Game Of The Week
HOTT in Brimscombe
Week Monday 9th June 2003..
Iain Davidson came round to try out his new Elves, I say 'new', they are actually ones that he bouhgt from Alan. The army is a bad going one with 8 Shooters including the general, 2 beasts and 4 (yes read it, 4) lurkers.
We played 3 games of which the last merits the report and pictures. In the first game I selected my Assyrians as I was determined to get both Gods on. It work but they both left shortly after arraving and I lost as the defender. In the second game I defended again but when the chance arose I elcted no to use the Gods. Having less elements concentrates the mind on what you have rather than hoping for the Gods to do the work. I managed to win the second game.
Game 3 was the big one. This time I decided to use the Ottomans. Iain defended and put into practice something often discussed on the mesage group - 49% of the board was bad going. Woods in fact; hindsight would show a mix of Woods and basic rough might have been better but there you go.
As you can see, it was going to be tough getting into attack so I elected to go down the right flank. As usual I failed to consider the Lurkers and got swamped in turn one !!
Incredibly all the Shooters survived the encounter but it was a pip drain. Iain's Beasts then approached to continue the attack whilst the rest of my army slowly made their way down the right flank. At this point we remembered that the chap in the top left corner in the pic below is Iain's Shooter general, and way out of sight of much of the army. Still, we carried on as I had done the same with my Blade general way out front !
Having dispatched 1 beast the other withdrew and then it was then a race to get a controling edge of the woods to get the magical +2 for Shooters in the rough.
It became a bit of a bun fight with the Shooters as jostled for position and to get decent shots. I could never get my Artillery into play and when I finally got one into a decent position it got wasted. My Blade general did stout work with support form the Mage. Iain gradually got his Shooters round but lost some to my Blade.
Whilst the Riders made a dash around the side of the wood the Ottoman Mage got shot down and destroyed, the Elven Shooter general came forward to bolster the defence helping to take out an Ottoman Shooter. But the Ottomans proved too much and took out the required AP to get victory
So 3 games, 1 attacker victory to Iain, adefender and attacker victory to me.