A HOTT Midsummer Night's Dream

The HOTT tournament at Beer and Pretzels weekend in Burton (run by Spirit Games) always has a them and this year it was 'Kings and Queens'. It's not compulsory and how you interpret the theme is up to you but there is a prize for the best interpretation so it's well worth going with the theme, not to mention it's just plain rude if you don't... hey Alan ? :-)

To begin with I was at a bit of a loss but sought advice from Sebastian Rogers, he mentioned a number of ideas amongst them being King of the Faeries. It occurred to me I could do this but make it more interesting if I used Shakespeare's famous play "A Midsummer Nights's Dream". Question now was how to assign troop types types to the various characters in the play. I dropped an email to James Ewins to get some input from him too and eventually came up with the list as per below. By this time there was about a week and a half to go before the event and it was a bit of a panic to get the figures ordered and painted. Fortunately Irregular Miniatures had a fair proportion of the figures I needed and Sebastian kindly sent some Foundry Elves and Cherubs. The Foundry Elves have a slightly more Goth look than GW Elves which appealed for this army; the Cherubs of course where ideal for Faeries. Irregular offer great service and their figures arrived the next day so so I cracked on with the painting. Seb's figures arrived a day or two later so pretty soon the army was complete. The mix of foundry and Irregular 15mm did mean a mix of scales but it worked quite well as the faeries were all 15mm (apart from Puck) and the humans all 15mm. The only panic was after spraying the figures in GW matt varnish (Purity Seal) they all frosted up and my heart sunk. Fortunately a quick check on the HOTT yahoo group and theminiaturespage.com revealed that the simple solution was to re-spray with gloss and then with matt. I did the gloss but did not bother with matt as they looked ok and I did not want to risk it.

Technically Theseus is Duke in the play but the stories have him as a King so that suited the theme; to get the figures the simplest was go for Irregular ancient Greek spearmen and follow suit with the other figures. The Amazons are from the Irregular Warrior women and since they did spear holders too it gave Theseus the supporting rank; although they were a head taller they fitted in well. The young lovers were a mix of ancients for the males the women from the peasants range. They ended up as warband to to their impetuous nature. Puck was also from the peasants range but with wings glued on from a spare Cherub. Whilst he could have been a flyer due to his ability to fly the globe woods present aerials with problems so Lurker fitted the ability to 'pop' into existence. Faeries were an easy choice for flyers despite the woods but at some point I may experiment with them as 4 Lurkers. Bottom was always going to be a beast since he had to be portrayed with an asses head. Simplest conversion ever, off with the head of a peasant and exchange with head of a mule, both from Irregular. The Horde was just left over figures and suited for various other characters of lesser importance in the play.

The Stronghold is a wedding marquee. I had thought of just a sort Elven wood / glade type thing but since there is a wedding at the end of the play and one of the regulars, James Ewins, was due to get married to Rachel on the same day as the event it seemed an appropriate concept. The marquee is actually a 25mm Roman tent with porchway made out of tissue paper and toothpicks. The second tent is from the Irregular range. Missing from the ensemble is the wall with a hole and the Little Indian boy. The boy is never seen anyway so any opponents will have to imagine him; the wall with a hole I expect to do sometime as a bit of army specific terrain; impassable I think.

On the day the army performed well, winning 3 out of 4 games. I'd not got the chance to play with them before the event so was pleased with how they worked. Two Mages and two Flyers can be a pip drain but it turned out not too bad. I was also pleased that other than the Horde all the other elements did their fair share to contribute to the victories. The warband in particular doing in a couple of clerics.