Triple HOTT

We played HOTT at the club last night for the first time in ages. made me realis that I'd only played a couple of games of HOTT all year so far. There were three of us, so that gave us three games over the course of the evening. 

Geoff and I started the ball rolling. He used a version of his Gondorians - knights, riders, shooter spears and a hero general. I used my super-impetuous Squidmen - warband, knights and a behemoth.

The Squidmen have one tactic - charge. The skill is in the timing. 

Geoff pushed forward his cavalry and hero to screen the vulnerable spears from hordes of tentacles horrors with spears. And that was the first fight of the game. 

The fighting soon spread along the whole line as the Gondorians were slowly pushed back. 

Parts of the Gondorian line collapsed under the onslaught. Even the mighty knights of Dol Amroth couldn't hold back the ravening land-sharks. 

But here's the thing with a warband army - it's easy for elements to get cut-off and surrounded. And that's what happened to my general. Somehow he managed to hold of the heroic Imrahil and some flanking cavalry. 

Other Squidmen rushed to his aid, and disaster was not only averted but the table were turned and Imrahil found himself fighting for his life. 

However as is often the way wit these things, the battle was won on one of the flanks, as a breakthrough by the behemoth saw the Knights of Dol Amroth flanked and destroyed to give the squidmen a fairly convincing win. 

Caesar stepped up next. Geoff fielded the Gondorians again, but swapping Imrahil for Gandalf and moving command to one of the spear elements. Caesar fielded an army of horse nomads (Easterlings I guess, if we want to keep this in a Tolkein setting). The main force was a mix of knights and riders, whilst he borrowed some of my lion-centaurs as beasts (representing wargs I guess). 

All fairly tidy at the start. However the gap in the nomads' line is due to Gandalf sorcery. 

Caesar's general got isolated and destroyed. But he'd managed to inflict enough losses on teh Gondorians to be able to keep fighting. 

Nomads with limited command and control are never going to fight well, but somehow Caesar held on, performing bod deeds on his right flank. 

Gandalf rushed over to the rescue but it was too late. Once again Gondor was defeated. 

It was a close result though; at the end both armies were one element from defeat and had viable kills on the last turn. We could have gone into a sudden-death turn.

The final game saw Caesar and I matched up. Caesar used teh nomads again, but swapped the beasts for some warband. This was mostly because I wanted to use my Lion-centaur Knights of Simba, a 50/50 mix of knights and warband. 

I opened the fighting, matching my warband against Caesar's He had the advantage of a hill, whilst I had a slight edge in numbers. 

I attacked with more warband on the other flank. With Caesar occupying two hills I didn't want to commit to a frontal charge at this stage. Win on the flanks, roll up his line and then charge to finish them off was my plan. 

Can you see the weakness in my position here?

That's right - vulnerable flanks. Suddenly Caesar's army sprang into action, threatening my attack on his right. 

And riders and knights swarmed into the gap on my right flank, isolating the original warband fight on the hill (which just became a shoving match for the rest of the battle). 

The Knights of Simba moved to prevent disaster as their general was exposed on the one flank. 

However once again I had an isolated and flanked general hold out for turn after turn until the rest of his army was able to not only stabilise things, but rout the opposing army.

It was a fairly close battle until the end, when the Knights of Simba pulled together and saved the day.

I really enjoyed both of the games I played and especially enjoyed watching Caesar's nomads in action; we don't get enough heavily mounted armies in play and it was fun matching them against another fast-moving army for what was a pretty exciting third game.