Dragon Rampant game and first impressions

The only game of Lion Rampant I've played so far was with fantasy miniatures and now the game has its official fantasy "standalone" version, Dragon Rampant. It was only released just before Christmas and I got my copy last week, so it's quite recent stuff. We took our fantasy armies to the field to try it out.

My Goblin army for the day

The game sticks to the tried and true Lion Rampant rules without messing with any of its core mechanics. Armies of maybe 50 figures duke it out with simple "beer and pretzels" rules that promise fun, uncertainty and fast play. Players have a great degree of freedom to design their own force and interpret the prowess of the units they have.

Here's a rundown of the rules to anyone with Lion Rampant wondering what's changed:

- Virtually all game rules are the same
- Restrictions on army composition regarding unit types have been lifted
- Additional special rules for flying, magic and undeath
- New scenarios
- Some new unit types to fit the fantasy theme, such as lesser and greater warbeasts
- Suggested "army lists" for different fantasy races but something you are free to mix, match and reinterpret.
- Rules for "reduced model units" and "single model units" which enables players to use multi-wound monsters to represent that 12 model group (just like we did in our previous Lion Rampant game).

The opposing armies approach each other

Basically it's a repackaged minor modification of the Lion Rampant rules, but it is easy to justify the purchase as the rules are cheap. On top of the rules mods, there's plenty of beautiful fantasy artwork as you would expect from Osprey. They've really stepped up on the wargames market!

For the uninitiated, here's a summary on how the rules work:

- During a turn you roll to activate your units to either move, shoot or fight. Depending on the units, some actions are more difficult to pull off than others.
- When you fail an activation, or when you've activated everyone, the turn is passed to your opponent.
- When moving, no model may move faster than their limit, units must remain within 3" of their unit leader and no model may go closer than 3" of models belonging to other units unless attacking. There's speed reduction for terrain but no wheeling, formations etc.
- Shooting and combat is as simple as it gets. Check ranges, roll a bucket of dice and remove casualties. Morale tests for all units losing models. Those tests are easy to pass initially, but every lost model makes it harder to pass.
- As each unit activation is completed individually, there's no multi unit combat. Which is kind of a bummer because this means there are no real flank/rear attacks either. This is one of the few gripes I have with the rules. Another thing is that games tend to run for some turns after the winner is already clear. The game takes some two hours to play however so don't worry.
- Fighting in terrain makes troops of differing quality equal. Those heavy infantry troops can be fought off by peasants and so on. This is a novel idea which gives players good incentive to include some cannon fodder into their lists as they become more cost effective in terrain. There are unit types which ignore the terrain penalties however.
- The basic recipe gets shaken up by plenty of different scenarios and a "glory system" where players have additional objectives they try to accomplish.

After just two games with the "rampant" system it's still early to draw any conclusions but I'd give these rules three-and-a-half stars out of five at the moment. The rules are quite tactical but also really light and I'm sure there are a lot of games decided by lucky rolls of the dice instead of superior tactics. The main draw of the game is to enable players to put pretty much any models they have on the table again and have a light hearted game with their friends. If marketed properly, I don't see any reason why this set of rules wouldn't enjoy the same kind of success Frostgrave has.

Oh, here are some photos of the game. My orcs were soundly beaten by the Marauders of the North.

Marauder infantry, counts as heavy foot

A greater warbeast attacks the bellicose orcs in the woods.

The warbeast is on the rampage

The orcs find themselves enveloped on both flanks!

With the "no movement within 3" of other units" rule, squeezing you unit through your own line can be surprisingly hard.

The warbeast is brought low by the Goblin general and his bodyguard.

Scouts are quite good at shooting. Not so good at defending against Elite foot.

The giant (elite foot, single model unit) is charged by heavy cavalry and is killed after a bit of to-and-fro combat.

The goblin general is slain by his opposite number.

The last goblins (light infantry) form a spearwall and start throwing javelins at anyone coming too close. It's time to concede defeat.

Lion Rampant Old School Fantasy

I'm always on the lookout for games that would allow me to get some play off my fantasy figures. I think I found just the excuse today in the form of Osprey's Lion Rampant.

The game is a low complexity semi-skirmish game of Medieval combat. Players take command of a warband of about 40-60 models, divided into groups of around ten models. Nothing fancy and quite generic, but it's quick to learn and does have some tactical depth to it. There are plenty of rules recaps on the blogs already so I won't bother writing one.

The generic nature of the game means it can be easily adapted for low fantasy gaming. You don't have rules for flying, firebreathing dragons, but you can proxy a "fierce foot" unit as orcs or treat magic as ranged attacks.

We played a 30 point game instead of the standard 24 one to be able to include more "heroic" units as befits fantasy, but otherwise all the units are pretty much just the typical Lion Rampant archetype units. Here's the lists we used:

The Realms of Men:

The Fellowship of Adventurers (Foot Men-at-Arms with bows, 6 models) @ 8 pts
The Knights who say Ni! (Mounted Men-at-Arms with General, 6 models) @ 6 pts
Pikemen (Foot Serjeant spearmen, 12 models) @ 4 pts
Pikemen (Foot Serjeant spearmen, 12 models) @ 4 pts
Crossbowmen (12 models) @ 4 points
Crossbowmen (12 models) @ 4 points

"The fellowship of adventurers" is your basic adventuring fantasy party capable on kicking ass in melee and giving some ranged damage

These Dogs of War pikemen saw the light of day for the first time in maybe 8 years. I used them as spearmen.

The Greenskin horde:

Orcish Warriors (Fierce foot with General, 12 models) @ 4 pts
Monstrous Trolls (Foot Men-at-Arms, 2 x 3 wound models) @ 6 pts
Monstrous Trolls (Foot Men-at-Arms, 2 x 3 wound models) @ 6 pts
Goblin Spider Riders (Mounted Serjeants, 6 models) @ 4 pts
Goblin Spearmen (Foot Yeomen, 12 models) @ 3 pts 
Goblin Spearmen (Foot Yeomen, 12 models) @ 3 pts
Goblin Archers (Archers, 12 models) @ 4 pts

To learn the rules we played just the basic line-em-up Bloodbath scenario without the boasting rules. Here's the setup:

 Tactically the game was pretty straightforward. Hills were taken, lines were drawn, forests navigated and blows exchanged. The elite units such as cavalry and trolls performed well, but even archer units can provide effective and deadly close combat rolls.

There was a cinematic fight between the trolls and adventurers for several turns According to my opponent, they were in it strictly for the EXP and loot.

Victory belongs to the Realms of Men!

At first it felt odd that eachclose combat was handled one at a time so that only one unit could attack another at a time, but in practice it worked out well and was quick to play out. Also the 3" buffer rule (no units may move within 3" of each other unless retreating) gave the game some needed tactical complexity once you learned how to leverage it to your benefit. The combat has a nice ebb-and-flow feel to it, although I felt like an army morale system with say, a break test at 50% point losses would be in order.

The game went well and was an effective proof of concept that the rules translate well for fantasy gaming as long as you don't miss spectacular wizardry and flying units. The "vanilla" unit archetypes will not work 100% though. In our game, Trolls were too easy to activate, and Goblin archers were too effective in close combat. I think I'll have a crack at making whole new units for the Greenskins to give them more racial flavour, but it doesn't need anything more than a little tweaking on the unit stats and prices. Drop be a line if you want to contribute!

UPDATE: Here's a draft on a greenskin army list for Lion Rampant. I've done some minor adjustments on the unit stats, but in strict moderation. Any input would be very much appreciated. I think the orcs are still easy to adapt, but the Undead might prove tricky.