Talk about Lady Luck? Some great HotT action.

It has been a while since I played any HotT, so Nick G popped around and we thrashed out two cool games. In the first I fielded the Victorian Science Fiction army, lead by none other than Major General Caruthers, and featuring that debonair inventor and adventurer Lord Chelting of Cheam with his wondrous flying machine, and downy faced young hero of the Empire Lieutenant Winstanley. Their foes were a sinister Sarmatian horde fresh from the foreign steppes.

Those fiendishly sinister Sarmatians

Lord Chelting fiddled with dials and levers as he manoeuvred his fantastical machine

Lord Chelting bravely flew into the rear of the enemy only to be confronted by a fearsome dragon.

Caught at a disadvantage by the dragon, Chelting tumbled backwards, and then rose dizzyingly above the dragon to overfly the threat and avoid its fearsome burning breath

In the meantime the main Sarmatian line (all knights!!) struck hard at the British line.

Caruthers and his men stood their ground while one of his attached units of the glorious 17th wreaked heinous harm upon their foe

Caruthers himself banished his opponents and, inspired by his example, his men followed suit

Meanwhile the battle royale continued in the skies above as the dragon pursued Lord Chelting.

Chelting turned to face his fierce-some opponent and, in a tussle that would be talked about for decades to come, a battle that would see Chelting labelled as the new Sir George, drove the dragon from the field.

The battle continued along the line, with unit after unit of knights succumbing to British might.

And so it ended, the Sarmatian host driven from the field of battle. Caruthers would be writing a glowing despatch to Horse Guards this night.


In the second battle, I took my 'Lost Worlds' army against Nick's Undead.

Nick's aerial hero struck hard and fast on the LWs left supported by a flyer.

The LWs behemoth managed a combat draw, allowing the rest of the LWs line to advance forward out of the way. It wouldn't have been pretty if the behemoth had been tumbled back.

The LWs behemoth counter-attacked against the Undead aerial hero (skeleton hero mounted on bone dragon) supported by its own flyer. Ouch.. that hurt (do Undead feel pain??)

Meanwhile the Undead line attacked.

The LWs magicians were eliminated without casting a spell .. hmm, not part of the plan

And then some interesting 'argy bargy' again on the LWs left flank, the Undead beasts destroyed by a ferocious counter-attack.

Two really interesting games, but I have to say they went perhaps unfairly to me in both cases. Nick's die rolling as such that he won a mere THREE combats in the entire two games. Even when he set up combats with good odds he was at best getting draws, but more  combat often losses. With my Lost Worlds army the great gorilla god failed to show, and yet the army was still victorious.

Good fun, but somehow I know that the Gods of Luck will play with me next time, and Nick will have his revenge.

Same army -- different manufacturer

More of those French infantry, 1914, but this time the Heroics/Ros figures.

This is the third of four new regiments for the 6mm 1914 French army. This latest batch did include the additional MMG stands to complete the two earlier regiments. One more regiment to go, and then the equivalent for the German 1914 army.

It were bl***y massacre it were

Time for another bash at our Warhammer 40K 4th edition revival (although I am feeling a little schizophrenic shifting between 6mm and 28m figures). Adrian and I got together for our second game (we decided we'd play a number of games in as close a succession as we could to re-familiarise ourselves with the rules  and game play generally). We took the same armies that we'd used in our previous game - for me the Lost and the Damned, and for Adrian his Necrons. The game was a 'Cleanse' mission, with forces setting up in opposite quarters of the table, and victory determined by possession of table quarters.

The table at the beginning, Necrons on the right, L&tD on the left.

Just showing off some of Adrian's lovely paint jobs

And again ...

Scarabs and warriors on Adrian's right flank

Adrian advanced his entire force, here pushing around on his left into the empty quarter on my right flank

The Necron monolith appeared on turn 2 scattering pretty close to my front line, and the area where I'd expected to fight the offensive party of my battle

Those figures of mine close to the Monolith were forced to test for casualties. The mutants lost 5 figures, failed the resulting leadership test, and .. well .. that was it for them, they failed every rally attempt for the remainder of the game.

The L&tD called for air support, and a rebel gunship swooped in to attack the Monolith and support the army centre. The Monolith was immobilised but was still packing a huge amount of firepower.

The mobile AT support in the form of 2 sentinels armed with lascannon took out some serious Necron firepower

But the advancing Necrons were inflicting significant casualties on the traitor squads that formed the main army battle line

The Chaos dreadnought was pushing around the Necron flank ... when Adrian assaulted it with his scarab swarms. While he'd failed to check of they could harm the dreadnought (they couldn't) they did tie the dreadnought up for the remainder of the game.

Necron airpower tried to flex its muscle in support of the Monolith but was quickly despatched by the Valkyrie

The traitors came under terrifying close assault, and crumbled beneath the terrifying claws of .. um  .. monsters from hell, really.

Be the end of the game there was very little of the traitor army left. A lot of the Necron heavy vehicles had been destroyed, but the warriors were largely intact with no real opposition.

Interesting reflections, as the Lost and the Damned army had been comprehensively routed. I failed to use the not insignificant firepower of the traitor units themselves. I had taken a H/W option with each squad, and this shaped my playing mentality as I targeted the Necron H/Ws and vehicles with the H/W, meaning that the traitor firepower was never effectively used. It also meat that I played a very static game, sitting still to use the H/W firepower.

I had eliminated a lot of the support for the Necron warriors, but the warriors themselves were largely unscathed, and with those Gauss weapons were pretty capable of looking after themselves. I took those single H/W options because I thought they were 'characterful' in the context of an army of random traitors who had come together in rebellion.

However it doesn't seem to make a lot of playing sense. Next time I'll try a more orthodox OOB with H/Ws in separate squads. That's not quite per the 'Eye of Terror' codex OOB, but the army is meant to represent  traitorous desertion, and it is quiet possible that these traitors would take with them at least some of their training and thinking.

We have another game organised for  a fortnight's time. We'll see.