Saturday, February 12, 2011

Playing HoTT in Battle Chronicler

Last night I managed to run a simple skirmish of Hordes of the Things (HoTT) using Battle Chronicler. It worked really well, since HoTT keeps to the IGO/UGO convention used by the software. Even though I barely used Battle Chronicler's features for laying out terrain, the images look very nice:

For the match I assembled the Forces of Good defending against Forces of Evil:

Forces of Evil
General: Garganturas
  •   (G) Behemoth, Garganturas [4 points]
  •   (R) Dragon, Revaxitras [4 points]
  •   (HH1) Beasts, Hell Hounds 1 [2 points]
  •   (HH2) Beasts, Hell Hounds 2 [2 points]
  •   (MS1) Warband, Mutant Skirmishers 1 [2 points]
  •   (MS2) Warband, Mutant Skirmishers 2 [2 points]
  •   (SA1) Shooters, Skeleton Archers 1 [2 points]
  •   (SA2) Shooters, Skeleton Archers 2 [2 points]
  •   (ZH1) Hordes, Zombie Hordes 1 [1 point]
  •   (ZH2) Hordes, Zombie Hordes 2 [1 point]
  •   (ZH3) Hordes, Zombie Hordes 3 [1 point]
  •   (ZH4) Hordes, Zombie Hordes 4 [1 point]
Total: 24 points
Forces of Good
General: Lord Haldor
  •   (SL) Hero, Sir Legaras [4 points]
  •   (LH) Knights, Lord Haldor [2 points]
  •   (RK1) Knights, Royal Knights 1 [2 points]
  •   (RK2) Knights, Royal Knights 2 [2 points]
  •   (S1) Spears, Spearmen 1 [2 points]
  •   (S2) Spears, Spearmen 2 [2 points]
  •   (S3) Spears, Spearmen 3 [2 points]
  •   (S4) Spears, Spearmen 4 [2 points]
  •   (L1) Shooters, Longbowmen 1 [2 points]
  •   (L2) Shooters, Longbowmen 2 [2 points]
  •   (L3) Shooters, Longbowmen 3 [2 points]
  •   (FD) Stronghold, Fort Durean [0 points]
Total: 24 points

The Battle
During the first two rounds, both forces advanced their troops. During round 3, the Forces of Evil charged with hell hounds against one of the groups of spearmen, pursuing them after their recoil.
In the fourth round, the good Hero flanked the beasts, assisting the spears. The Forces of Evil diced for 6 PIPs and thus managed to summon their dragon to combat. In the second close combat exchange, the beasts were destroyed.
In the fifth round, the Forces of Good charged with the first unit of Royal Knights against the other group of hell hounds, with no effect (a tie.) The longbowmen also advanced but only managed to make the first zombie horde to recoil. On the Evil army's bound, the mutant skirmishers flanked the knights, which would later cause them to be destroyed. The dragon flew over to attack the longbowmen but only managed to push one of them back.
[Note: thinking about it now, I should have recoiled the other two units of longbowmen, since they were overlapping]
On round six, the longbowmen attacked the dragon, causing it to flee the battlefield. On their bound, the Forces of Evil maneuver the first unit of Skeleton Archers to attack the longbowmen. Unfortunately, the skeletons lost the fight and were eliminated.
At the end of the Forces of Evil's bound, they had lost half their AP in units, resulting in a Victory for the Forces of Good.
Conclusion
Battle Chronicler worked great for Hordes of the Things. This game moves very fast once you get the rules; for instance, I managed to play this battle in little more than one hour, compared to my first attempt which took several hours to complete.

I was a little surprised by the dragon's underwhelming performance. Maybe I should have used it to round up isolated units. On the other hand, columns of spears seem really powerful (but two of them can be defeated at once, in this formation.) I'm starting to feel that HoTT is more fun with mixed "common" units, rather than the "special" ones like dragons and magicians.

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