at a horrible disadvantage in the ensuing combat. Unfortunately June experienced her first 6-1 die roll and my rider - who was fighting on a factor of 0, won the fight, destroying its opponent. 

I'm not sure how my riders ended up like that, but June pressed her advantage and soon had them horribly flanked. Needless to say I lost one.

On the other flank the main bodies of each army had simply stared at each other up until now.

But we soon had a hero vs hero fight as June decided to see what would happen in that case. It was fatal to her hero, Hanuman.

June's warband were driving off the hill now, pushing my Dothraki back. Rama had been confronted by some Unsullied spears and had backed off into the woods.

Daenerys herself entered the fray. She was classed as a rider general on the assumption that she is a non-combatant but surrounded by a Dothraki bodyguard. With the help of the dragon, who had up until now simply been spectators, they polished off the remaining bears and warband.

Meanwhile my unopposed heroes (whose names I always forget - it was the old bloke and the friendzone guy in the series), had rampaged down Rama's line, killing more warband. This one was the final element needed to take June to half losses.

Daenerys picked up a 12-2 with, with her only loss being the element of riders.

It was nice to get back into HOTT again, with a fun mix of armies, and also good to teach it to a new player.