A new project - Hordes Of The Things

I was recently introduced to Hordes Of The Things at the club. I have to say that I enjoyed the games I played and it left me thinking that I really ought to put an army together, not least so that I could take part in the club's annual HOTT tournament.

It is a very, very long time since I last played Warhammer Fantasy and almost as long since I sold my Empire Army, and, I have to admit I've always had a soft spot for the Renaissance period pike and shot period, so when I first looked at creating an army for HOTT it didn't take me too long to whittle down my list of possible armies to a few contenders, with a Renaissance army pretty much top of the list.

This got me looking around for figures and, to be fair, there is an embarrassment of riches out there in 15mm for this period. However, because we are talking HOTT, I wanted to add in a magical dimension, but none of the available 15mm magic user figures around really looked right for the period to me. I started to reconsider what kind of army to create but I really wanted all those pikes, arquebusiers, gendarmes etc, so, when I found out that Alternative Armies ALTUOS 15mm Renaissance range contained a pair of Leonardo Da Vinci figures - on foot and mounted - PLUS a nice resin model of his famous "Turtle Car" tank, I knew that Leonardo would be a perfect character to use as a magician and his tank would be ideal as a Behemoth. The range of figures was perfect for what I wanted because you can buy small numbers of figures (they are priced individually, rather than as packs) and they have plenty of variants. 

Anyway, going back to Warhammer Fantasy for my original inspiration meant that the figures should look like those of the later 15th and early 16th centuries, with halberdiers and sword and buckler infantry as Blades, arquebusiers and crossbowmen as Shooters, gendarmes as Knights and pikes (yes, I know that Warhammer didn't have pikes, but you really do have to have pikes in a Renaissance army) as Spears. For Riders I had lots of options. Did I want mounted crossbows? Maybe, but I have always been fascinated by Stradiots, light cavalry used by many armies in the Italian Wars of the late 15th and 16th centuries, who were recruited across the Adriatic in the Balkans, so Stradiots it would be.

My old Empire Army had been a bit of a mishmash of colours, with troops from various parts of the empire, but it had a core of troops painted in the black and yellow livery of Averland, which I really liked then and still like now, so I simply had to create an Averland-themed Renaissance HOTT army. The stark black/yellow scheme would be brightened up by adding red and green to the colour palette, especially for the stradiots, but also for the carriages of the artillery pieces.

So, here are the Spears, Blades and Shooters. Note that one of the units of Blades are Halberdiers and there is an officer figure, so that I have the option of having the General in that unit;

 

These are followed by the Knights and Riders. I chose to use fully-armoured Gendarmes for one unit of Knights, because they look like Warhammer Fantasy Knightly Order troops and what were known as "Archers" but who were equipped with lances as well as crossbows as the other one;

 

And finally, here is the Artillery, the Behemoth and, left to right a Paladin, a Magician and a Hero (who will also serve as a mounted General);

 

I decided that I wanted a large enough army to be able to play large games of HOTT, so I bought enough miniatures to give me a 48AP army. Here is the whole army, which I think looks rather impressive.