Beware: more spiders, different spiders

It's a few years ago that I created my Spider army for Hordes of the Things.

The Spider army in a recent game.

And here is a link to their most recent game.

The army is primarily a horde army. That is, the predominant troop type is horde bases - there are 12 of them in the standard 24 point HotT army. It always seemed to me that, being a horde based army, it would look amazing if expanded to a Big Battle HotT army i.e. 72 points worth. Time has been an issue that has prevented me from actually creating the larger army over the past few years, as also has been the availability of more small spiders. The army was based on a few cheap packets of small plastic spiders. Recently however 'gaming friend Andy alerted me to a supply of suitable figures on sale as part of the Halloween season. I grabbed some. I've just finished the first batch of horde bases - 21 to be precise. There are a few more to be made.

The latest 21 Horde bases

Close-up horde bases

I did however also grab a packet of middle sized spiders, wondering how I might use them. A little internet digging revealed that there are species of spider that can 'fly'.

Source: https://nypost.com/2018/07/06/flying-spiders-use-electricity-to-terrify-us-all/

Take a look at this video:

Clearly first of all there could be some flyer bases in the army. I'll do that, but then a more interesting idea occurred to me (possibly some of my more creative thinking in the HotT universe). What about a group of large spiders that fly across the enemy, dropping hordes of smaller poisonous spiders onto the enemy? In my head (a very strange place, I agree) in HotT terms this sounded like an 'airboat'. Here is the result.

The 'airboat' base has 2 large flying spiders, two smaller spiders descending to the ground, and another couple on the ground - a veritable poisonous spider horde.

The final 72 point BBHotT army will feature 2 airboats, and a couple of flyers as well.

As a footnote, there is an important acknowledgement I'd like to make, and that is to my good friend and 'gaming colleague Keith. Now HotT, and spiders, are perhaps the last thing Keith would tackle in the 'gaming universe. He is an historical 'gamer through and through. However he is also a 'gamer who puts a lot of time and energy into basing, and terrain, for his games. It is his work in this regard that has inspired me to 'do better' with the basing of my own armies, whether fantasy of historical. So for this army, as for all of my work now, basing has taken the biggest proportion of prep time and effort.

I've always believed that it is important to say thank you to people who inspire you .. thanks Keith. This is perhaps not an area in which you expected to have an influence, but .. you never know, eh.

Foray into the Russian Civil War 1919

Adrian and Jon and talented at making adaptations to rules sets to create a flavour that suits sub periods for which the rules may not have been written. This week we played a Russian Cilcvil War game using an adaptation of the 'Rapid Fire' rules that Adrian has developed (the variation, that is). I had played the original edition of RF extensively back in the 90s, but hadn't really looked at them since, preferring the Spearhead rules systems.

The game was a bit of fun, we had a good time. This isn't an AAR, but more of a show and tell for Adrian's beautifully painted Peter Pig 15mm miniatures.  The armoured train didn't feature in the game, but I just couldn't resist taking a few shots .. what's not to love about an armoured train?