Big HotT game

Utilising the impetus I gained during my last two Hordes of the Things games, I decided to go all out and try a big game with almost everything I have painted hitting the table! I'm not following the rules in the book precisely for this, just having  fun and seeing what happens. 

Here's the initial set up. At the top of the table are two evil armies, at the bottom to three human ones. 

Clockwise from top left these are:

Ratmen: mostly Warband with some Shooters and a smattering of Beasts, Riders and Heros. 

The rats are allied with a mixed force. Chaos Dwarfs, Chaos and Undead knights, a wizard, a skeleton giant and some wolves, led by a wraith on a winged mount. 

Facing this tide of evil are (from right to left): 

A band of human archers and riders led by a mounted hero (These are from my Wallachian army for DBA):

Human Riders and Knights, along with a cannon and peasant rabble. These are most of a Ottoman Turk army for DBA: 

And a selection of Blade and Spear elements, a Northman contingient. And yes, you guessed it, they are incomplete Viking and Saxon DBA armies!:

After a few turns, the battle proper is starting. On the right, the evil army is holding the hill while the wolves try to flank the horsemen:

In the centre (on the right of the pic below), evil knights have moved round the other side of the woods the wolves are in to exploit a gap. The human knights are moving to meet them. On the left the Ratmen are moving slowly forward, as are the Northmen:

Unfortunately an error was made which lead to some human cavalry being pushed back into their allies by bow fire and destroyed! First blood to the evil army! 

Battle is joined in ernest in the centre as the knights on both sides charge in. The result was indecisive, but the evil side were pushed back, with the humans following up. 

Casualties start to mount on both sides:

On the left flank the humans reform against the rats while knights from both sides remain locked in battle:

Cavalry try to outflank the Ratman archers:

As the last of the wolves is defeated, the Ratman hero joins the fray:

Ratman archers are eliminated as the human cavalry continue to harass the flank and face the hero:

An element of human knights falls:

The humans try to reform their line as casualties mount on both sides:

Ratmen wolf riders were slain, shortly followed by two elements of warband as the humans cheer:

The level of casualties mean it is now hard for either side to maintain an effective battle line:

Human spearmen fall to the rats:

At this point the battle was almost over on the left. Both sides had taken enough casualties for their forces to be demoralised, but all of them clung on until the bitter end. 

The right flank was not as exciting. Human forces advanced against the Evil army's line while wolves lurked in the woods, ready to pounce. 

The wolves were eventually beaten offbu the human riders and hero, while the Chaos Dwarf bowmen were slowly ground down. Soon it reached a bit of a stalemate between the hero and the bone giant, with neither able to achieve a decisive advantage. 

Final casualties (% of points fielded):

Humans:

Northmen: 88%

'Turks': 72%

'Wallachians': 38%

TOTAL: 66%

Evil Armies:

Ratmen: 69%

Generic evil: 47%

TOTAL: 60%

So it was a very close run battle. I think out of the remaining forces, the Wallachians were best placed to regroup and continue. I'm not sure the unbroken evil army would have lasted long against them. So I am declaring this a marginal human victory, and a very fun game!

Xmas HotT: 2nd Game

After the victory against the Ratmen, it was time for a more challenging foe. The next battle for the Xmas army would be against an amalgamation of half finished forces, chaos dwarves, chaos and undead. This army is more heavy on elements that either quick kill or get higher combat modifiers against beasts or mounted, which is half the Xmas army!

The full list is:

Chaos Knights (Gen Kn): 2pts

Chaos Dwarf hero (Hero): 4pts

2x Chaos Knights (Knights): 4pts

3x Chaos Dwarf Xbows (Shooter): 6pts

2x Ratmen (Warband): 4pts

Skeleton Giant (Behemoth): 4pts

The armies lined up and ready. Seeing all the enemy elements that are good at killing Beasts is a bit daunting: 

Battle is joined in the centre:

Given that Beasts, Warband, and Knights all follow up after winning melee, it was never going to be a static battle line!: 

The Wraith moves over from the left flank to prevent the Knights from breaking through. The rightmost pair of Warband use the hight advantage from the hill to force the other Knights back:

A change in the enemy's plan. The general withdraws and the crossbows start to pick off the Christmas trees:

 

The Wraith follows up the enemy general. The Chaos Dwarf hero on the left holds off the snowmen and the crossbows on the right advance to maximise their shooting against the trees:

Things are looking desperate now. The bone giant and Ratmen have advanced off the hill and the crossbows have done their worst. The hero and general are holding the enemy's centre against all my efforts:

The bitter end. Although my final element of Trees destroyed an element of crossbows, my Warband were defeated by the enemy general and the Christmas army lost:

With gaps appearing in the line, the Wraith and Warband were hard pressed to stop the enemy taking advantage of the opportunities this presented. It didn't help that they were badly matched. The enemy were defending so there was very little bad going terrain for my army to take advantage of. That was a huge factor against the Knights. Also, needing to double up Warband elements to get their bonus and having a hero worth 3 times a normal unit meant the Xmas army is reliant on beasts to form the main width of their battle line. This is not a good proposition against an army like the one they faced. 

So the Christmas Wraith returns to the Winterlands to lick his wounds and see what next Christmas will bring his growing army. I'm looking forward to developing this army with the next release from 15mm.co.uk. No idea what it will be at the moment, but some kind of mounted troops or missile armed ones would be nice!

Easter Diversion

Many years ago (and by that I mean 15-20) I received a Lego X-Wing for Easter. It was a pretty awesome Easter gift then and is even more awesome now! Better yet, I still own the kit so thought what better to blog about today than a Lego-building trip back to my youth?

Here's the box:

And the bits (hope they are all there!):

After a few minutes of work I have assembled the maintenance vehicle:

I imagine when I was younger I would have balked at the idea of having to complete this vehicle first, before the 'main event'!

And here's the X-Wing!:

It's a very cool model and only took 20 mins to half an hour to build. Luckily all the bits were there! Now I have built it again, I think I'll have to find somewhere suitable to display it. 

So thanks to my parents for getting this for me all those years ago, and happy Easter!

Christmas Project Complete!

It's been a while since I've been able to post much of anything on my blog. The demands of fatherhood are many and varied so much of my energy over the last 6 months has been exerted elsewhere. But I've been making the most of minutes snatched here and there to progress my various projects. It's just that this level of activity doesn't lend itself to being posted about on a blog!

However, this week I am happy to say I have managed to compete my 2014 Christmas project, and only 4 months late!

15mm.co.uk do an excellent seasonal range of figures, only available over the festive period. Last year they added evil snowmen to the killer Christmas Trees from 2013 and I ended up deciding that I could use these as a decent basis for a Hordes of the Things army. So I bought a pack of each of them plus a Wraith on winged mount ( It's a bad pun you see... Christmas Wraith... Christmas Wreath... Never mind...). 

The pack of Christmas Trees gave me 5 elements of Beasts:

The snowmen pack provided 4 bases of Warband (you get some rifle-armed snowmen, but these I kept for modern horror games):

I picked the Wraith as it made up the points required for a typical HotT army and it fitted in okay with the theme:

Here's the army assembled and ready for battle:

One thing I like about the way 15mm.co.uk sell these packs is that each year I'll get a surprise new type of element to add to the army! 

So, having assembled the various elements it was time to test them on battle! Emerging from the winter wastes, the army first encountered the ratmen of the highland regions. This was a similar match up, with both sides having several stands of beasts and warband. 

The armies arrayed for battle!

A fierce melee in the centre of the table.

The Ratman line begins to break, leaving their general vulnerable.

The Ratman general falls just before his beasts can make contact

All in all it was a good little game. The main conflict was in the centre, with much to-ing and fro-ing between the warbands. The Wraith was able to fly behind the Ratman lines and pick off the odd exposed element, which helped. On the Ratman army's left flank the wolves managed to drive off the Xmas Trees, leaving them in a position to move to the centre and confront the snowmen, but it was too late by that point.

I'm loving these new figures and I look forward to finding out in Autumn what will be the next release!

More battles in posts to follow this one.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome as always.

The Conflict Cornucopia on Twitter

I In a seemingly half-baked idea to promote my blog, The Conflict Cornucopia has taken to Twitter!

Follow @concornblog for updates, if you are into that kind of thing. 

A VSF Diversion

I'm making some progress with my four assigned projects for the year. But not a lot. Actually, it's more like very little progress. It's been a busy few months and I didn't really believe te warnings that new parents pick up every illness their baby brings home. 

Here's a quick summary of where I am at:

Judge Dredd

No progress

Slaughterloo

No progress

Muskets and Tomahawks

No progress

Star Wars

No progress (well, I bought lots more figures and organised my collection...)

So, yeah, not the greatest of starts to the year! And to compound it all I've been circling the idea of 2mm VSF using Areonef, Land Ironclads and the hex based Space 1889 skyship rules. Of course, the plus side is that it isn't necessarily an expensive diversion!

I ended up buying PDF versions of all the above rules and printed off Aeronef and Land Ironclads. I don't know why, but I have never used the booklet printing option on my printer before. So I tried it out and ended up with some nifty A5 rule booklets. Much better than a pile of A4 printed on one side. 

Then, with the aid of a Battletech map and some home-made counters, I was ready to give Land Ironclads a go. True, the rules are not written for hex maps, but it was easy to convert them. I set a 200 point British force against a pair of Martian Tripods. 

Above is the initial set up. Two tripods are at the top. The British have two lines of infantry and then three artillery batteries and a unit of tank contraptions. 

A turn into the game and the Martians have eliminated one artillery battery. They have chosen to ignore the infantry entirely  as they can pass through them and are almost impervious to their fire. 

During the following turn, the Martians eliminate the tank contraptions. The human infantry have tried to wheel round and face their foes, but it has not helped much. Artillery fire was moderately successful, but only inflicted a couple of points of damage. 

Unfortunately I caught a stomach bug soon after this point, so I have not continued. That said, I think it would have been a clear Martian victory. The cannon would have been next to feel the heat rays and the infantry really weren't up to much. 

In the plus side, I think the rules worked very well and gave a game with a good feel to it. I think I might have to pick up a few bits and play with proper miniatures. I can see myself playing alternate history games, using Land Ironclads during the ACW or staging a joint French/German invasion of Britain. But also I like the background of All Quiet On The Martian Front, which sees a second Martian invasion take place in 1910, so I'd like to develop some good Martian and Human forces for that. Then, of course, there is the option for Space 1889 type adventures with skyships flying across Mars. So lots of potential!