Lions Rampant at Lanyon

I confess I hadn't been down to the Lanyon club for ages.  The illogical situation saw me drive miles across town to have games at Jolt but not 10 minutes down the road...   Well that all changed last Wednesday night when the 'Hammer of the Scots' campaign game we were due to have at Jolt was cancelled so Doug challenged me to a practice match of Lion Rampant down at Lanyon which is far more convenient for both of us. Besides which, Lanyon Vikings is a very pleasant club and serves a mean burger (pulled pork nomnomnomnom)!

Scots Foot Knights - loyal liege men to John Balliol?

The game was a simple enough affair to get some LR experience in before the campaign proper. Doug of course being the notorious exterminator of all things Scots, English King Edward 'Longshanks' gainfully assisted by some of the finest dice rolling seen lately by his son Jack. 'Tinny' would not even begin to describe it.  You want plenty of 5s and 6s - Jack's yer man. And naturally the English had archers. Lots and lots of archers. And Mounted Knights (the Longshanks crew) and rounded off by heavily armoured Foot Sergeants - quite a formidable lineup.

The Longshanks lineup - quite a horde

Facing this lot were myself (a Bruce of some sort?) and Doug's brother Owen as co-commander. At our disposal were a unit of Foot Knights (tough but sans horses so no 'wild charge' dammit) and three units of Foot Sergeants (the long pointy pike wielding variety made to draw the blood of the unwary gamer - ouch!), another mob called 'Fierce Foot' which are lightly armoured sword wielding maniacs (our 'wild charge' boys) and Bidowers. Ah yes, the Bidowers. The only archers the Scots possessed and only a half unit of 'em! Did I mention they could only shoot 12" to the British archers 18"? No yew trees in Scotland it seems.

The Bidowers - bravely try to whittle down some of their English counterparts

Young Jack's superb dice rolling saw the English advance across the field while us reluctant Scots failed again and again. With the exception of the Bidowers. They at least finally advanced within range and actually killed a longbowman or two before being turned into human pin-cushions themselves. First unit down. Next up were the English Foot Knights. These toughnuts advanced within range of the Scots Fierce Foot who, being fierce and thus quite unhinged as well as unarmoured, charged into the nearest unit, the English knights.

Doug's Foot Knights come into range (downwind) of the Fierce Foot and appear to be confused by the appalling stench of the unwashed Scotsmen coming their way! 

A great donnybrook develops on the English left: a horde of smelly Scotsmen smash into the English armoured gentry, preventing them getting their perfumed hankies out in time and making them quite irate.

While the Fierce Foot and Knights duke it out in front, the English archers rain arrows down on the Sergeants opposite.

After the remaining Fierce Foot fled the field, the next Scots unit to suffer were the Sergeants who after a similar stoush with the armoured English archers, were battered and had to retreat making them once more pin-cushion targets for the archers.  

The Knights and Fierce Foot take a well earned breather in the background with the Scots actually killing more Knights but unable to get the morale test score they needed so getting ready for Round 2.

The English Foot Knights prevail but their archers are put under pressure by the Scots Sergeants.

After loosing three units to one on the other flank the Scots Foot Knights finally, after the 3rd or 4th try, advanced into range of the English Mounted Knights. In our first stroke of luck the English Knights failed to get their charge off and the Scots were able to catch them at the halt in a counter charge.

Scots Fierce Foot and Bidowers gone, its not looking good for the remaining Scots Foot Sergeants 

The knights, mounted and on foot and their respective commanders battle it out in the decisive encounter of the game while behind them the archers steadily reduce the Scots Foot Sergeants. 

Against the run of the game the Scots Foot Knights actually beat the English Knights and kill Longshanks!  

Progress on the Scots right: the English Knights minus Longshanks retreat (but don't break) while the Scots Sergeants push back the English Sergeants.

The last English knight about to run away while the English archers take care of the rest of the Scots Sergeants with yet more arrow showers.

Situation at the end of the game: the English Sergeants  battered and retreating, the archers drive off the other Scots Sergeants (I think) but the Scots Foot Knights are victorious.

Great game - only went the Scots way at the last moment.  Those Mounted Knights are very tough buggers to kill and would not break two round after Longshanks got the chop! Seemed like a lot more Scots died (again) - been a bit of a theme in the campaign thus far - although this one was just a practice (unfortunately) as I reckon after Wallace's early demise, doing Longshanks would even things up a bit!  But Doug takes great delight in chopping up Scotsmen and getting Scotsmen to chop up Scotsmen, so I'm sure he'll be back with a vengence in the next phase of our campaign.

Lion Rampant is a relatively simple and medi-evilly bloodthirsty system that's great fun to play and thanks to Doug, Owen and young Jack for a beaut evenings wargaming. Club's a great venue and it was good to see Ian and Greg again - and look forward to contributing to the next 'Little Wars' con later this year!

Lions Rampant game - Crusaders notch up a win

Not an era or even gaming set I'm into or have any plans to start collecting BUT I am the first to admit the Crusades game I had last night was FUN. I was the Muslim forces - Saracens - commander of a kind of ancient ISIS! With John as Crusader commander and Andrew as our rules guru adjudicated my introduction to the rules system.  Lion Rampant is a quirky little rule system not without its idiosyncrasies but its a fairly straight forward gaming mechanism that's easy to pick up - once you get the hang of it the games goes quite quickly. It can be surprisingly hard to get kills - horse against armoured infantry do not have an easy time of it - they are tough buggars to crack. Missile troops can be effective  - but not overwhelmingly so. My horse archers were all cross-eyed and in four(?) rounds of shooting (and two failed activations) they managed to kill just one Crusader! Whereas my opponent's armoured crossbow wreaked havoc on my mounted units and nearly did for the Muslim commander as well before finally being beaten back ('battered' but still intact!)

Andrew's superb figures - Saracen Sergeants - fantastic standards.

At the other end of the spectrum - belligerent armed monks - again with a brilliant standard

I rolled better than I have in years with three rounds of uninterrupted activations for all my units and decided to get stuck in immediately (well I rolled "rash' for my C-in-C!) but my melees on my right, where I'd concentrated my cavalry were unsuccessful and my mounted bow in particular were useless. On the other hand my opponent John's Crusaders, particularly his crossbow, were very effective, fighting off two of my three mounted units, destroying one, with both infantry units battered but still intact.

Mounted Crusader Sergeants

Saracens with the Camel 'Knights' (Mounted Yeomanry) - tough buggars indeed!

Mounted Sergeants or full armoured knights - whichever - their clash with the Saracen Camels was epic in the game

Muslim Foot Sergeants  - unfortunately too far away to get stuck in but another great standard

John's Sergeants vanquish their opposite number in the first combat on that flank

The Saracen (camel) knights in turn destroy the Crusader Sergeants. They also destroyed the second Sergeants unit behind.

The Crusader Knights  charge in, are met in a ferocious Saracen counter-charge and also destroyed

The  Camel boys, weakened destroying the knights, finally meet their end with fourth Crusader unit - failing the counter-charge and being hit at the halt didn't help their chances!

The Muslim foot did not get involved save for the archers who fired twice at long range (18") without much effect before finally getting more hits moving into normal range. Crusader armoured infantry are remarkably hard to kill and the killing was largely left up to the Men at Arms and Sergeants mounted units.  Unfortunately the Fierce Foot came the closest and being genuine wild men would have stood a good chance in melee - ran out of time before they could contact the Crusaders. I gambled all with my C-in-C attached to a Men at Arms unit who charged the crossbowmen that had been giving me such grief from behind the wall.  Once more they proved hard to kill and rallied - battered but intact - rather than fleeing the field. My last chance as my unit was reduced to half strength. It wasn't enough and on the count - 23 to 18 points - John's Crusaders had more units left on the table such as the valiant (not) monks who spent the entire game hiding behind a wood - shouting encouragement no doubt!

The victorious Saracens  drive back the Crusader foot but didn't destroy them  - I wouldn't have liked the Muslim's chances had the game gone one more round!

Well it was a nice change from the usual historical gaming and a good introduction to Lion Rampant rules which we'll be using for our forthcoming 'Hammar of the Scots 1297 - 1314' campaign - I've been recruited as King of the Scots! (great - we know what happened to most of them!)  My thanks to Andrew for organising the game - and apologies for forgetting all my desert terrain for the game (doh!) Thanks also to Jolt Games in Mitchell for the convivial gaming venue and my darling wife (Minister of War and Finance) who drove me halfway across Canberra and back again so I could enjoy my game!

Muslim CinC: Abdula BulBul Emir