Dwarves and Greeks versus Orks and Draconians / HotT Battle Report

Last Saturday I got together with Sven, Andi and Krüger to play HOTT. Andi actually travelled 190 km for this and Sven even 510 km.

We used single based miniatures on large bases with an 80 mm frontage. Andi and I played as a team. Krüger and Sven were our opponents.

Andi played a dwarf army, made up of the following elements: Blade General (C-in-C), 6 Blades, 4 Spears, 1 Behemoth (2 little plastic Kinder Surprise trolls which look kind of cool), 1 Airboat, 1 Artillery.

I played 8 Shooters (Greek slingers).

Krüger played an Ork army: Warband General (C-in-C), 5 Warbands, 2 Knights, 1 Behemoth, 1 Hero.

Sven brought a Dragonlance army: Hero General (Sivak Draconian), 1 God (Takhisis), 4 Blades (Baaz Draconians), 2 Flyers (Kapak Draconians), 4 Hordes (Hobgoblins).

I don't know much about Dragonlance but Andi and Krüger got quite excited about this. Probably because they have read all the Dragonlance books.

Andi and I were the defenders and placed the terrain: a Mayan Temple and some woods.

Andi deployed his army in the centre. I placed 4 Shooters on the left flank and 4 Shooters on the right flank.

Krüger deployed his Hero, Behemoth and 2 Knights in the centre, opposite to Andi's army, and his Warbands opposite to our left flank. Sven placed his whole army opposite to our right flank. Their plan was to destroy our flanks quickly, I guess.

Andi's Airboat was a bit too daring and got killed by the Ork Hero at the beginning of the game.

The God Takhisis appeared early on and left in Sven's next bound. This is the only element he lost during the game.

My Greek slingers were hard to kill. They were able to push back Sven's Blades several times and even killed a couple of Warbands on the other flank, while Andi's army slowly destroyed the centre of the Draconian + Ork alliance. Apart from the Airboat, we lost 5 Shooters and 1 Blade. When Andi's Behemoth killed Krüger's Ork Hero after 2.5 hours, we won the game.

It was the first HOTT team game I have played. I like team games. It was lots of fun. I especially enjoyed the rules for demoralized commands.

Bettina, Sven's girlfriend, was so kind to take pictures of the game.

Imaginary Ancient Islands

I like the concept of imagi-nations which is popular among wargamers at the moment. There is a fascinating blog network called Emperor vs Elector which connects different blogs about imagi-nations and there is even a wargame written especially for gentlemen who want to field horse and musket armies of their imaginary nations against each other: Maurice by Sam Mustafa. All of this is very inspiring. 

I have been talking a lot with my cousin and Krüger about how we can introduce narrative elements to our tabletop battles. First of all we want to start using maps in our games. Do you know Cartographers' Guild, a forum dedicated to making maps of fictional places?

I started to collect 28mm ancient Greeks about a year ago, so I made this island. I don't know much about it yet. Sven suggested the name Kalimera which sounds good. Our hack and slash GURPS game next Saturday will take place on the island Kalimera which reminds me that I need to buy a bottle of Ouzo for my friends and some olives.

Since this post talks a lot about sources of inspiration, I would like to share a couple of pictures which fascinate me. I found them on Steve Dean's forum.

This samnite was sculpted by Kev White, one of my favourite sculptors. It's a portrait of Duff who commissioned the miniature and painted it.

This is a scene from RuneQuest. The samnite has a large helmet now which makes him a Rune Lord. The Walktapus was sculpted by Snuurg for Fenris Games. Both miniatures were painted by the very talented Duff.

Makes me want to get some old RuneQuest books. Ancient Greece + Beastmen + Cthulhu + Ducks sounds cool.

Yamas!