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Author Topic: "Micro-HotT" - a (succesful) experiment  (Read 744 times)

Offline Hobgoblin

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"Micro-HotT" - a (succesful) experiment
« on: January 21, 2020, 08:29:03 AM »
A thought struck me yesterday: what would Hordes of the Things be like if played with square-based individual miniatures and huge armies? Last night, my son and I gave it a go.

We used most of the square-based 28mm infantry we have (orcs and lizardmen), adding a smattering of wolf-riders and cold-one riders of various sorts. Each figure counted as one HotT element. Base depths were obviously square for infantry and double-length for cavalry.

The figures at hand gave us two armies, each at 52AP - so more than twice a regular-sized HotT army. The troop types fielded included a great many warbands on both sides, plus spears, blades, a ride, a shooter and three heroes on the orc side, and three behemoths, a knight, a beast, several riders and a hero on the lizard side. We played on a 28mm table (3' x 3') but used 15mm movement.

We just rolled one die each for PIPs, as normal. Because the elements were lined or ranked up in large groups, movement was quick, and 1-6 PIPs worked just fine. It looked much like a game of Warhammer, but the battle lines swiftly became ragged because of recoils and pursuits. Despite the 15mm movement, the game played out pretty quickly. We had lots of manoeuvre and outflanking, and a fair bit of interaction with terrain - which led to lots of tactical considerations about cavalry in woods, etc.

We didn't come across any obvious disadvantages to playing like this. Cavalry tend to have longer flanks than in HotT, so are more exposed to flank attacks - but that probably just allows an extra outflanking that would have been a rear contact with shorter bases.

Most importantly, the game wasn't obviously fiddly - which was my main fear. A 28mm orc is as easy to manoeuvre as a shorter but slightly broader 15mm element. And 1-6 PIPs led to lots of dilemmas about splitting groups - which made for a more interesting game. Meanwhile, the big - by 15mm standards - table allowed a lot of room for fairly intricate manoeuvre.

An obvious difficulty will be having suitable troop types on 15mm bases. But some things worked surprisingly well. The GW cold-one riders looked and 'felt' right as behemoths, given their relative strength to other cavalry. In fact, I'd say that they played better in that role than many other behemoth elements, which can sometimes look too weak or too strong for their battlefield powers in the rules.

So, all in all, it was a successful experiment and one that we'll be trying again. With Oathmark looking interesting, I was thinking of basing up more troops on squares and trying out a much bigger game on a 6' table.

Has anyone tried anything similar?

Offline DivisMal

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Re: "Micro-HotT" - a (succesful) experiment
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2020, 09:31:16 AM »
My dear Hobgoblin!

You always come up with really interesting examples of how to creatively use one‘s models. This idea is pretty awesome!

Just one question, that maybe shows my inexperience  in this specific set. HotT? Isn’t that DBA with fantasy models? And where can I get it?

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: "Micro-HotT" - a (succesful) experiment
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2020, 01:22:35 PM »
Thanks! I'm really just keen to get the most out of figures based in any particular way.

The HotT rules were out of print briefly, I think, but they're available on Amazon now.

I've never played DBA, but I think HotT is slightly different, though based on the same 'engine'. Some people seem to prefer it as a game regardless of genre. One of the main differences is that HotT army lists are just suggestions/inspiration: any side can use any element types. The only restriction is that only up to half an army can be the more expensive types (heroes, artillery, behemoths, magicians, dragons, gods, etc.).

Thinking a bit more about last night's game, I reckon that the only major negative of this style of play is that there's less of an illusion of great numbers when you have, for example, one spear element supported by another (i.e. two individual spearmen in a two-man column). Rectangular, multi-figure elements are probably a bit better at conveying the idea that these aren't individuals but groups of dozens or hundreds or thousands of troops.

Against that, though, is the ability to have huge battles with all the complexity of interactions that HotT's deceptively simple ruleset offers. And because you can use more miniatures and are still limited to 1-6 actions a turn, you'll tend to keep troops together in lines and blocks in any case.

The pursuit rules really come into their own when you have lines of ten or so warbands, blades and spears: warbands can hit hard, but disrupt their formations significantly in the process whereas blades and spears keep formation much better.