Thursday HOTT

Last night saw my first HOTT of 2025 and, indeed, my first HOTT for a while. Once again I was playing against Geoff, who used a Gondorian army. In the first game they were a load of spears, some shooters, a couple of knights and support from a pair of Eagle fliers.

I used my Wild Elves - six warband, a couple of magicians and a couple of shooters. Geoff defended.

The eagles came out boldly and fell foul of the Elven archers

Geoff switched them to the other flank where the elven magicians dealt with them instead.

Both lines looked a bit fragmented as Geoff closed on the Elves.

He quickly overwhelmed my left flank.

I attacked his spears in teh centre with my warband, but couldn't get the rolls to make that vital first kill. Warband are always a gamble in that respect.

One of my magicians was shot down by the Rangers of Ithilien.

Geoff closed in for the kill. On my left my general was looking vulnerable.

My magician general was overlapped and killed, giving Geoff a 12g-4 win.

So on to the next game. Geoff dropped the poorly performing eagles and added Gandalf as a magician. I swapped armies and went for Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo. This consisted of a hero general, four fliers, and airboat, a lurker, two warband and two riders. Geoff defended again.

The Hawkmen fliers were in a lump on my left. Not learning from the previous game I sent them straight into action with a vague plan of picking off some flank units before the rest of my army came up.

One of them got picked off my Gandalf but the others managed to mob an element of  knights, then draw them into bad going for a potential kill.

Unfortunately the knight fought well, and forced the flier opposing it to flee. I had to resort to the lurkers to finish the knight off and, in teh meantime, Gandalf took out another flier.

My main force was coming up on an enemy that was looking rather too well-entrenched for my liking.

Ithilien archers took out Prince Vultan. So that wasn't good.

I charged my meagre forces into the Gondor line.

On my right the Frigians managed to destroy more Gondorian knights.

But unable to make any headway in the centre, Flash was surrounded and, once again, I lost 12g-4

So two losses was not a great start to my HOTT playing year. We didn't have time for a third game; as the club meet started we had a (false) fire alarm and had had to evacuate the building, so we were late starting actual games.