The discussion about a chessmen army triggered some thinking on my side and I would like to summarise some ideas about how to build chess armies for the main kind of chess games I know: the ancient Indian game, and (what I feel are the most interesting evolutions) the modern chess game as played in most of the world and Chinese Chess (Xiang qi, if my transliteration is correct).

While I occasionally played Indian and Chinese chess, I never played some of the variants I mention. I got their description for R.C. Bell, 'Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations', Dover Publications, an edition with two volumes bound as one.

In all the games victory is achieved by capturing the enemy king, no matter how much losses you need to get that. That sounds to me like the King is a stronghold. Unfortunately in HOTT only the defender deploys a stronghold, so here is a:

The players roll for the attacker/defender roles.
Attacker wins only if he captures the enemy Stronghold.
Defender wins according to the usual rules.
If the Defender wins, he plays the next game as Attacker.
Troops lost in the previous games are not replaced.
The campaign finishes when one of the player captures the enemy
Stronghold or a draw is agreed.

In ancient India, chess pieces were representing the four parts of the army: elephants, chariots, horses and infantry. In the original deployment of pieces, near the king there was a minister. That kind of army is well described by a modified Classical Indian DBA list II/3 (and my interest in chess is why I bought a Classical India army pack, that is long waiting in my cabinet for painting):

Traditional colours for the two armies would be red and green, not black and white as in modern chess.

Options
In some variants of the game, chariots are replaced by boats, so replace chariots with two water lurkers and an additional shooter.

Variants
Burmese Chess

This has pieces similar to Indian Chess but, since the DBA list for Burmese has mainly Auxilia for infantry, replace three Shooters with Warband.

Chariots are replaces by Boats, Elephants by Noblemen, so that gives a very different list: Blade general, two Blades (Noblemen), two Riders (Horsemen), 2 Water Lurkers (Boats) and six Warband (Infantry).

In the Middle ages Chess were brought into Europe by Arabs, the pieces were reinterpreted according to European culture and movement rules changed to get a faster and more interesting game. But, as piece representation, it was a mess.

The Minister was replaced by a Queen, with enormously improved movement capabilities.

The Elephant, 'al-fil' in Arab, sounded like 'alfiere' in Italian, a standard bearer. In figurative sets it is often a noble man-at-arm. In English it became a Bishop. Somebody explain that if the following way:
Arabs played with very simplified pieces, the Elephant was a cone with a cut in the middle, to represent the tusks. To Europeans this piece looked like a bishop's mitre.

The Chariot (Rukh in Persian) pieces were almost simple cubes, representing the chariot without horses. It sounded like "rocco" (castle/tower in ancient Italian and, OK, you may have already understood I am Italian) and looked like that. In some ancient Nordic chess sets it was sometime represented as a berserker. But they are boats in Russian.

All of that to say there is no obvious correspondence between troop type and chess pieces!

To try to get a HOTT army, one may consider the following factors:

The value of pieces in chess (Queen =9 pawns, Rook =5 pawns, Knight and Bishop =3 pawns);
Their movement capability;
If you are starting from a figurative chess set, the kind of figures you have.

Piece value
The Queen is the most powerful piece, so it deserves to be a general and a 4AP element.
Rooks come second in power, so one may use 3-4 AP elements for them.
Knights and Bishops have similar impact in a chess game so they can be 2AP elements.
Pawn can be 2 AP elements representing 3-4 pawns each, or 1AP elements to representing 1-2 pawns.

Movement
Queen, Rook and Bishops can move in straight line, crossing up to 8 squares in one move. So they are candidate for fast elements.
Knights are slower, but their strange jumping around, even going over enemy elements give the impression of a skirmishing style of compact, and suggest they should be classed as riders, more than knights. On the other side the straight move of Bishops looks more like a charge.
Pawns must definitely be foot elements, hordes or generic infantry.

Available figures
Should I start from scratch, I would build an army from a medieval range of miniatures, with the following list would be:

If you start from a figurative chess set, one may get the most appropriate choice of elements according to the following options:

Pawn: Any 2AP foot or hordes

If you base each piece alone and pawns 4 to a base, you can easily transform a figurative chess set in a HOTT army.

I never played at this game. It is a sort of blind chess. You know where your pieces are, but do not know where the enemy ones are. You communicate your move to an umpire who check its legality. So you can try to guess where your opponent men are only by trial moves and umpire answers.

Chinese chess has preserved all the pieces from the Indian game, but significantly limited Elephant and Minister movements, changed the Pawn (Soldier) movements and introduced a new piece, Artillery. Pieces are usually plates with the ideogram of the element they represent. I have never seen a real 3D Chinese chess set... this may be the opportunity to build one!

The chessboard is divided in two by a river, which significantly impact the game and call for a different army for defender and attacker. Pieces move on the intersection of the lines, not in the squares. So you play on a 9x9 intersection net, instead of an 8x8 square board.

Elephants cannot cross the river, so they are confined in the defender side. Moreover, both Elephant must move only on the same 7 intersections. They are quite a weak piece, but, since they are Elephants, must be Behemoths. Therefore using only one instead of two in the HOTT army is already more than enough.

Ministers, (yes, now they are two and are called Mandarins) are confined in a 3x3 intersection space, the Fortress, together with the king. Pretty scared by the enemy they seem.

Soldiers can move only forward in their own side of the river, but after crossing they can also move sideways, improving their offensive capability. Therefore attacker's pawns must be better than defender's pawns.

Finally... there are only 5 Soldiers in a Chinese chess set.

I say shooters because the only set I have seen having symbols instead of simple ideograms on the pieces, had a Bow for the soldiers.

If Defender-Attackers roles are swapped:

The previous attacker must use the Shooter's points to buy Hordes (at least the Mandarins) and the Behemoth, but never more than in the original list.
The previous defender takes away the behemoth and the Horde general, upgrades all the remaining Hordes to Shooters and chooses one Chariot as general.

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