"Anyone playing Lion Rampant yet?" Topic

I was given the rules about a week ago. It seems interesting, but I haven't had the chance to go into it in detail yet.

Mine arrived in the post today. Will probably try it out at the weekend – from a readthrough it looks to be everything I hoped for.

Eager to hear impressions or AAR's.

What's the basic army size? Dalaupprors posts imply 4 units of 12 – 3 infantry, 1 cavalry.

Inquiring minds want to know!

From what I have gathered so far: You can have up to six units on the field. Cavalry max is six figures per unit, infantry max is twelve. So the most in an infantry only game would be seventy-two individually based figures. They say its harder to play with multiple figures on a base. They recommend a mixture of both to your own choosing. I guess playing a couple of times would help in the break down of foot versus cav. They also recommend having one major piece of terrain on the field. They believe that you need table of 4'x6', but it could be squeezed onto a 3'x4' if you need to.

I need to correct. They say one major piece of terrain on each quarter of the table. Just as an aside. Can anyone tell me why the original posting didn't make it on the front page.

I think only paying members' posts make it to the front page.

I'm very curious to hear how these rules play myself.

Well, I had a go with these rules this morning solo to see how they work and to familiarise myself before getting a "proper" game on. I've been looking forward to Lion Rampant for ages and even rebased some stuff in anticipation and I'm happy to say that the game seems to be spot on.

Just to clarify some of the above posts – the game suggests 24 point armies which will give you 4 or 5 units on average. Knights (or Mounted Men at Arms in the game's terminology) are the most expensive unit at 6 points, serfs the least. Mounted are always six figures per unit, foot usually 12. The game assumes single basing but you could use multi-bases with casualty caps or something without any problems. The troop types are fairly generic and what we would all expect from a medieval game – Heavy, medium and light cavalry, crossbows, bows, couple of different grades of foot, skirmishers and serfs. There are optional special rules with which you can tweak them. For example in my solo games today I used a unit of Horse Archers which I classed in game terms as Mounted Yeomen (or light cav) with the Expert special rule which meant they could move and shoot in the same turn without penalty.

In order to get your troops to do stuff they roll 2d6 against their unit stats. For example if you want to move a unit and it's Move score is 7 you have to activate it by getting 7 or more on your roll and then you can move. The same goes for shooting for missile troops and there is a seperate stat, Attack, which you use when charging into melee. If you screw up an activation your turn ends so you need to prioritise what you want to do each turn.

Melee is simultaneous so it is possible to charge in full of fire and confidence and end up coming off the worse. Units have seperate Attack and Defence scores to beat in order to cause hits so Knights, for example, are more likely to score hits when attacking than when defending. Spear armed foot are tougher on the defence than the attack. This one of the many nice design choices which reinforce Medieval flavour. Casualties are removed and degrading unit sizes affect morale tests and fighting ability.

There are about a dozen scenarios in the book as well as suggested Retinue Lists covering assorted historical armies, Hollywood style Robin Hood and also suggestions for using the rules for Fantasy battles. The focus is on small fights and skirmishes – border raids, escort duty, etc. Because the units are supposed to be a small handful of men there are no rules for flanking and facing isn't that important – archers have 360 degree arc of fire. The rationale for this is that such small gangs of men can easily turn to face any threat in seconds, unlike a big formed unit. This also means that pikes have no special rules since their advantage is en masse.

My solo games played out quite quickly, units move at a good clip (10" for knights, other types correspondingly more or less) and combat is quite bloody. Having your turn end when you fail an activation is a good design choice and can really throw a spanner into your plans just when you don't want it. I also found that the side that seemed to be losing can, if the other ends its turn early this way, get an advantage which can even things out by being able to activate more units more often. Losing your leader can be disastrous and severely degraded units are hard to rally and activate. The rules are simple and while cleverly put together there's nothing unduly taxing or head-scratchingly unusual about them so they would make an ideal club night game. So far I'm greatly pleased with it.

Thank you, Frothers for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!! Very helpful and encouraging. Amazon says my copy should arrive early next week.

In order to get your troops to do stuff they roll 2d6 against their unit stats. For example if you want to move a unit and it's Move score is 7 you have to activate it by getting 7 or more on your roll and then you can move. If you screw up an activation your turn ends so you need to prioritise what you want to do each turn.

If 7 is a typical move stat and your turn ends when you fail one activation, it doesn't sound like you will get to do much (if anything at all) each turn.

Spear armed foot are tougher on the defence than the attack. This one of the many nice design choices which reinforce Medieval flavour.

Trouble is, if you have spearmen facing each other this is going to lead to a stand-off as neither side wants to charge. Personally I don't think it's a good design choice or even very realistic for stationary spearmen to be better against charging enemy spearmen. Against mounted troops, yes the spearmen should stand to take the charge, but they should not get an advantage against charging enemy foot IMO.

Thank you for the write up, Frothers. Very helpful indeed!

If 7 is a typical move stat and your turn ends when you fail one activation, it doesn't sound like you will get to do much (if anything at all) each turn.

I have to assume that was just a general example of how the activations work, because most units have a Move of 5+ or 6+. There are different numbers for activating to attack or shoot. Unit profiles are constructed by balancing these to reflect their function. Thus, archers have Attack 7, Move 6 and Shoot 6, making them more likely to move or shoot than to charge into combat. In contrast, mounted men-at-arms Attack on a 5 and Move on a 7, making them easier to get into melee but cumbersome to manoeuvre.

I've not played the rules yet, but I have read them and they look interesting. I am looking forward to playing, in part because I think that managing your activations will be an interesting part of the game. Do you go for the easy activation but not in the right order? Do you go for the right order but risk the plan falling apart due to poor activations? This element of risk management based on your opponent's possible actions in the game really appeals to me, as does the possibility that on some turns you could get no activations at all. If you don't like that lack of control in a game, then this may not be the game for you.

Yes, I just picked 7 to illustrate the mechanism although this is the Move score for Knights which as Dr Berserker has made clearer is deliberately high to contrast with their low (and therefore more achievable) Attack score.

Regarding foot vs foot I don't think making them better defensively than on the attack is ahistorical. A bunch of guys with long pointy sticks, close up and braced is in a favourable position whether they're facing foot or mounted. While players might be reluctant to attack a unit of Foot Yeomen with another unit of Foot Yeomen because hits are more likely to be scored by the unit defending the difference is only 1 point so lucky dice can still give victory. You can, of course, make us of the Expert upgrade which boosts Foot Yeomen's score on the offensive. Or you could do what I think really is historical when two well matched troop types are facing off – soften up the opposition with archery. Once that foot unit has taken a few casualties from missile fire then the fresh unit will have all the advantage. Also there are more than one grade of foot. Foot Yeomen vs Foot Sergeants or vs Fierce Foot will be a different scenario.

In Lion Rampant Knights are always rash, tribesmen ferocious and spearmen steady. The author is quite clear that he didn't intend to write a scholarly simulation of medieval combat, he name-checks Rules According to Ral and the old boardgame Cry Havoc as having influenced him. It has more than a nod towards Hollywood history if you like. In terms of flavour it puts me in mind of The Sword and the Flame in that it gives a flavourful, fast and fun game but is clearly not attempting to model the intricacies of warfare in that period. If you approach the game in this spirit I don't think you'll be disappointed.

do you all think these rules would work for dark ages?
i know the game is set for about 1066/1100 and upwards, but what about 8th or 9th century?

I would probably just not use as many mounted units, or any at all for that matter.

i'm interested because those are the figures that I have.

Given that the rules are more cinematic than realistic, I think they would work fine for the Dark Ages. You might want to tweak the troop types a bit, but you could probably get away with the standard ones and just rate your troops on their perceived quality.

As for cavalry, it's your choice whether to use it or not. The cavalry troop types would work well enough, I think, and some armies did use cavalry more than others, so it would really depend which armies you have and what figures you have as to whether you bothered with it or not.

Stew, why not just use Mersey's rules written for the Dark Ages – Dux Bellorum?

thanks for the feedback. The main figures i have are an ever growing collection of Vikings and Saxons, mostly Griping Beast but others thrown in as well. My interest in this time period started with SAGA and now I'm all about the dark ages; 7th through 10th century basically.

I'll probably end up picking up the rules anyway because the cost is low enough. i also have some Normans in a suitable sized force for skirmish games. so maybe I'll set my games in the times right after Hastings with the Normans putting out English fires.

I don't mind tinkering here and there to get the rules to be dark age-ish, but the more i read about them the more they seem that they will port over pretty smoothly.

I had Dux Bellorum, which is a set a little before my preferred time period as it focuses on the Saxon migration / Age of Arthur in the 5th and 6th centuries. DB is not a skirmish game but an element based combat game. The game was alright but there were several things about it that I didn't like (activation sequence, auto charges, and I found the LP system to be lacking) so I sold it off.

doesn't mean it's not a great game; it just wasn't my cup of fun. But I do like Mr. Mersey's style and game philisophy.

LR looks more like my speed.

-Stew

turns out that over on boardgame geek forums the author has some suggestions for SAGA warbands as LR warbands, so that really solves that!

: )

Will these rules work with multi based stuff. I've got 2 mounted on a base and 4/5 foot figures.

Er oh yes they do as Frothers has already pointed out :)