The HOTT Literature Championships - Draw And Game 1

 A couple of weeks ago Geoff and I played a small three round knockout HOTT tournament using two literary matched pairs from my collection. I quite enjoyed the concept and thought that it would be fun to expand it, even as a solo effort.

So I printed off a bracket for an eight army tournament - four matched pairs. 

On the Ace we have Redwall vs Cluny's Rat Hordes. On the Two are the Barsoomian pair of the Red men of Helium vs the Green Men of Warhoon. The Three is the Alan Garner pair - the Forces of Light vs The Morthbrood. And finally the Four represents the Narnians vs the White Witch

The second set of four cards is shuffled and ready for the draw. games will be played in order from left to right, top to bottom. The winner of Game 1 will play the winner of Game 3 and the winner of Game 2 will play the winner of Game 4.

Game 1 - The card was a Three, so it would be The Forces of Light vs The Morthbrood.

The live feed was interrupted for the draw for Game 2, but I can report that the card was an Ace, so it will be Redwall vs Cluny's Rat Hordes.

Game 3 - The card was a Four, so this match would be the Narnians against the White Witch

Game 4 - Only the Two was left, so the final game of the first round would be Helium vs Warhoon

At this point the draw was interrupted by the announcement that I had been awarded the prestigious FIFA Greatest HOTT Player In The World award! This award is totally real, and not at all made up. 

It's such an honour. 

After all that excitement it was time to set up the opening game! The Forces of Light would play the Morthbrood.

The Forces of Light defended and tried to close down the terrain, if only to limit the Morthbrood's aerial element.

The first combat of the tournament - Lios Alfar ambushers attacked the palug cats moving through the village, but were driven off.

The Morthbrood advance was slowed by terrain and bad PIPs, and some of their elements got left behind. The Forces of Light saw an opportunity to bring numbers to bear, and advanced rapidly to meet the enemy.

The armies meet.

Initial combats went against the Morthbrood for the most part. But the Mara pushed ahead on the Morthbrood's right, and a retaliation by the Morrigan ensorcelled Albanac, the hero of the Forces of Light.

The Mara drove back the Lios Alfar cavalry.

The Einheriar of the Herlathing cut through the Svart Alfar hordes. The Morthbrood line was now looking pretty thin.

The loss of Albanac forced Cadellin Silverbrow to step into the front line, scattering Svart Alfar as he went.

The Morthbrood hordes were all but wiped out.

But reinforcements were on the way, and the Morthbrood's breakpoint was a little way off yet.

The Mara finally destroyed the Lios Alfar riders, to even the score.

But the Brollachan was ridden down and fled, leaving the table.

And now the Morrigan was surrounded ...

... and cut down by Dward warriors.

This was enough to give the Forces of Light the win.

The score was 12G-6 to the Forces of Light.

The Morthbrood suffered from PIP starvation at a couple of key moments, that meant that they couldn't bring a couple of key elements to bear when they needed to. They did manage to bring back most of their hordes though. 

The Forces of Light will go into the semi-final where they will play the winner of the Narnian game.

Fjord Racing

Last night was our final normal club-meeting of the year, so as is traditional we played a single large game. Because our these of the week was Naval, Ralph came up with the idea of playing Fjord Serpents. But we did something a little different - a race rather than a straight battle.

Each player had one fully-crewed ship, either a small but nimble karvi or a large (but slightly faster) snekkja. Because they are slightly faster the snekkja started further back.

The goal was to race down the fjord, round the buoy (blue marker) and then head back to the finish-line. The winner would get 3 treasure, second-place 2 and third-place 1. But scattered around the terrain pieces and shoreline was more treasure, so a ship could win by going slow and collecting treasure before finishing. Or stealing treasure from another ship.

It all looked pretty straightforward, but the area we were sailing in was, shall we say, somewhat constricted, and it was obvious that there wasn't going to be room for everyone without some conflict.

And they're off!

This snekkja with the green and white checked sails was mine. I got to start close to the shore, so didn't have to worry as much about a possible scrum in the centre.

Daniel (blue stripes) and Ralph (red stripes) moved ahead with their karvis. But Daniel collided with Ralph and we had teh first damage of the game. In Ralph's case it was considerable.

Five ships sailed to avoid a log-jam in the fjord by going through the main channel. Other Daniel (red sail karvi) and I went through the gap. Other Daniel ran inshore to collect some treasure. He had decided to focus on the race, not other ships.

Craig's snekkja headed along the other shoreline and collided with Ralph's ship, sinking it. We were now down to six competitors.

Caesar's ship (white sail) broke through into a lead. Behind him you can see Other Daniels ship against the shore, and mine against the log-jam, both collecting treasure. 

Here I am, stocking up on loot. The idea was that we didn't have to win the race if we could collect lots of stuff first.

And this is why it wasn't worth getting too far ahead in the race - as Caesar rounded the buoy one way, Craig was rounding it the other and there was a collision.

Collisions in Fjord Serpents can do a lot of damage to both ships. And you can see Daniel and Keegan's ships heading towards Caesar's intent on doing as much as possible.

Aerial view. Caesar and Craig were locked in a boarding action, whilst at the bottom of the picture Other Daniel was on the move. His plan was to go past the buoy and come back in through the gap in the two islands, hoping that, by then, all the other ships would have sunk each other.

Another shot of my ship and its heroic crew.

And here it is deliberately colliding with Keegan's ship. Which sank. Mind you, it left my ship pretty beaten up as well.

Yes, my plan was to go round the buoy by just smashing through all of the ships in the way.

Other Daniel can be seen beginning his turn bottom right. Meanwhile I was preparing to bash Caesar's ship out of the way. But wait! Is that Daniel's karvi comin up the middle of the scrum?

It is! I smashed into that and it sank.

Other Daniel joined in, comin in between the islands to smash Caesar's ship to pieces. 

At that point we had to call the game. Other Daniel and I both had two treasure, whilst Craig had nothing. But both Craig and I had ship that were close to sinking, whereas Other Daniel's had taken no damage at all. He'd played a nice safe tactical game and deserved to be considered the winner.

Thanks to everyone involved for a fun evening, and to Ralph for putting together the scenario.

Triple HOTT

After a long break I played HOTT with Geoff last night. Initially I wasn't sure what armies to take, but then I had a shower-thought and thought of a triplet of games based around some children's fantasy literature.

I took my Narnian matched pair and my Alan Garner matched pair. We played one game with each pair, and then a final where the winning armies from the first two games faced off.

The first game saw me running the Narnians with Geoff running the White Witch. The Narnians defended. This is the position after a couple of turns.

The two armies closed and, thanks to some interesting terrain placement, both had their right flanks anchored on hills.

First combats ...

... saw some push and shove, and the Narnians lost a couple of beasts, exposing their left.

Aslan had stayed in reserve in case of such disasters, and started chewing his way through the White Witch's hordes.

The Narnians had a run of good combats and began to turn things around, destroying some enemy behemoths.

On the left of the picture you can see a problem for the White Witch. The Pevensie children are attacking the minotaur from the front, whilst Narnia's giant is providing a potentially fatal flank contact. If the Pevensies win then the minotaur is destroyed. If The minotaur wins then the Pevensies and the giant recoil, and the giant crushes the White Witch.

The minotaur dies, and that was enough to break the White Witch's army.

So our first finalists were the Narnians.

The second game was between two armies based on Alan Garner's 'Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath'. I took the evil Morthbrood (which is almost identical in structure to the White Witch's army), whilst Geoff was the Forces of Light under the wizard Cadellin Silver-Brow.

Geoff pushed Cadellin to the fore and he quickly bespelled the fearsome Mara, forcing it to retreat.

The armies closed over the length of a long ridge. Kind of appropriate, if you know the books.

The Mara fled into some woods ...

... and was destroyed by Lios Alfar ambushers.

The Morthbrood's right flank collapsed and things started to look bad for them.

But the shapeless black blob that is that the Brollachan sneaked through the enemy lines, with a clear run at the stronghold.

The Morthbrood's left flank - Svart Alfar hordes backed up with crow fliers - evened things up a bit, holding off the Wild Hunt knights and destroying the Lios Alfar horsemen supporting them. 

The Herlathing in action!

But the battle ended when the Brollachan switched from the enemy stronghold to attack Cadellin Silver-Brow, supported by the crows. It's not often you get a game where a sneaker kills an every general, but this was one.

So the final was between the Morthbrood and the Narnians. Geoff took the Narnians this time.

The crows were at the forefront again, picking off the Narnian hordes on the flank. The Brollachan was also oozing forward.

A fight on the Morthbrood left saw their beasts destroyed.

The Mara was next. 

Narnian hordes returned via Cair Paravel. The crows were sent to destroy them and possibly clear the way for the Brollachan.

The Svart Alfar bore the brunt of the Narnian attack, and held it well.

Aslan went after the Brollachan, but couldn't destroy it. It soon fled from him towards the stromghold.

The Morrigan destroyed the Narnian giant.

But she was attacked by the Pevensie children supported by some dwarves. And she won - the children were ensorcelled by her dark magic.

Leaderless the Narnians fell prey to the Morthbrood and were defeated.

So two wins for the Morthbrood who emerged as the top army of the night.

I'm keen to try this again with two more matched pairs to create an eight-army World Cup of literature. I can add in my Redwall matched pair, and to round it out maybe a pair of Barsoomian armies as well.