Rohan vs Mordor

Geoff and I finally played our delayed 72AP HOTT game last night. We used Geoff's 15mm Middle Earth armies, which were assembled over may years from figures bought at bring and buys; they are a mix of old and new figures and different painting styles, but he has a load of them and they look great en masse.

Anyway I selected an army from his Riders of Rohan figures, and Geoff went for a Mordor army. And here they are, all set up.

Rohan. I had one command of mainly spears, with some supporting knights. They were led by Theoden. Eowyn was in the army as a hero general. Her command was a mix of knights and riders. My final command was some ally ents. Led by Treebeard they were a mixture of behemoths and woodsmen warbands.

The army of Mordor. One command, led by a Ringwraith hero, was all hordes. Another was a mix of Olog-hai blades and warg riders. And a third in the centre was Uruk-hai warband and trolls under a Ringwraith C-in-C.

On Rohan's left the knights and riders under Eowyn faced a lot of hordes.

Ents in Rohan's centre.

The woodsmen were briefly inconvenienced by Shelob, but she was quickly driven off.

Meanwhile on Rohan's right the two armies were close. At the bottom of the picture you can just see knights and riders about to engage in a wood, in an attempt to outflank the enemy line.

Rohan spears vs Mordor Olog-hai. The advantage was with Mordor, but the spears were just there to hold them in place whilst the battle was won elsewhere.

And here's where I hoped to do well. Rohan's knights charged into the massed orc hordes. There was great slaughter. Of orcs (just in case you were wondering).

Rohan's riders stared down more orcish hordes on Rohan's far left.

The centre. Here the ents were fighting trolls whilst the supporting warband of both sides tried to avoid the enemy behemoths.

It got messy. The behemoth fight turned sideways and now the warband scrambled about trying to stay out of the recoil zones.

Orcs and riders met at last. Despite lacking the punch of Rohan's knights, their riders set to killing orcs.

On the other flank there's been some push and shove, but very few losses. Both sides took a moment to reorganise their lines.

The ents were getting the upper-hand against the trolls. And the woodsmen were finishing off the Uruk-hai.

Although Geoff was bringing back hordes as fast as he could, Rohan was riding them down faster. Now their general was looking exposed.

Over on Rohan's far right the skirmish in the wood had seen losses on both sides, but Rohan finally prevailed.

A Ringwraith comes under attack from lots of Rohan warriors.. But a hero general is a tough proposition, and fought them off.

A brief hairy moment for Treebeard as he was flanked by trolls. But he prevailed, forcing the opposition back.

Rohan kept up the pressure on the orc hordes.

Treebeard finished off more trolls, and Mordor's centre command broke.

However on Rohan's right Theoden was killed by some Olog-hai ...

... and that broke Rohan's spear command, most of which fled the field immediately.

Rohan had another crack at the Ringwraith.

But at that point Geoff counted up his losses and realised that he's lost the game the bound before (indeed before Theoden was killed, but we decided that a Nelsonian death in his hour of victory was a perfect end to the game). In fact the game was very close. The loss of Theoden's command put Rohan close to breaking; if Geoff had been able to fight on he could have pretty much brought back enough hordes to clinch a win.

This was a fun game. There wasn't a lot in the way of grand sweeping moves, but there was some interesting shuffling of troops in the various melees in attempt to get overlaps or prevent flanking moves. 

Thanks to Geoff for a fun battle. 

Middle Earth HOTT

Geoff and I played a couple of games of HOTT last night. He brought his vast collection of Middle Earth troops. I'd planned to borrow from those, but took my new Wood Elves as well and, in fact, used them in both games.

In the first game the Elves were attacking Geoff's Army of Mordor. Geoff put down some large areas of bad going, so I anchored my flanks on them and waited for him to come to me. Which he did.

My archers cut down some hordes on his left, but his centre quickly closed into melee.

On my left I surrounded some Orc warband with lurkers and destroyed them. The lurkers spent the rest of the game doing a sterling job covering that flank.

In the centre, Geoff's Uruk Hai blades (which included the general) were pushing me back, but the bad going protected me from the worst of it. Mordor's trolls battled the Elves' ent.

Mordor's general broke through the Elven line.

The troll steadily forced the ent back towards the Elves' baseline.

But the Elven archery was taking its toll; Mordor was slowly running out of troops that weren't hordes (Geoff was sensible enough to bring any of those that were lost back into action).

The ent was forced off the board by the trolls.

But the Urk Hai general was destroyed when he was shot at and his recoil was blocked by some Elf archers.

The Elves picked up a 10g-8 victory.

In the second game Geoff switched to a Gondorian army with a mix of spears, blades, knights and shooters. The Elves defended. I set up a few woods to hide in.

Gondor's archers found themselves exchanging fire with Elves well hidden in the trees. But they stood their ground fairly well; the Elves didn't inflict as many casualties as I hoped they would, despite the real advantage that shooters get for being in woods when there's an exchange of fire.

Geoff's centre just charged straight in, risking knights against shooters. It was 50/50 - he lost an element of knights and I lost one of my archers.

I kept shooting and Geoff kept attacking, and casualties were about even. But I lost my general to a flank attack to give Geoff the win in this game.

With one win each we called it a night.

Battle For Minas Tirith

 Geoff and I played a 72AP game of HOTT last night, using his Middle Earth armies. He ran a combined Gondor/Rohan army, whilst I had the forces of Mordor. Here's the game set up and ready to go. We both massed our foot on the flank nearest the camera, with the centre and the other flank being primarily made up of mounted.

My foot were led by the Lord of the Nazgul, on his winged beast.

Geoff's stronghold was, of course, Minas Tirith.

On my left flank my wolf-riders were faced by the massed knights of the Riders of Rohan. This was not going to be an easy fight for me.

In they went; on the far right the Nazgul in command of my centre moved in to fight Eomer.

The wolves were pushed back, whilst Eomer and the Nazgul both died (one of those rare Hero vs Hero getting a draw situations).

In the centre I'd Advanced a large command of trolls to smash the Rohan troops before them, but poor PIPs, a bit of bespelling from Gandalf and, finally, the loss of their general made it less of a mighty blow than I'd hoped.

Indeed the Lord of the Nazgul had to fly over from his relatively static flank in order to plug a serious gap in the centre.

My position was not looking good at this stage, with the wolf-riders obviously doomed, the centre paralysed and nothing happening with my foot. So I decided to go all out an simply try and win the battle with the Lord of the Nazgul. I mean I say 'win'. What I mean is 'salvage some kind of credibility'. So I sent him over to kill Gandalf. And he did. 

The foot of both sides did finally meet and there was the obligatory blade vs blade shoving match between the soldiers of Minas Tirith and the Olog Hai.

The Lord of the Nazgul destroyed some of Rohan's foot, whilst the surviving trolls attempted to take out some of their horse (and failed). 

On my left the wolf-riders had ceased to exist as a fighting force, and Rohan was reorganising to roll up my centre. And even my centre was demoralised. I was only a smidge from breaking.

Rohan surrounded some trolls in the centre, pushing me closer to defeat.

The Lord of the Nazgul went for the Rohan commander in the centre, but failed to kill him.

And the loss of the last element of wolf-riders sealed my fate.

Geoff played well, and exploited the weakness of my army organisation. I went for an all-out smash in the centre and completely blew it, leaving my 'delay the enemy' flank to be wiped out and my static flank unable to do anything meaningful. Countering his knights - he had a lot - had to be the priority and I suspect mixing the trolls into the other commands was probably the best way forward. Still, with the enemy having a magician, I did well not to lose one of the three hero generals my side had. That would have been an embarrassingly quick loss had it happened to the Lord of the Nazgul.