Big Battle HotT: Spiders vs Asag and the Rocks

Asag's generals strode across the landscape, littered as it was with broken rocks, but more particularly with the mortal remains of thousands and thousands of spiders. Hordes of the things, seemingly unlimited in number, seemingly irresistible .. until that is they had collided head first with the armies of the mountains. Had they had a sense of smell, their senses would have been assailed by the smell of death, the cloying, lingering smell of .. victory. The rocks and stones knew no fatigue, only animation, or nothing, at the hands of the generals and their magicians, God-like in their work. Somehow they knew this would not be the end.

A week or so ago Andy began work on an army of animated rocks, based around the Sumerian myth of Asag. This was to be a 'horde' based army, in Hordes of the Things (HotT) terms, to match my Spider army (also a horde based army), now expanded to Big Battle HotT (72 point) proportions. The rock army is incomplete, so Andy supplemented it with Aliens for this Big Battle outing. I won't give a blow by blow account, merely a few comments along the way, with some concluding comments at the end.

The set up, spiders on the right, rocks on the left, with the flank anchored on a water feature.

Hordes of stones

The Rock CinC, a stone behemoth

The Spiders' God (Spiderman) did show up.. briefly

Long enough to attack the Stones' magician...

... and eliminate him

Spiderman also eliminated an Aliens' blade element

.. and with that single roll, 

... the God disappeared again

The Spiders left tried to roll up the rocks' right, the behemoth general doing damage along the way

In the centre, the Spiders CinC, a Hero general, pushed hard, and was confounded by Hordes... surprise surprise

The Spider Horde casualties on their right flank, brought back on (seen at the bottom of the photo)

The spiders left flank command loses its general, and is demoralised

The left flank makes a subsequent low PIP die roll, can't hold enough stands, and the whole army is pushed over 50% casualties

This was a very good game. As always, the Big Battle version of the game plays differently to the standard 24 point game. My lessons with the Spider army.

1. I was defender, and so chose a water feature for my water borne spider element. We used this per Gunboats in the Hordes of The Empire variant of the game. However a water feature down the flank seriously limits the use of the element. Had I placed a 'river' down the centre of the able I would have significantly enlarged the sphere of influence of the water element, and therefore its potential impact on the battle..
2. The army includes two airboats and two flyers. I split these between two commands. I was starved of PIPs often. I reckon that as a player your plan should work on the assumption that it can still work to some degree even when starved of PIPs. I didn't do that. Therefore aerials saw relatively little use. Had they operated together in one command I MIGHT ell have been able to leverage greater impact form the combat effectiveness against foot.
3. Gods are fickle eh

Overall a really good game, with a well deserved victory to Andy.