Lion Rampant: A belated AAR

Last month, Stan and Mike came over for a game of Lion Rampant and of Frostgrave and I am finally getting around to making a post for it (Mike was much more timely with his description of the battle)

We had been considering putting on a Crusades game at Cangames with the Lion Rampant rule and this seemed like a good time to give them a try. Mike and I had both read the rules but no one had done any real prep work (like army lists or that sort of thing). We decided we would go for 12 points a side with the Crusader army divided in 2 with 2 commander (only one of which would be active on any given turn)

My force consisted of  2 mounted Serjeants with bows, 2 units of mounted yeoman and 2 units of foot yeoman. The crusaders had (I think) one unit of Knights and one of Crossbow and then a bunch of heavy foot.

My initial plan was to harass the crusader infantry with bow fire while avoiding the knights. This plan would have worked better if I had realized (or read) that the mounted yeomen also had bows.

I ended up getting caught in various melees which I lost, partly because I was outclassed but also because my rolls in combat were pretty poor -- I think I made nearly every command roll though

The battle continued in this vein, I became a bit more effective with the bows as I came to grips with the rules but the crusaders kept the upper hand.  I don't really remember any of the details so I will just present the rest of the pictures I took

In the end it was a fun game but the rules were a bit too simple and the special rules for each unit type weren't so special (in the way the "useful rules" in Hail Caesar can really help to add character to a different troop type).  We seemed to be in agreement that for smaller 2 player games, SAGA is much more fun (though more complicated) and if we were going to be playing a bigger game, Hail Caesar would have been the way to go. There are some good features to the rules and it wouldn't be too hard to make special rules for each unit without going overboard. The "boasts" were you get victory points for performing some act of daring are quite good.


I think the rules would be really good for a con, they are simple and mostly intuitive. After playing them I had some ideas of what I would like to do at Cangames but a week or so later, I was convinced that what I really wanted to do was run a Roman game (using Hail Caesar) at Cangames so that is the current plan!

We also played a game of Frostgrave which turned out really well, probably the best game of that so far but for some reason my camera was set for really long exposures and all my pictures ended up as blurs. (We are also going to run that at Cangames)

Frostgrave: The Eclipse

The second game of the weekend was a game of Frostgrave, playing the Eclipse scenario which is the fist scenario from the newish "Thaw of the Lich Lord" book.

Mike used the same warband as he had from our previous set of Frostgrave games (as related here) and I chose the same type of wizard (Sigilist) but, since I had lost my paperwork, I started a new warband from scratch.

We made the table with a castle wall and a series of larger buildings separated from it by a wide street. There is more open LOS here than is recommended by the Frostgrave rules but this was balanced to a degree by the eclipse special rules which reduced the distance for LOS.

I had split my warband in 2 and sent the apprentice with a smaller force along the top of the castle wall and my wizard with the rest of the warband along the road to the near treasure.

Reaching the first treasure turned out to be quite easy but it turned out that disturbing the treasure attracted the attention of an ice troll who came on the table behind my warband.

The ice troll made short work of my thief who was carrying the treasure, fortunately he was far enough away from the rest of my warband that he didn't automatically move towards them but he stayed near the treasure for the rest of the game so no one got that one.

Soon the two warbands meet in the middle of the table and combat ensues. I briefly had the upper hand by distracting the enemy templar with the "Furious Quill" and almost killing him with bow fire. The group on the wall managed to get another treasure (and disturbed some wild dogs)

The dogs came on on one of the neutral sides and just wandered around their entry point for the whole game.

As the battle in the street went on, things got worse and worse for me.

Things started to go badly on the tower as well, I did get the first treasure away but lost the fight over the next treasure at the top of the tower.

In a move of desperation the apprentice climbed up the tower and cast explosive rune where the treasure was. When the enemy moved, the rune exploded and caused great carnage but sadly the only survivor was one of Mike's warband. In the following turns everyone in my warband was killed except the thief that managed to get off with the treasure.

I ended up with 1 treasure, Mike got 4 and the ice troll kept 1. When we checked the warband for casualties I only had one warrior who was seriously injured (sadly it was the best one!) but Mike had several deaths.

We did set up the treasure properly this time (the treasure is placed before table sides are chosen) so I think that  made a big difference and the eclipse did a bit of interest. In the post game discussion we decided that a lot of the house rules we used last time were not really needed except for the one that removed the gain of XP for killing enemy warband.

Looking forward to more Frostgrave in the New Year!

Saga: Moors vs Rus

So Mike was over this weekend and we played a game of Saga and then we had a game of Frostrgrave. This is the battle report of the Saga game.

We played a 7 point game so that I could use the Moorish army that I have been painting up. I had bin Yusuf, a hearthguard unit of 8 African Horse, a hearthguard unit of 8 Black Guard and a warrior unit of 8 mounted on camels. I did have an Imam painted as well but I felt I already had enough special rules to deal with this time around.

Mike had a Rus army (I think it was Christian Rus rather than Pagan Rus, but really, they are all infidels anyway!).  He had a unit of 8 mounted hearthguard (much like the Black Guard, they cost an extra point and have several special powers), a unit of 12 Levy bow and 2 units of 12 Warriors. We decided to play the river crossing scenario from the original Saga book.

My plan, such as it was, was to have the Black Guard move on to the right ford and have the mounted units sweep across the left ford and crush all in their path.

I started out sensibly by moving slowly up and using some of my board abilities to slow down the Rus.

The Rus were also being sedate in their advance.

By the second or third turn my instinct to immediately get stuck in took over and the Black Guard crossed over the ford with Ben Yusuf.

And the horsemen charged across the ford into the Rus horse (who had killed one of my horse on the previous turn with bow fire). It was at this point that I realized that several of the battle board abilities I was counting on for this attack wouldn't work because they are armed with javelins and the abilities specify that they only work for troops not armed with missile weapons.

My horse were forced back with great loss and managed to inflict no damage on the Rus

The remains of my horse were wiped on the following Rus turn (they weren't so keen to attack the Black Guard though...)

The Black Guard smashed into the Rus warriors driving them back over the hill but they did lose a stand to the levy bow on the hill.

The Rus began to move towards the left ford with only the camels between them and victory.

The Black Guard finished off the warriors and faced off against the levy bow.

The camels charged across the river into the mounted Rus and just disappeared in a mist of tawny fur and blood. I had hoped to do a bit better here due to the penalty of horse fighting camel but it was not to be.

The Rus crossed over the river and the hearthguard took a few bow shots at the Black Guard to no effect.

At the end of the game the Black Guard had not quite wiped out the bow. The Rus won handily with what they had crossed the river with.

I was reasonably happy with how things went given that it was my first time playing with this force. I really didn't take much advantage of Ben Yusuf's special abilities and I think that having 2 big hearthguard units (especially when one costs an extra point) is not really a good strategy (but this list was based on what I had just painted and wanted to play with). I think the next time I play with them I will not take Ben Yusuf but just the Black Guard with foot warriors and maybe levy bow or one unit of mounted warriors. The other way to go is to go with Ben Yusuf and a mostly mounted force and use the abilities to slow down the enemy and then pick of units at the edge.

I have now played with all 3 of the Islamic armies from Crescent and Cross and I like them all, the Moors might be my favourite but they are all close. For the next few games, I want to use more foot (some of which is still being painted but I should be able to finish them off over Christmas) and also try out the 3 varieties of Cleric. I do want to just stick with these three armies to try and learn them a bit better (sticking to one would be better but I don't think I can limit my self to that).

This was the first time I had played at 7 points and I think it worked ok because we had both taken special units or figures. I don't think that there would be much point in going to an even larger point value (though maybe will will try and find the upper limit in the future...)

We also talked about using Lion Rampant with these figures to run a Crusades game at Cangames. I have since read some reviews and it seems it would work well for that .  I will probably get the Kindle version and read it over the holidays.

Fate of a (different) Nation

This past weekend at the club Mike and I played a couple of games of Flames of War: Fate of a Nation. Being more disorganized than usual, I couldn't find all of my Israeli forces so I just brought my Egyptians -- To provide a thin veneer of "historicalness" we decided they would represent the Iraqis in the 1970 Jordanian Civil war.

My force consisted of a T-55 Commander, a platoon of 10 T-55s, a platoon of 6 IS-3s, a platoon of 5 SU-100s and a platoon of 2 ZSU 57-2s. Mike had an HQ of 2 M-48s (I don't remember the Jordanian name for them) 2 platoons each with 3 M-48s and a mechanized infantry platoon with M-113s

 Here is the Egyptian force ready for action (I hadn't brought all my SU-100s so there are some BTR50s standing in for them)

For the first scenario I had to set up in one corner of the table and the Jordanians set up in the 2 adjacent corners and the objectives were in the 4th corner (but didn't count until turn 6). Mike set up one platoon of M-48s in the town area and the mechanized infantry with the HQ tanks in the valley in the big hill. I set up my T-55s to attack the tank platoon and the IS-3s to go after the HQ and infantry.

On the first turn I managed to take out 1 M48.

In a surprise move the Jordanian M113s do a double time move across the front of the IS-3s!

The IS-3s seem to have been surprised since they rolled really badly but you don't have to roll all that well to destroy an APC with a tank!

Mikes saves for the infantry in the APCs were not all that great (and the surviving M113 fled -- oddly the infantry chose to get out before it fled).

Meanwhile, I managed to take out another M48.

One of the reserve platoons of M48s arrived in the valley but by then my force had concentrated and I had managed to destroy the command tank. Shortly after this, I wiped out all the other tanks for convincing Egyptian (Iraqi?) victory.

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For the next came we were again set up in corners but this time the objectives were in the setup corners.

Mike had only one platoon and chose to dismount his infantry around the near objective and put his HQ tanks hidden in the valley. I lined up all my tanks to charge at the infantry thinking I could wipe it out by turn 3 and win before the delayed reserves could arrive. In hindsight this was unwise

As I moved up, I lost my nerve to some extent and made a long chain of T-55s so I could leave some back on the objective. I am not sure why I didn't just move the IS-3s back and all the T-55s forward but this seemed like a clever thing to do at the time.

The T-55s that moved forward assaulted into the infantry but could go no further because I couldn't move my commander and still be able to get good shots on the reserve M-48s that were now arriving.

They managed to destroy one T-55.

And I destroyed one M48 in return

When the second reserve platoon arrived it moved through my tanks to shoot them from behind causing my moment of grief with the Flames of War rules that I usually have in one form or another each session but even now, I think this rule is a bit dumb even when I think of it just in game terms. Oh well. Mike would have won at this point but we then realized that the objective couldn't be on the edge and he moved it in (I would count this as a win for him since we played with the objective there)

We carried on for another few turns and I managed to kill the Jordanian CinC and enough stuff to force a company check so I managed to win in the "overtime".

I am still enjoying the Fate of a Nation games, which is odd because I don't really like really tank heavy games of regular Flames of War. I guess this will soon be eclipsed by the Team Yankee stuff but I think I will come back to this from time to time.

Rumble in the Desert

On Friday Mike and I got together for some gaming and decided to play some Flames of War. Mike wanted to do some Early War Desert which sounded it good. It turns out that since he only has Germans and I only have Germans and Italians we would have to do an axis on axis game. I am not usually a big fan of that sort of game but the Germans and Italians are quite different and I was keen to get my Bersaglieri into action again.

We rolled for the mission and got a defensive mission but I asked for a reroll (what is the point of all those motorcycles if you are just going to dismount and dig in) so we ended up with Free for All.

In a fit of common sense I dismounted my MGs and AT guns and put them in the town on the left hand side to protect that objective and then spread out the rest of my force with the smaller motorcyle platoon and the howitzers protecting the other objective.

Mike had 2 platoons of Pz IIIs some armoured cars and some motorized infantry.

On the first turn we both moved some stuff forward and (starting a trend which would last the whole game) my air support came on but was completely useless.

The motorcycles came up the hill in the centre (where both my artillery and my Stuka managed to not damage anything in the cluster of trucks that was there before the infantry dismounted) and the two groups of tanks advanced on each flank. I should have dismounted the other infantry so they could dig in but I like having them on their motorcycles for the coolness factor! (My Italians win glory much more often than they win games!!)

Machine gun fire from the motorcycles and the armoured cars managed to wear down the German infantry but my tanks were losing the battle with the Panzers.

The motrocycles line up for the assualt on the hill as the tanks on either side of them get wiped out.

They win that small unimportant battle but then the Germans sweep forward to victory.

It was a fun game but I should have had a better plan (and better luck) I think if I had driven all the bikes towards the objective in the town and dismounted I could have forced a close in fight that would have worked better for me.

I have a bunch of desert infantry for the British but no tanks. I should get some at some point so we can do a proper early war desert game.