HOTT Ponderings

Naturally, now that I have the rules, I had to ponder about making armies. The person I blame most, though not the only one to blame, is David of the Miniature Minions blog. It was the thought of a Narnian army that led me across his blog and another website that had Narnian armies for HOTT.

However, first order of pondering is how to make HOTT armies from figures already on hand. I turned first to my sole box of Caesar 1/72 Samurai and Ninjas. This provides 16 Ninja figures, 1 mounted officer, 2 geisha or noble ladies, 4 bowmen, 4 heavily armored spearmen, 2 senior samurai, 4 lightly armored spearmen, and 4 lightly armored swordsmen. The excess of Ninja is a source of dithering, as they could be used as Sneakers, but the 3 point cost adds up fast and clashes with the rule about 3-4-6 point elements not being over 50% of your points. On the other hand, as Lurkers, the low cost leaves me potentially short on points without getting more figures. One set of options:

1 Blades General (2AP) - 2AP
3 Blades (2AP) - 6AP
1 Shooters (2AP) - 2AP
1 Heroes (4AP) - 4AP
2 Sneakers (3AP) - 6AP
2 Lurkers (1AP) - 2AP

That would leave me 2 points short.

Another ponder is taking my Thirty Years War figures and working out a HOTT semi-historical army for them.

Succumbing to the Hordes

Well, I finally reached a point that I could no longer resist the lure of Hordes of the Things. Today's mail brought my copy of the ruleset in, but I've not had time to look through it at any depth yet. I looked at a half dozen or so army lists that caught my eye as familiar subjects and that's about it. The brief glimpse was encouraging, however.

The most interesting thing about buying these, to me, was that I ordered a copy from a seller in England, and even with shipping the total was significantly cheaper than ordering it from the only US sources I've found.

Among the ideas for armies tickling my brain (not necessarily in order of priority):

1) Japanese Samurai
2) Chronicles of Narnia
3) Redwall
4) Redaemon Chronicles/OnePrince - humans, rats, the occasional badger, and 'spirit things'
5) English Civil War/Thirty Years War era - I wonder if the combined pike/musket nature of some of the units of this period may be an issue.
6) Archives of Anthropos - no end to the fantasy characters in this one... dragons, horsemen, medieval-style infantry, pegasi, harpies, magicians,...

Of course, it may be a while before I have figures for any of these. But they're fun to dream about, if nothing else.

Elephants and other Thoughts

The previous post mentioned some Rocos I was waiting to receive, and these arrived safely and with a nice bonus...a sixth Panther and a Panzer IV. The new arrivals have created an unexpected dilemma for me, as it demonstrated that my existing knockoff PzIV and JgdPzIV were actually significantly over scale! I knew it was large next to the StuG III, but now that I've seen it next to both the Panther and the Roco PzIV, I'm convinced they're overscale. So I may well actually put them up for sale too.

On to Elephants.... I've acquired a copy of the new TooFatLardies ACW rules, charmingly titled "They Couldn't Hit an Elephant" from a quote attributed to a Union general who assured his staff that the Confederate skirmishers "couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" right before dying from a shot by said skirmishers. I haven't had time to read through the whole thing yet, just the first few pages. It looks very hopeful though.

The recommended base size for TCHAE up to 15mm figures is 20mm x 20mm, and over 15mm is the 40mm x 40mm. I think I've decided, however, because of the way the figure strips that several of my ACW are on are set up, that I shall use the 40mm x 40mm bases for my 10mm figures. I should be able to get up to 3 or 4 rows of 3 or 4 figures per row on a single stand, with room left at the back for some sort of label identifying the unit. I think I shall like the look of that. I'm still not sure if I'm going to end up clipping apart the 3-figure strips into singles for mounting. The strips are rather thick, so I'm also pondering if I should eventually try to cut the bottoms off so that I don't have to build up putty or something around them to make the top level.

Income and outgo

Still have all the items for sale/trade listed three posts down. May add to the list soon.

In the meantime, I'm expecting probably by the end of the week or possibly next week to have a small addition to my Roco forces, namely a platoon of 5 Panthers and a single Sdkfz 7 half-track. This will be my first actual German half-track, where right now all my half-tracks are diecast US ones from various toy companies. Hot Wheels, mostly, with a smattering of Zee Toys and Johnny Lightning.

With the arrival of the Rocos, I shall have all the vehicles necessary to recreate the first battle in Operation Warboard. This has been an objective that's been in my mind for a few weeks now, to assemble troops and vehicles and try out the battle as an IABSM scenario. I may use British troops instead of American as I already have some Brits being based up. I'm also debating whether to use the number of platoons listed in OW, or go with squads, as the platoons in Operation Warboard have roughly a squad worth of figures in them, so going with squads would be closer to the actual figure count involved. Plus, the scenario calls for 3 trucks, each carrying a "platoon", and I'm thinking the carrying capacity for a truck is probably about one squad in IABSM.

Errr...

The Neocounter says I've had over 688,000 visitors. Surely that's not true.

Lesa and Shadrach

Emails were sent to both of you as requested. It's holiday time so you may just not have had a chance to respond yet, but please confirm whether you've received them. I wanted to make sure they got through.

Items for sale or trade

Books
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Osprey Men-At-Arms 64 Napoleon's Cuirassiers and Carabiniers
Osprey Men-At-Arms 55 Napoleon's Dragoons and Lancers

25-30mm Old Glory
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SYWA-13 Austrian Hussar Command - complete (1 standard top broken off but present)
SYWA-08 Austrian Hungarian Grenadier Command - complete
SYWA-03 Austrian German Grenadier Command - 1 officer w/spontoon, 1 drummer, 1 standard bearer
SYWA-04 Austrian German Grenadier - 1 wounded marching hatless, 12 marching grenadier variants
?? unidentified 18th century - 2 officer marching with spontoon over shoulder, 2 officer standing with sword upright
AWI-21 British Grenadier March Attack - 1 officer, 1 standard, 1 fifer (I think), 1 drummer, 11 marching

25mm Barry Minot plastics
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2 Highlander
3 AWI light infantry advancing
2 AWI musketeer in tricorn advancing
16 AWI grenadier in bearskin advancing

30mm Spencer Smith plastics
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2 drummers (1 painted and based)

25mm Sash & Saber
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1 Prussian Grenadier Advancing Shoulder Arms (Prussian Cuffs)

1/72 Plastic Napoleonics - Boxed
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Manufacturer Code # Name Number of Boxes Number of Figures
Italeri 6058 British and Scots Infantry 1 50
Zvezda 8021 French Infantry 1 50

1/72 Plastic Napoleonics - Loose
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Manufacturer Code # Name Number of Figures
Esci 227 French Line Infantry 75
Esci 215 Napoleonic British Infantry 127
Airfix 01744 Waterloo French Infantry 141
Esci 214 French Imperial Guard 127
Airfix 01749 Waterloo French Imperial Guard 50
Airfix 01736 Waterloo French Cavalry 24

1/72 Plastic Samurai
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Caesar 003 Japan Samurai with Ninja - 1 box (with box, but off sprue, unpainted)

1/87 Vehicles
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Roco Marder I (missing targeting asembly on left of turret)
Roco fuel tractor/trailer (Z168 maybe, with scoop-entry on tractor?)(painted)
EKO WW2 dump truck
Roco water tank truck (Looks like the #148, only it has the scoop-entry rather than doors on the tractor)

1/72 Plastic WW2
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Airfix 01748 USAF Personnel (loose figures, but should all be present)
Airfix 01747 RAF Personnel (loose figures, but should all be present)