oh bother!
Let’s try that again…
We all played a game of Hordes of the Things with each other!
I wanted to try and play a couple quick 24AP, one-on-one games to see if we could get games in under an hour. I’m trying to get an idea of how long games take so I will have some idea how the campaign weekend will play out. The shorter the games the longer the campaign – in terms of game-years.
THE FORCES
First off we each picked a 24AP force from the toys I had available.
Amanda – Elves
1x Blade General
2x Paladins (Elvish Knights)
1x Magician
2x Riders
3x Shooters
Mr. Miller – Dwarves
1x Knight General – (Bear Riders)
2x Warband (Highland Dwarves)
1x Artillery (Cannon!)
5x Blade
1x Shooters (hand gunners)
1x Behemoth (young tamed pet dragon!?)
Myself – Humans
1x Knight General
5x Knights
1x Hero (Eomer!)
1x Magician (Randalf the White!)
1x Rider
1x Warband
THE GAMES
As I was concentrating on just getting through a game as quickly as possible I didn’t take so many pictures or notes… So below are just some highlights of the games.
GAME #1 - Tim M. vs. Amanda
Amanda wanted to go to be early so she wanted to play both her games first. Mr. Miller and I diced to see who would fight her first – Mr. Miller won. Then they diced to see who would attack – Amanda won.
(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)
Here is the battle line Mr. Miller set up.
Amanda’s forces roll forward.
Amanda’s Paladins and Magician go toe-to-toe with the baby dragon (behemoth) and shooters and annahilate them.
The Bear-Knight general galloped (if you can call it galloping… ambled?) away after Amanda’s General but the Elf Paladins wheeled around and caught him for behind and rode him down without mercy… game over.
It took maybe 15 minutes…?
The elves took no losses, the Dwarves lost their Knight General, Behemoth, and shooters.
GAME #2 - Tim B. vs. Amanda
This time I was the attacker and Amanda defended.
There was a little copse of wood (off to the right, there) and a road going around it – so I started a little group of riders, warband, and knights in a column to race up the road and around the wood hoping to either flank the paladins or, better yet, draw them away from the main force of the Elves…
It worked the Paladins rode off after the flanking column and my knights smashed through their riders and galloped past the archers to ride down the Elvish Blade General which was lurking in the rear.
This took a little longer (50 min.) and was a bit more bloody. I lost Three stands of knights – two of them to shooters, the third was shoved off the table edge by a Paladin. Amanda lost one paladin, two riders, and her blade general.
GAME #3 - Tim B. vs. Tim M.
This time I was defending and Mr. Miller attacking. I decided to mix up the terrain leaving a nice big open field in the middle with a bit of terrain around the edges.
The battle lines approach.
Just about there…
CRUNCH – what a mess!
My knight general pursued recoiling dwarves, was flanked and killed, GAME OVER!
15 minutes. One stand lost – my Knight General…
As this was a little unsatisfying we played again…
GAME #4 - Tim B. vs. Tim M…. again…
We used the same terrain and went at it again – modifying our lines slightly.
The battle lines meet
This time I lost three Knights, the Warband and my Magician. One knight and the Magician were due to the line being very broken up and units turned and flanked them. One Knight was killed by artillery, another by shooters. The dwarves lost their shooter – because of another attempt to turn a flank which failed and the shooter recoiled into friendlies not facing the same direction.
I think this one took half an hour to 40 minutes…
Conclusions
All games were played in under an hour which is what I was shooting for. Three of the four ended with Generals being killed?!
We made some mistakes….
Mr. Miller thought Behemoths were only 3 points as so was playing with a 25 AP army all night.
I told Mr. Miller that Paladins didn’t seem to get quick-kills against anything ordinary… like… say… shooters… forgetting of course that they fall into that clever little category of “any mounted in contact”.
I also pursued a little too far with knights in the first game with Mr. Miller – pursuing a base width rather than a base depth – which meant he was easily able to flank them – wouldn’t have been quite so easy to get into a legal flanking position otherwise as I think it would have required crossing the front no-go-zone of a knight that had recoiled.
I’m sure there was other stuff I screwed up, but I’m starting to get a god handle on it and good fun was had by all.
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Sounds like fun - I am sorry I missed it!
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