Xmas HotT: 2nd Game

After the victory against the Ratmen, it was time for a more challenging foe. The next battle for the Xmas army would be against an amalgamation of half finished forces, chaos dwarves, chaos and undead. This army is more heavy on elements that either quick kill or get higher combat modifiers against beasts or mounted, which is half the Xmas army!

The full list is:

Chaos Knights (Gen Kn): 2pts

Chaos Dwarf hero (Hero): 4pts

2x Chaos Knights (Knights): 4pts

3x Chaos Dwarf Xbows (Shooter): 6pts

2x Ratmen (Warband): 4pts

Skeleton Giant (Behemoth): 4pts

The armies lined up and ready. Seeing all the enemy elements that are good at killing Beasts is a bit daunting: 

Battle is joined in the centre:

Given that Beasts, Warband, and Knights all follow up after winning melee, it was never going to be a static battle line!: 

The Wraith moves over from the left flank to prevent the Knights from breaking through. The rightmost pair of Warband use the hight advantage from the hill to force the other Knights back:

A change in the enemy's plan. The general withdraws and the crossbows start to pick off the Christmas trees:

 

The Wraith follows up the enemy general. The Chaos Dwarf hero on the left holds off the snowmen and the crossbows on the right advance to maximise their shooting against the trees:

Things are looking desperate now. The bone giant and Ratmen have advanced off the hill and the crossbows have done their worst. The hero and general are holding the enemy's centre against all my efforts:

The bitter end. Although my final element of Trees destroyed an element of crossbows, my Warband were defeated by the enemy general and the Christmas army lost:

With gaps appearing in the line, the Wraith and Warband were hard pressed to stop the enemy taking advantage of the opportunities this presented. It didn't help that they were badly matched. The enemy were defending so there was very little bad going terrain for my army to take advantage of. That was a huge factor against the Knights. Also, needing to double up Warband elements to get their bonus and having a hero worth 3 times a normal unit meant the Xmas army is reliant on beasts to form the main width of their battle line. This is not a good proposition against an army like the one they faced. 

So the Christmas Wraith returns to the Winterlands to lick his wounds and see what next Christmas will bring his growing army. I'm looking forward to developing this army with the next release from 15mm.co.uk. No idea what it will be at the moment, but some kind of mounted troops or missile armed ones would be nice!

Christmas Project Complete!

It's been a while since I've been able to post much of anything on my blog. The demands of fatherhood are many and varied so much of my energy over the last 6 months has been exerted elsewhere. But I've been making the most of minutes snatched here and there to progress my various projects. It's just that this level of activity doesn't lend itself to being posted about on a blog!

However, this week I am happy to say I have managed to compete my 2014 Christmas project, and only 4 months late!

15mm.co.uk do an excellent seasonal range of figures, only available over the festive period. Last year they added evil snowmen to the killer Christmas Trees from 2013 and I ended up deciding that I could use these as a decent basis for a Hordes of the Things army. So I bought a pack of each of them plus a Wraith on winged mount ( It's a bad pun you see... Christmas Wraith... Christmas Wreath... Never mind...). 

The pack of Christmas Trees gave me 5 elements of Beasts:

The snowmen pack provided 4 bases of Warband (you get some rifle-armed snowmen, but these I kept for modern horror games):

I picked the Wraith as it made up the points required for a typical HotT army and it fitted in okay with the theme:

Here's the army assembled and ready for battle:

One thing I like about the way 15mm.co.uk sell these packs is that each year I'll get a surprise new type of element to add to the army! 

So, having assembled the various elements it was time to test them on battle! Emerging from the winter wastes, the army first encountered the ratmen of the highland regions. This was a similar match up, with both sides having several stands of beasts and warband. 

The armies arrayed for battle!

A fierce melee in the centre of the table.

The Ratman line begins to break, leaving their general vulnerable.

The Ratman general falls just before his beasts can make contact

All in all it was a good little game. The main conflict was in the centre, with much to-ing and fro-ing between the warbands. The Wraith was able to fly behind the Ratman lines and pick off the odd exposed element, which helped. On the Ratman army's left flank the wolves managed to drive off the Xmas Trees, leaving them in a position to move to the centre and confront the snowmen, but it was too late by that point.

I'm loving these new figures and I look forward to finding out in Autumn what will be the next release!

More battles in posts to follow this one.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome as always.