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Hordes of The Things (HOTT) is a fast-play mass battle fantasy rulebook created by Wargames Research Group. The current edition, v2.1, was released in March 2014. Currently it is OOP on Amazon.co.uk. The name comes from a BBC radio series of the 1980s that parodied Lord of The Rings. My review is based on the v2.0 rulebook.
The Authors
WRG are a well respected miniature game company in the UK, having developed the hugely popular Ancients in the 70s to 80s, and the De Bellis Antiquitatis rules in the 90s. HoTT is based on the DBA rules. It is a generic system which can be applied in many different fantasy settings.
Core Concept
The design objective is to make it possible to fight the kinds of battles seen in fantasy fiction and films like Lord of the Rings, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and similar wars. These are essentially based on historical mediaeval combat with added elements of mighty heroes, monsters and magic.
Building an Army
Your army is made up of “elements”, standard width rectangular bases containing the figures that represent the type of troops present.
Each element is basically a regiment of troops, a gigantic monster like a dragon, or a small group of powerful beings -- a hero and his retinue, say. An element can move and fight as a unit by itself, or it can combine with other elements into larger units.
Each element costs between 1 and 6 points. More powerful elements are more expensive, of course. The standard size game is 24 points, which usually will be about 10 or 12 elements. Only half your points can be spent on super units like Heroes, Gods and monsters, ensuring a good battlefield role for normal troops.
The side that is defending must also have a Stronghold, such as a castle, enchanted forest, goblin cave, or something else suitable for the army. This is free and comes with a garrison, but if captured it costs the game.
Any scale of figures can be used, providing the dimensions of the element bases are consistent. If using 15mm figures, an area of 24 inches square is recommended, and 36 inches for 28mm figures.
Troop Types
A lot of games define troops according to their training, equipment and morale. HoTT defines them by their battlefield role. For example, a unit of Shooters is missile infantry. It works the same way whether it’s made of Hobbits with slings, Martians with radium rifles, or City Guard with crossbows.
Specific Troop Types
Aerial units can be Gods, Dragons, Flyers, Airboats or Heroes. Obviously these can fly and ignore the terrain effects on movement.
Mounted troops can be Heroes, Paladins, Knights, Riders, Behemoths, or Beasts. These move faster in good going than Foot.
Foot can be Blades, Spears, Shooters, Warbands, Artillery, Hordes, Lurkers, Sneakers, Magicians or Clerics.
To give detail on a few examples…
Gods are members of the traditional pagan pantheons such as Zeus, Thor, or fantasy equivalents. Monotheistic gods never appear on the battlefield, having Clerics instead.
Knights are heavily armoured or magically protected fighters on heavy horses, chariots or equivalent fantasy beasts such as lizards. They love to charge into melee.
Hordes are the cheap, mob type troops like lesser Goblins, or rioting peasants, whose weak skills are made up for by seemingly endless numbers. When a Horde is destroyed, a new Horde element can be brought on from your table edge.
Behemoths are any giant monster such as Oliphants, elephants, dinosaurs, huge trolls, and so on, except Dragons who are a separate type.
Beasts are wargs, wolves and other non-intelligent creatures that are vicious in numbers.
Sneakers are stealthy units like assassins, ninjas, and burglars with magic rings. They cannot fight, but can evade attacks and sneak into fortresses and attack commanders.
The beauty of this system is that it doesn’t matter if your figures are elven knights, Napoleonic kurassiers, Goblins or Germanic tribesmen. Practically any pre-20th century or fantasy army can be fitted into these troop definitions. You can either make specific fantasy armies -- Lizard Men, Elves -- or use historical figures and add some fantastic special figures to them.
Army Lists
The rules give example armies from many backgrounds, including Generic Elf, Generic Barbarian, Generic Chaos, Generic Kung Fu, Epic Myth armies like the Norse Ragnarok or Indian Ramayana, popular fantasy including Tekumel, Discworld and Barsoom, also semi-historical armies like Samurai, and HG Well’s War of the Worlds. Using these example lists and the troop type definitions, it’s easy to come up with your own variations.
If we look at LoTR/The Hobbit, then Smaug is a Dragon, oliphants and giant trolls are Behemoths, Bilbo is a Sneaker, Gandalf is a Magician, Aragorn is a Hero, the Dwarves of the Iron Hills are Blades, Elven bowmen are Shooters, the Knight of Dol Amroth are Knights, the Wargs are Beasts, and so on.
Command and Control
Command and control works by a simple but tactically challenging system. At the start of your turn you roll a D6. This is the number of player initiative points (PIPs) you can spend that turn.
It takes one PIP to activate a single unit -- an element or a group of elements. Thus, if you form your entire army into a single massive block you can move it every turn, although only at the rate of the slowest element, but more likely you will split it into a number of units that support each other -- a big block of Shooters and a unit of Knights, perhaps -- and take the risk of not being able to move the whole army every turn.
PIPs are also used to summon Gods, to bring on replacement Horde units, and to free Heroes and Magicians from being ensorcelled.
Movement
A unit can only move if activated with a PIP. The movement rate depends on the troop type and terrain. Light troops move faster through rough ground then heavy troops. Mounted troops move faster than infantry, when in the clear. Aerial units ignore terrain.
Combat
Shooters and Artillery can shoot at targets in line of sight at long range. Other troops must move into contact in order to fight.
In either case each player rolls a die and adds various tactical factors, for flank attacks or cover, and so on. The higher total score wins.
The result depends on the ratio of the two scores and the units involved. Nearly all units are destroyed if their score is half the enemy’s. If the score is less than the enemy’s but above half, the result will usually be a recoil or withdrawal move, but this can be affected by the terrain.
Riders, when beaten, will recoil from combat with any enemy troop type, but if they are in Bad Going they will be destroyed.
Morale
Morale effects are included in the combat results, so you don’t have to track morale.
Magic
Magicians work basically like long range missile weapons, perhaps causing fear, or bewilderment or actual damage, rather than specific individual spells.
Magicians don’t need line of sight. They can’t be attacked back while bespelling, except if their target is another Magician or a God. They can suffer bad luck and ensorcell themselves. Heroes don’t usually get destroyed by Magicians but can get ensorcelled. Command points can be spent to bring back ensorcelled Magicians or Heroes.
Winning and Losing
If you lose your general, and more points than the enemy, your army flees.
If you lose half your points, and more than the enemy, your army flees.
The defending army loses if its Stronghold is captured.
It’s usually possible to complete a game in an hour, once you are used to the rules.
Big Battle HoTT
If you want a larger battle, you can simply allocate more points to your army. If playing with 48 or more points, there are some variant rules given in this section.
The table needs to be wider. The army must be split into “commands” equivalent to 24 points worth each. The high value elements can be concentrated into one command. Each command rolls a separate Command die. Each command can become demoralised, without being destroyed, and fights on at a disadvantage. Otherwise the normal victory conditions apply.
The Rest of the Book
The campaign rules cover a simple campaign for 3 to 10 players, with strategc movement, various scenario types, the use of allies,and replacement of lost forces.
There are also army lists as mentioned above, plus a number of diagrams to explain tactical situations involving the placement of elements.
Conclusion
The game has less specific flavour and detail than Warhammer Fantasy Battle. This allows it to be faster playing and accomodate a much wider range of possible armies that you can make up by yourself.
Playable with small armies, often using historical figures, it’s easy to get into and the main drawback is that the rules are currently OOP. The wide popularity of the game and its historical predecessor DBA means that it's fairly easy to find opponents.
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