I recently transferred my Dark Age figures for Hordes of the Things (HOTT) to Big Bases. Magicians, beasts, clerics, hordes, that kind of thing, making Big Base HOTT. This included my Strathclyde Welsh (Northern Cymry) for Britannia 600 AD.
To celebrate the big basing, Chris Harrod and I had a game of Arthurian HOTT. Chris brought along his Picts and we used sabots to give him big bases.
King Arthur and a Welsh army
For a start my “Strathclyde Welsh” are actually Romano-Spanish. And “Arthur” is actually Santiago Matamoros (St James the Moor Slayer). But, for the purposes of this game, lets pretend it is Arthur leading his Welsh subjects.
Yes, I’m one of those who believes Arthur was Welsh. Welsh in the sense that the majority of people in the UK before the Anglo-Saxons arrived were Welsh (of course, the Irish and Picts were around too). Britons by another name. But Arthur probably lived in Wales. In fact, he was likely the hereditary King of the Silures in South Wales. An argument presented quite thoroughly by Chris Barber in his book “King Arthur”:
Barber, C. (2016). King Arthur: The mystery unravelled. Pen & Sword History.
The book is available from Amazon USA, UK, and Canada:
Initial Moves
Arthur was on the right of the Welsh with some nobles. Arthur was, of course, my Hero General. The nobles were Knights. Round table and all that.
Part of the Welsh shieldwall was next to Arthur. You can see the rest of the shieldwall to the rear. Yes, I took a calculated risk and split up my battle line. Not super sensible in DBA/HOTT but can get results.
Priests joined the fray to exert some spiritual support, in the front line, extending the shieldwall.
In the centre I had spearmen and war dogs, positioned some distance from Arthur and his force. The war dogs are Beasts under HOTT. I’d taken them because the defender is obliged to place difficult near the centre of the table (Chris chose two steep rocky hills) and Beasts are difficult-terrain-friendly.
I had a kind of symmetrical line up because on my right I had the Welsh Campion (a Hero) and more nobles, matching the Hero (Arthur) and nobles on the other flank. Again these were some distance from the nearest support guys.
In HOTT Chris likes a combination of Hordes and Shooters. He couldn’t get his preferred balance between he was using big bases, but none-the-less, he got sufficient bases for his Pictish horde to stretch for miles. Almost table edge to table edge.
In the centre Chris had a Hero and Cleric. I quite like the Dark Age thing where both sides have priests claiming that god is on their side.
Of course, we’re talking Picts here. Clearly they are only barely Christian since they choose to fight naked.
For some reason the Pict Crossbowmen are more modest.
As are the noble cavalry (Riders)
The Game
What could I do, I attacked.
Chris chose to wheel in his line from the centre to the flank on my left. One big door with a hinge. That was good for me as it opened up his flank. So I decided to pin Chris on my right and in the centre, and attack properly on the left.
It should have been easy. Hero versus Horde. And then later Knight versus Horde. But clearly these northerners had not read the manual on correct Horde-like behaviour in the face of rampaging nobles and heroes.
Chris held his left flank back so I advanced mine in echelon. As I said above, the goal was to pin him.
Then I pulled back. A bit of a dance in front of his battle line.
On my left the all too even fight was continuing. These hordes just would not die!
To add insult to injury they took our half my noble cavalry. How embarrassing.
This enabled Chris to turn on my Champion and get him in front and flank. But the Champion fought like a thousand men and drove the Picts back.
Clearly fighting alone works for my Champion so, after escaping from being surrounded, he calmly cut down the horde in front of him.
My distributed deployed now looked very, very thin on the left and centre. Only one stand in each area.
In the centre I had one stand against Chris’s three. I had the war dogs (Beast). Chris had a Cleric, Spear, and Horde stand on the steep rocky hill. All at -2. My war dogs were on the flat, but was unfazed by difficult terrain anyway. So, even with overlaps, it was only a factor of 2-1 in Chris’s favour. I might survive.
My Champion, of course, had a good chance against a lone horde, and despatched it pretty rapidly.
And then the Welsh Champion came to the rescue of the war dogs. That peeled away the Pictish horde in the centre and left the war dogs facing only two stands. The factors were now 2-2.
To the immediate right of the steep hills, one of my Spears had been fighting it out with the Pictish Hero. The matter got decided when the Welsh Cleric got on his flank.
The confused fight in the hills continued.
Having the Pict Cleric partially in difficult terrain allowed me to spring my ambush (deploy my Lurker).
The Welsh Champion then took another Pictish horde. It took him a while to warm up but when he got going the got quite a score.
Chris countered my Lurkers with his own. But the dice were on my side.
While the battle was being decided in the hills the opposing armies on my right flank just stared at each other.
The combined war dogs and Lurkers kill the Pictish Cleric.
Embarrassingly, my Hero got pushed off the hill. I guess he doesn’t like -2 to his factors either.
The reason Chris likes hordes is that they are inexhaustible. And he is quite disciplined about bringing them back on table. So, to my distress, three hordes appeared back on table.
I chose this moment to go for broke. Attack before Chris got his reinforcements back into the battle.
I did well in the first contact. Four recoils and a kill.
Chris closed the gap with spearmen but I just opened another hole. Where the hordes had been.
And that was enough to give me the game.
Summary
An enjoyable game. Nice to have the Dark Age boys on table again, including Chris’s Picts. I’ll have to encourage Chris to rebase onto Big Bases.
I still like HOTT for historical battles.
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References
Barber, C. (2016). King Arthur: The mystery unravelled. Pen & Sword History.
Wheu!! For a minute there I thought that you went to the Dark Side (Fantasy/Sci Fi)!
A good thing about the Picts fighting naked (didn’t they have a lot of blue tatoos?) is that you know who there best man is. ;>O
Yeah, I admit, despite being a HOTT game, there wasn’t very much fantastical about the armies. Heroes and clerics were the sum total difference from the DBA equivalent armies. But I like that difference.
re tattoos, yeah, Chris originally painted the Picts in a hurry. He never got to the woad. But, in time, I expect we’ll see naked blue men, as it is only right and proper for the northern lads.
Realize this is late….
I think your heroes need friends. A couple of guys (towards the back-wouldn’t want to get in the way!) would look better. Three figs clustered won’t get confused with other troop types and reduce all that empty space which just looks weird on the bigger bases you have adopted. One guy on a 40×30 didn’t look so bad, but on a 80×60.
StuRat, I probably would have agreed with you when I started this project 5 years ago. Now I think it just enhances the awesomeness of the lone hero facing swarms of plebs.
As it happens a couple of my heroes, not shown, are multiple figures. For example, I have a hero base that has Ivar and Halfdan, the Danish brothers. So I guess this means, I think it depends.
Cheers
Steven