Back in time with HOTT and DBF

Chris K has been working on and off with the playtest group hoping to publish the updated "Hordes of the Things", to be called DBF. I'm not that bothered with it, to be honest, but Chris is interested so it is only fair to give him support. This week, however, there was a carrot dangling in the shape of some of my old figures I gave to Chris many moons ago.

When I was in my teens  I invested in Middle Earth armies initially based round converted Airfix and then transitioning to Minifigs ME range. I bought an early set of table top rules called "Wizards and Warfare", which I now find I had as a first edition, that probably dates from about 1974. I've lost my original copy, but I found a picture of the cover of the rules I had online. The magic in them was heavily influenced by Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" I recall. Showing a tendency I have kept until now I immediately started modifying them and had a hand written QRS that I'd done on the cardboard insert from a new school shirt (the card was white, so clearer to write on).

I took this seriously, and my armies were quite large, seeing as I was building both sides. As usual. They were all neatly sorted in Racco Cabinets, with Dymo taped labels on the trays. I took them with me to university, but no one was interested in fantasy. In fact they were actively opposed as a group, for reasons I won't go into in detail but was connected with the club nearly being overwhelmed by D&D players. So the figures languished until I gave them away.

Chris has resurrected them as LotR armies for DBF, so I could hardly miss out.

Here's me with the Gondorians taking on some Southrons. The Southron army is made up of figures that weren't mine (my sizaeable hordes from Harad were set up to be another army). The Gondorians have been rebased, but memories came flooding back. All those red coated spearmen had to have their spears replaced as they originally held them horizontally over their shoulders in weak metal and snapped off one by one.

Not a lot of tactical sophistication here. Steve's tied himself in knots with his Behemoths.

Next to us Tim was using an Orc army against Phil with Wood Elves. Except for the cannon and the command bases these are all my figures from about 50 years ago. There's been a bit of repainting, but still recognisably my output from when I was 14 or 15.

After a series of misfiring combats I finally started to get the upper hand, and killed a Behemoth.

I then managed to get to grips with his archers and cavalry and killed a load. Then I noticed that not all of Steve's army wasn't my figures. There's one of my old Southron standard bearers waving one of my hand painted tooth paste tube flags in his general's Behemoth.

We lined them up for another go. Someone has repainted a lot of the shields, wrecking my beautiful Tolkeinian (?) heraldry. Those swordmen in the front rank aren't Minifigs, but most likely Garrison/Greenwood and Ball. The wizard at the back isn't one of my old figures either. Gandalf and Shadowfax seem to have gone walkabout.

Meanwhile on the other table Tim's orcish hordes swarm across the board. Again my shields have been repainted, so no more lidless eyes. There's a group of goblins in the middle that certainly aren't Minifigs. Exactly what they are I'm not sure. Bought them in a bring and buy.

Steve and I were back at it. He got his Behemoth's sorted out this time, with a heavy flank presence.

This is where the battle would be decided. I'm a little exposed here, with my blades losing out to Steve's Behemoths. My hero General (again not one of my figures) is doing okay, but my wizard is being steadily driven back due to the presence of Steve's white robed cleric.

I was doing okay. I'd got Steve three bases down, so only needed one for the win. He'd killed one of mine, and then in a final round where I couldn't hit anything (I mean two 5:2 roll offs and a 5:1 and no kills...how fair is that?) he rolled up my General and my Magician to sneak a 4:3 win.

As games they aren't that exciting with these troop mixes. The spear/blade combo means you have to create a meat grinder somewhere. They Gondorians could do with some horse, but Chris has taken all of that to make an army of Rohirrim. 

But so what. It was fun to reacquaint myself with these old fellows, and see they haven't gone to landfill.

PS We did a follow up game in the 18th June as well. Chris is making real progress on the figure refurbs:

He's also added some GW LotR figures that Steve no longer wants, so there's quite a collection building.