15mm Wargaming for Fun and Sanity: Kings of War vs Hordes of The Things

I thought I'd try something a little different, we haven't done any “regular” fantasy for some time.

This is taken from the free rules and army lists on Mantic's site. Achaeans use the human list, Japanese the Goblin list and Skeletons from the Undead list. There is no points system and I'm a bit confused as to why, when points lost is required, a unit is not dividable by its number?

Spears

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts per figure.

Regiment 5 4+ 4+ 15 13/15 120 (6)

Big Shield All attacks front arc treat its defense as 6+.

Archers

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts (7.5)

Troop 5 5+ 5+ 3+ 8 9/11 75

Javelin

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts (7.5)

Troop (10) 5 5+ 5+ 3+ 8 9/11 75

Big Shield All attacks front arc treat its defense as 6+.

Skeleton Spearmen

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts (5)

Regiment 5 5+ 4+ 15 –/16 105

Big Shield All attacks front arc treat its defense as 6+.

Shambling cannot be ordered ‘At the Double’, except when carrying out a Vanguard move.

Satyrs & Amazons

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

Horde (40) 5 5+ 3+ 25 19/21 115 (3)

Total 490

Greenbacku-san's Goblin Infantry Unit

Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

(20) 5 5+ 4+ 15 12/14 95 (5)

Goblin archers

Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

10 5 6+ 5+ 3+ 10 12/14 43 (4)

Spiders- Cavalry

Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

Troop (5) 4+ 4+ 7 9/11 95 (19)

Special Thunderous Charge (1), All melee hits inflicted by the unit have a +1 modifier when rolling to damage.

Unit loses this bonus when Disordered or during Hindered charges. Nimble can make a single extra pivot of up to 90 degrees around its centre while executing any move order, including a Charge! Except Halt.

Oni Large Infantry Unit

Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

Horde (6) 6 4+ 5+ 18 14/17 190 (32)

Special Crushing Strength +2,

Regeneration (5+) Every move order (including Halt!), before doing anything else, roll a number of dice equal to the amount of damage currently on the unit. For every result of (5+) or higher, the unit recovers a point of damage.

Hero Cav

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De Att Ne Pts

1 10 6+ 4+ 1 8/10 55

Inspiring If this unit, or any friendly non-allied unit within 6" of this unit, is Routed, the opponent must re-roll that Nerve test. The second result stands.

Total 478

First impressions – far too many stats and paperwork. Obviously aimed at people with large armies of snot gobblin greenies and similar. The lack of a playsheet is annoying. Layout is poor, no index and having to flit between start and end of rules while organising a real pain.

We did the same game twice, the first time I had overlooked that a unit being attacked does not fight back, cannot fail in its attack. For morale, if figures lost was used instead of points, some units might stand losing more than one figure.

I had the Achaeans and decided to waive the large shield rule, as it cost 0 but allowed the bulk of my troops to stand there twiddling thumbs while attacked. Rather unrealistic, shall we say? Yes the results would have been different, but who wants to play a “super army”? I can many players buying cheap (points) figures and filling the table edge to edge, oh, wait, no, that couldn't be – no!

Tony concentrated his trolls and cavalry/ Oni and Spiders, on his right and sent them crashing into my poor horde. His hero did a double move to take the temple, I moved my archers up, but she was in cover so I couldn't touch her. So she came out to play and routed my archers. My javelin caught by Greenbacku's gang and routed.

The troll/Oni turned and attacked my spear in the flank while I was pinned,and killed, the hero. More manoeuvrable, the riders flanked my skeletons whilst pinned by Greenbacku..

And that was that. Hardly inspiring, but quick.

Hordes of The Things.

I quickly found my old copy and organised the standard 24 point forces:

Japanese 4 goblin warbands, 1 Archer, 1 beast, 2 behemoths 1 Hero

Achaeans 2 satyr warbands, 4 spear, 2 archer, 2 skeleton hordes, 1 blade, 1 hero

That's it. I didn't have the playsheet to hand but p22/23 had the bulk needed.

Apologies to the purists, I used the bases to hand with no regard to basing conventions. 1 base = 1 unit.

Wet set up too far apart, but the moves gave us a chance to reacquaint ourselves with the differences.

Surprisingly we both kept fairly straight lines. Tony started by sending in the warbands in a good tight group. This worked, as it destroyed one of mine and allowed the hero to push back my spear. Next time he came on strong (a 6PIP) and his hero and warband wiped out my spears in one glut. My reserve archers pushed back the hero!

In the centre my hero took on a behemoth and was pushed back then killed. My hordes failed to do their hold & annoy, one being destroyed- and that was the end of me.

Conclusion

HOTT has stood the test of time and shows its long pedigree. No fight is a forgone conclusion, different troop types react to others realistically. No reams of paperwork and point-counting. A lot quicker (and cheaper) to organise and play, 55 (not including sub-lists) army lists and campaign all inclusive.

I'm still looking for the reason resin 15mm figures cost 3x that of metal?