Lion Rampant - Little Smelling... 3 Player Battle Report

This weekend the three of us decided we'd like to play Lion Rampant. I looked around online and found this 3 player scenario: "Find the Lady 3 Player Lion Rampant Game on Graham's Wargames".

After a little bit of looking through our figure collections and we found that we had enough of the right models to play it, though we did vary the 3 retinues very slightly.

The game started with the Mounted Men-at-Arms of Sir Simon and Sir Roger fighting a multi-turn duel, which Sir Simon won, just. Meanwhile Sir William struggled to get anything to move. Eventually the retinues started to reach buildings, but every one was empty. This suited Sir William, who just set them on fire.

Eventually Sir Simon managed to steal the relic from the church (one of the 10 left ears of St Cuthbert known in Christendom) and Sir William found the Heiress in the very last building. He struggled for a while to beat the Militia, but eventually his Foot Men-at-arms routed them. In good time as well! As he retreated with the Heiress Sir Roger reached him with the remains of his Mounted Sergeants but they were beaten off easily.

In the end Sir William (me) won with the Heiress off the table (2 Glory) and 3 buildings burned (3 Glory). Sir Simon (Brendan) was second with the relic (5 Glory), but without the Heiress (-3 Glory). Sir Roger (Ed) looked on at the burned village (-1 Glory) and  looted Church (-1 Glory), and realised the mission for him had been a disaster...

We all enjoyed the scenario thoroughly. Having a real story play out made the normally enjoyable scenarios in Lion Rampant even better and we really want to try something like this again.

We had a couple of minor issues:

1. Lion Rampant doesn't have rules for buildings. We ruled they would act as Cover and Difficult Terrain.
2. The Bidowers didn't really do anything. That may have been down to where they were placed however.

Sir William's forces march, haltingly, towards the centre of Little Smelling

Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants race to the centre of the town.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants manage to speed up a little on their advance. Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants can be seen coming in from the other side of town The locals wonder if it's time to hide.

Sir Roger's and Sir Simon's Mounted Men-at-arms charge and counter-charge in a whirling melee for many turns.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants sets fire to a building.

Sir William's Mounted Sergeants set fire to another building and his Foot Sergeants find the Heiress.

Sir Simon's forces search each building carefully as they advance into the town.

Having found the Heiress Sir William's Foot Men-at-arms attempt to run only to be caught by the remnants of Sir Roger's Mounted Sergeants.

But they soon repel them and make a run for it.

Sir William's Foot Sergeants form a Schiltron to hold back Sir Simon's forces

Meanwhile Sir Simon's Foot Sergeants manage to sneak off the table with the Left Ear of St Cuthbert.... but is it the real one?

Animals!

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago I bought some farm animals from Warbases. I just finished painting them all last night. These will be used as general scatter to set the theme of my terrain for games such as Lion Rampant.

My daughter loves them and I'm rather pleased. I may have to get more of the range.

The ducks will eventually be glued onto a pond I have.

Also whilst at Derby World Wargames I picked up a few packs of scenery from Iron Gate Scenery. These are all excellent value 3d printed pieces. So far all I've painted is their "Torture Cage" which I've populated with a Wargames Factory plastic skeleton. This is wonderful value for what you get and I don't think the structure would have been easy to replicate using any other technology.

Two Months...

Just over two months since the last post... oops!

Well to be honest it's not because I've been lazy, more that I've been exceptionally busy. A lot of this was with non-wargaming stuff. i.e. re-enactments of various types. However there have been a few notable Wargames going on in that time. A quick run-down...

A Lion Rampant game with Ed. A favourite game of ours, but one I've posted photos of before. This decided me that I really needed to get some animals for my farms and village. These  have bought from Warbases and am actually just about to start painting.

A new game in the last couple of months has been Warpath: Firefight. We've played it a couple of times at the club and also demoed it at Derby World Wargames. I really like the game, but either I'm a superb player (doubtful) or the balance isn't quite sorted out for the Plague. I needs some mods I think.

It's been fun getting this table together, but tremendously easy. The buildings are from Deadzone and the boards & hills actually date back to games of Battletech and Starship Troopers I ran at shows many, many, many years ago.

I got a new display cabinet for my miniatures... The less used ones that I still want to see. The idea was that this would make space for me to make a display board for my Kings of War armies, but that project has been shelved for the time being.

I did remember finally to take photos of the bombed out church that my son Brendan made for his school project last year!

I got a game in of Fighting Sail with Ed and that prompted me to get my last French ship painted and rigged. See the next post for photos of that.

And of course there have been a few games of Kings of War including two tournaments, Battlemasters and Clash of Kings. Both enjoyable events that I took my Abyssals to. I now have plans to extend my Wars of the Roses army.

But yes... most of my efforts in the last two months have been re-enactment and bicycle related...

Those are just about finished now... and since it's out-of-season I'm hopefully going to be back on track with modelling.

Lion Rampant 3 way game

Sunday afternoon meant a game against my friend Ed. We'd had a Lion Rampant game planned for some time and I'd built up new models for my Wars of the Roses army and the medieval wagons I posted earlier so we could play the convoy mission.

However Ed brought his son, Henry, along as well and so a slight change of plan was needed. After a quick google I found that others had had some success with three player Lion Rampant. The modification needed was to sort out the turn sequence. It seemed popular to use playing cards to designate each player's turn. One for each player drawn randomly to designate the turn order then reshuffled and repeated.

The scenario would require a little more work as I still wanted to use the wagons. In the end each wagon was assigned to a player and the players had to get as many wagons as they could off the opposing side of the table from their starting position.

I also decided to put quite a few more buildings in than I normally see in a game of Lion Rampant. I have quite a collection now since I've been building up my Frostgrave city board and I fancied seeing how the game worked through more built-up terrain. We ruled that no models could go inside buildings.

Ed used his own force of Fireforge medievals whereas myself and Henry used my Perry Wars of the Roses. I picked Lord Fauconberg's retinue and that left Henry with Edward IV. I just had enough models to do 24 points of each, though Henry had no fast moving troops.

It looked like Ed would have the easiest job as he had the shortest route since he started on one of the long edges. But it was not to be. He found himself sandwiched between mine and Henry's troops and all but wiped out before I found a way around the back of Henry's forces. Unfortunately for Henry his slow army and having to move through the town meant he didn't get very far.

Eventually Henry's forces were wiped out and I captured his wagon. We ran out of time and had to rule that myself and Ed would have got the wagons we held off the table without further combat. This meant I had 4 glory from those and Ed had 2. In the end after boasts were taken into account that left myself on positive points, Ed on zero and Henry unfortunately on negative points.

We all agreed that the game had been great fun with some especially tense moments as troops fought amongst the town.

Wagons, Labourers and Clergy

I've had these sat ready to paint for over a year and decided it was about time I got them done. Again an upcoming game spurred me into action.

Anyway, what we have here is a set of 3 medieval wagons. One is from the Perry's Wars of the Roses range and 2 are from Irregular Miniatures. I've made them with interchangeable loads. These will be used in a game of Lion Rampant next weekend.

Next up are the labourers. These again are from the Perry's Wars of the Roses range.

Last, but certainly not least, are the clergy. There's a monk and priest and a bishop. I figure that as well as being useful objectives in games like Lion Rampant they'd make fun alternate "wizards" in games of Kings of War. They're from Irregular Miniatures.

Reinforcements for Lord Fauconberg's Retinue

Myself and Ed arranged a game of Lion Rampant for some time in early December. When we arrange a game I like to have something new prepared. Doing so gives me a target point for getting some painting done and it's always nice to get some new models on the table.

So with that in mind I started work on some light cavalry for my Wars of the Roses army. These I decided would be under Lord Fauconberg's banner the same as the bowmen I painted a few months ago. They are Perry plastics.

However with the Mantic Open Day coming up we have been invited to put on one of our big Kings of War games, so I thought it would be a good plan to have these ready for then as well.

Well they are ready, plus a couple of bonus items in the form of some dismounted knights and Lord Fauconberg himself.

They'll join the ranks of the armies fighting at Mantic HQ on Saturday. I think it's going to be our biggest big game yet, with over 25,000 points on each side.

Post Mill and Wealdon House

My son and daughter bought me a couple of MDF kits for Father's Day this year. With all the Hirst Arts excitement recently they've sat unmade since then. However with the Hirst Arts stuff slowing down I finally got around to completing them.

The kits were actually bought at Salute from Timeline miniatures and are their Post Mill and Wealdon House. Both are great models as they come, but I thought I'd improve them a bit.

With the Wealdon House this meant adding the roof tiles to match my other half-timbered MDF buildings. Being made of thin card roughly cut and glued on with PVA putting these on is a really simple and quick way to improve the roofs which always seem to be a weak point on MDF buildings. I also put some Hirst Arts blocks in as the firepit rather than using the piece of MDF that had been supplied with the kit.

With the Post Mill however I had bigger plans. I've motorised the sails, applied coffee stirrers to improve the outside of the mill and added canvas to the sails.

These are fairly generic medieval models so can be used in Kings of War, Frostgrave, Lion Rampant or any other medieval historical or fantasy game so will get a lot of use I'm sure.

Update:
Since making the windmill I have found a far better solution to the motorization. I have added one of these motors. Found on eBay with the title: "DC 6V 12V 8-16RPM Long Shaft Turbine Worm Gear Motor Slow Reduction Gear Box". The motor is fixed direct to the inside wall of the windmill and the shaft cut down to size.