A great blog and a darned good read

For quite a while now I have used iGoogle as my means of managing the huge array of information that interests me. This includes both professional and hobby information. Amongst the gadgets I have on iGoogle is GoogleReader, which allows me to manage the various blogs that potentially interest me, and amongst those is one that I consider to be truly outstanding: Mr Farrow's DBA Blog.

Now here's a guy who enjoys his hobby, actively engages his two children in the hobby, and writes some fantastic and engaging after action reports. This blog covers their adventures within the traditional DBA ancients period.

But they also use the various extensions to DBA to play games that cover that whole 1500 to 1900 period, and the AARs in these periods are just as engaging. Here is a typical image from an AAR (this one from the Franco Prussian War era):

So if you want some inspiration, or just a darned good read, try Mr Farrow's Blogs.

Reflections on HotT ..

My fame and fortune in the local HotT tournament scene has been earned with my Spider army (Nick G has posted an excellent AAR of our game in last Sunday's tournament here). As Nick comments, it was the only game I lost out of 5, and it was a pretty thorough thrashing I have to say.

The army composition I used was:

1 x Behemoth general
1 x Hero
1 x God
2 x lurkers
10 x Hordes

I have always considered Horde armies to be weaker than most, but now I'm not so sure. The basic approach has been to surround my strongest elements (the Behemoth and Hero) with plenty of Hordes, hoping that the opposing army becomes bogged down in the horde of Hordes, while the two biggies do the business. I generally don't count on the God; if he turns up that's a bonus, but I try to plan the battle in my head on the assumption that he doesn't.

I had traditionally considered Hordes to be weaker elements, but I guess that with a CF of 2, they are strong enough to hold out, and deployed 2 deep, near the baseline, they do indeed tend to wear the opponent down. The opposition's 'mental fatigue' isn't helped by the constant redeployment of lost Hordes as well. This redeployment means that I try to keep my 'battle line' close to my own base line, so that those Hordes brought back onto the table at least have a running (or scuttling, in this case) chance of getting back into the battle.

So, having mentally gone into two tournaments now with the view that the spiders were the tournament 'easy beats', I have had to change my mind. Maybe Hordes aren't too bad a bet after all.

As I think Joseph Stalin once said (correct me if I'm wrong) "Quantity has a quality of its own."

After all, the rules are titled 'HORDES of the things'!!!

A HotT Winter's day 11-Postscript 1

A word of warning.. in today's tournament, in my 3rd game, against Nick G, my spider God (Spiderman - well who else??? really, I mean!!!) turned up to play, only to turn around and leave again within a couple of moves. I was not amused...

 ... so a jolly good talking to was in order. Spiderman was given a very clear description of his antecedents, and a warning about the consequences of any future repetition of this behaviour.

He failed to turn up at all in the following game (perhaps in a fit of pique), but then made a jolly good showing in the final game. Clearly he'd taken the time to think about what I'd said!!


Thanks to Nick G for the photo.

A HotT Winter's day 11

A change of pace in my 'gaming, with this year's 'A HotT Winter's Day' tournament. This year there were 6 of us playing, so the format was simply everyone plays everyone else once for 5 games each, and a total of 25 games over the day. No individual game write-ups this time, but a selection of photos from some of the games that took place over the day.

This yeea, for a change, we allowed players to change armies during the day. It was all about getting some pretty cool armies onto the table, and having fun, and judging from some of the shouts and jeers (who'd have thought 6 'gamers could make so much noise), there was plenty of fun to be had as those dramatic 'cinematic moments' unfolded.

The armies were:

Nick S - Mythical Indian
Nick G - Victorian Sci Fi
Gordon - Dwarf, then Zulu
Stan - Conquistador
Kevin - Easterling
Robin - Spiders



Spiders vs Conquistadors:

Spiders vs Dwarfs: The spiders had just disposed of the Dwarf general.

Indians vs British VSF:

Spiders vs British VSF (this was the game I lost during the day.. Nick G gave me a 'damned good thrashing'!!):

British VSF vs Zulu:

Spiders vs Easterlings: The spider behemoth general making beady eyes at the Easterling Paladin .. nom nom nom.. eventually he made a meal of the Paladin.

Spiders vs Indians:

The Indian magician general looked ot be introuble but managed to extract himself and have his revenge by driving off the spider behemoth general, and then bespelling the spider hero (on the right). Sadly for Nick S, his God showed up, then left on the very next move, while the Spider God turned up, and proceeded to chomp his was through the Indian riders.

Many thanks to everyone who played.

"Orcs is Orcs" - even in KOW

Third 'Kings of War' game in 3 weeks, this time against Adrian. Adrian had dragged out a little used Orc army now many years old, and as usual my Dwarves took to the field, keen as ever to seek redress for any wrong doing, imagined or real!! The game was a 'Kill and Pillage' scenario with 1100 points per side.

The Dwarves adopted a defensive positon (now that was a surprise), seen here on the left, as the Orc hordes swarmed forward.

The Orc army was led by a Krudger on a flyer (sounds like something that would make your eyes water, and in this particular case it did!!!)

After inflicting several turns of artillery fire on the Orcs as they advanced, thr Dwarves then launched an attack against the advancing hordes .. SPLAT!!!

The initial assaults routed one unit of Orcs, but bounced off the remainder.

Foolishly (I'm a slow learner) I had yet again placed the Dwarf Berserkers on a flank. They attacked an Orc unit, but were then in turn hit front and flank by Orc units, and routed. They dish out the attacks on the charge, but are not too hardy when the enemy strikes back.

Meanwhile the combats continued in the centre, while an Orc Horde routed on the Orc left flank, after taking too many hits from Dwarf cannon and rifle fire.

The Dwarf Horde of warriors was then hit in the flank and front, and... ouch!! the first Dwarf rout!!
The Dwarf King meanwhile was busily engaged holding back the Orc riders.

The Orc Krudger swooped in and attacked a unit of Dwarves in the flank.. another Dwarf route!!

And the game was over - 6 turns for each side, and a solid Orc victory.

This was interesting. The Orcs (as with other game systems) dish out the punishment, but are also relatively fragile. Their low Nerve value means that they tend to route relatively more easily, but when they get into contact.. ouch. And the Dwarven toughness makes them relatively more resilient.

The Orc Krudger costs a lot of points, but is well worth it.. he dished out a lot of Dwarven pain!!!

The game ebbed and flowed nicely. In the early stages of contact the Dwarfs grabbed the initiative and several Orc units were routed. After 4 turns it was looking like a Dwarf victory. But this is a game of flanks, and it was the ability of the Orc riders to get on to the flank that caused the Dwarf collapse.
At 1100 points these are still small games in KoW terms we think. On the one hand the larger games will allow more resilience for both sides. On the other hand the games may possibly have a feeling of sameness about them (and that's after only 3 games). I'll reserve my opinion on that until we have played more games. Certainly for the Dwarves the Orcs presented a different set of challenges to those met when facing the Humans.

Dwarven revenge ...

They were back! Across the valley - another human horde, apparently intent on destroying the Dwarf hold. Well, if that was what they wanted, the Dwarves were only too willing to offer battle; after all there was the large matter of the grudge borne of the earlier Human invasion.

This was our second 'Kings of War' game (Mantic Games), a 'Kill' scenario. The Dwarves deployed much more tightly than previously, wary of the Humamn heavy cavalry that had been so devastating when last they had met on the field of battle. Their battle line was enhanced by more artillery, and the army's special standard bearer had come to support the army. Meanwhile the Humans had recruited some of their border Pistolliers to support them.

The Dwarf general did push some of his key units forward in response to some annoying archery fire from the woods to their front (but realised his error, and eventaully withdrew them back to the battle line).

The Pistolliers sat tucked behind the Human centre, looking for opportunities.

Meanwhile a unit of Knights had swung onto the Dwarf left flank, and attacked a badly deployed unit of Berserkers who had been softened up with archery fire.

After initally bouncing back, the knights went in a second time and routed the Berserkers.

They then rolled on into the Dwarf Organ gun battery.. this was going to make someone's eyes water!!!

... and then on into a unit of Ironguard... oh oh!! And now the King is in on the act!!!

Meanwhile the Human Pistolliers had pushed forward into the centre and, after inflicting some casualties on an Ironclad Regiment,  were eliminated by a devastating cross-fire.

It took a couple of turns but the Knights on the Dwarf left couldn't take the casualties, and fled the field.

On the other flank, the other unit of Knights hit a Dwarven Ironwatch Regiment, and it should have been all over.

Mother Luck is a fickle lady. Despite the casualties, the Ironwatch passed their first Nerve test. The Knights went in a second time, and again inflicted casualties. This time, the Ironwatch failed their Nerve test, but, with the Army Standard Bearer to hand, Andy had to re-roll the Nerve test, with... 'snake eyes'.. and the Ironwatch held!!

The Knights were then hit in the flank by an Ironclad Horde.. it bounced off the first time, but finally destroyed the Knight regiment, and the field belonged to the Dwarves.

And so it was that at least some of the grudge had been paid off.

And what a great game of 'Kings of War' it had been, all in two hours (the time limit set for the game)..

'Kings of War' - trial game.

Andy has been on the  look out for a set of fantasy rules for a while. He'd tried WFB, and we had played HotT together numerous times, but I suspect that these hadn't quite 'hit the spot'. So last week he mailed me with the Mantic Games rules set 'Kings of War' by Alessio Cavatore. So 'Kings of War' it was, last night. My Dwarves came out of early retirement (I hadn't actually managed to do anything WFB'ish with them in the finish), and out came Andy's 'Humans' (GW Brettonians) .. one of his 'I'll get those painted one day' projects (it's the artist's temperament you know .. he paints divinely!!).

We fielded 1000 points each, and off we set.

Dwarf Berserkers attack a poor unit of Human archers. ouch.. cut through them, like a hot knife through butter.

A head-on clash in the centre, with Dwarves attacking Swordsmen and Spearmen.

Andy managed to get his two units of Knights around the flanks, and first attacked the Dwarven artillery.

Then they took on the Dwarf regiments.

One of the Dwarf units was a 'horde'.. a 40 strong unit. Andy attacked it with both units of Knights and the victory was his.

So, what did we think?

We picked up the rules very quickly (there are only 12 pages in total) , and they played very cleanly. The mechanisms didn't appear to create super units. We had simple armies, so there was little in the way of magic. The specific army rules (and there aren't too many of them) created some character in the armies, and is clearly an area that can be developed and exploited to create 'characterful' play.
We liked the fact that we weren't ploughing through 100+ pages of rules plus army books, trying  to mentally collate across numerous pages -- this has always seemed like too much effort for us.

The rules seem to be so simple that  we feel that we will be able to pick up a game only every now and then and still find the rules 'accessible' or 'playable'. I also suspect however that they have some subtly that will reward clever play.

These definitley get the thumbs up from us. Adrian will be getting his long held fantasy forces out of a prolonged retirement, and my Dwarfs will now take to the field of battle; that has to be a good thing too.