Dragon Rampant: The Trolls/Orcs

I continue to plough through my Rampant armies adding filler to the bases. Here is another of my Dragon Rampant warbands which has recently had the bases levelled as part of the Great Lockdown Leap Forward.

Following Poul Anderson's world, these are Trolls but they're equivalent to Tolkien's Orcs (who Tolkien sometimes called Goblins). Anyway, to avoid confusion for other wargamers, I will probably have to start calling them Orcs and reserve the name Trolls for larger figures, a couple of which are also featured below.

The figures come from various manufacturers. It's been a while since I bought them, but I'll do my best to identify them. Their physiognomy is similar (I avoided very pig-like features) but clothing styles differ. I'm confident the divergent styles will be brought together once I get some paint on them.

These larger Orcs (Reaper) will provide the Troll King and units of Bellicose and/or Elite Foot.  It's now common to assume that Orcs should be violently green-skinned. Anderson's Trolls and Goblins are both green, but Tolkien visualised his Orcs as swarthy and 'Hunnic' in appearance. I'm compromising on this by painting my Trolls (Orcs), Goblins and giant Trolls in a light olive green, but Hill and other Giants will be completed in human skin tones.

The mass of Trolls/Orcs will be fielded as Offensive Heavy Foot. Some of the more weedy ones may be drawn out as Scouts. The most appropriate Trolls I originally found were the CP Models Orc clubmen but it's a very small range, so I also ordered all the Reaper figures I thought would do, and then added some from a new range by Elite Wargames. I also bought some newer armoured Orcs and Orc bowmen from CP Models but these are disappointingly crude and lumpy designs and I won't be using them.

These Half-Orcs (ex-Grenadier from Mirliton) will be Offensive  Medium Foot. I looked at the Grenadier Orcs but they were anatomically very extreme and I think Trolls and similar are most sinister when they are closer to human form.

There are a few bow-armed figures scattered amongst the various types. These will be ignored or used to indicate units additionally armed with missiles depending on how I want to field things.

Ogres (Otherworld). Great figures but the spear arm on the lower right one was a devil to fit.

Various opportunistic Nasties as Troll/Orc allies. Front row: A Witch (Magister Militum) with Rat (Eureka) flanked by two large Trolls (North Star). Back row: An archetypal 'Fairytale' Giant and a Fantasy Viking-style Frost Giant (North Star OGAM).

Wolves (various manufacturers) as Lesser Warbeasts. They do look a bit puny now, especially next to my wolf-riding Goblin cavalry.

My first two games of Dragon Rampant (last year)

This is a belated report of my first two games of Dragon Rampant fought in March and April of last year. While planning my own Dragon Rampant armies, I showed the rules to my friend Ian who includes Games Workshop’s Warhammer Age of Sigmar amongst his many game interests. He already had a lot of Warhammer armies and was keen to design some DR Warbands to try out the rules.

As those who know will know, Dragon Rampant is essentially the same as the Medieval Lion Rampant set, but with the added magical dimension. I have no great experience of Fantasy so I can’t compare these rules with others, but they have all the advantages of Dan Mersey’s elegant rule mechanics coupled with immense army design flexibility. At this point I had not yet played Lion Rampant (or The Pikeman's Lament) though I had played the Colonial variant, The Men Who Would Be Kings.

First Game (March 2018)

The armies we played with are known in GW terms as Sylvaneth and Brayherds. For those not familiar with the GW fantasy world, the Sylvaneth are treemen on the side of Order, while the Brayherds are satyrs on the side of Chaos.

The Sylvaneth comprised a Witch (Summoner), a Tree Lord (Greater War Beast) and two units of Dryads. The Brayherds had a Shaman (Spellcaster), Bestigors (Heavy Foot), Gors (Light Foot), and Ungors (Scouts). Forgive me if I get any of this wrong.

We went for a straightforward 'set-'em-up and kill' game but the terrain determined that there were decisions to be made.

My warband: Gors, Bestigors and Ungors with a Shaman Leader behind.

My Bestigors and Gors move up. The Gors have seized the hill. They are facing Dryads and a Tree Lord, the tall character in the back left of the photo.

My Gors move off the hill in the hope of achieving a quick victory on the right flank. Another unit of Dryads can be seen in the fenced enclosure at the top left.

The first Dryad unit is eliminated but my Gors are weakened in the process.

The second unit of Dryads is summoned to replace the first.

My Ungors inflict missile losses on the Tree Lord assisted by some thunderbolts from my Shaman.The Tree Lord is vanquished. Things are beginning to look very good.

My Gors were taken out, but thunderbolts from my Shaman despatch the second Dryad unit. It's time to go after the Witch who is cowering in the wood but not for long. Total victory is mine.

Throwing thunderbolts about is not the most imaginative use of spellcasting, but it's like having artillery and an easy option for those steeped in historical gaming.

As expected, the rules played well and were great fun. Having not then yet played Lion Rampant this game was also something an introduction to that rule set. One thing I learnt was it's beneficial to have a mixture of different troop types including humble missile troops. This gives you more options and allows you to strike at the enemy when you might not otherwise be able to do so.

I’m essentially an historical player, but I belong to a club which has been attracting more and more fantasy players, so I thought it was handy to have a game sharing Rampant mechanisms that fantasy players might be interested to play. Since then, the whole idea of DR armies has grown on me so much that I'm finding it hard to resist the temptation to plan more and more of them.

Second Game (April 2018)

Unfortunately, my second game was followed by last year's break in wargaming and I didn't make any notes. It's now difficult to remember much about it, but I did take some photos...

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The armies were again supplied by Ian. I chose the army of Beastmen (Brayherds and Minotaurs) because I like animals while Ian commanded Blood Seekers - fantasy Vikings. This time it was Ian's turn to win. Herewith a few random photos...

Thoughts on Dragon Rampant

Dragon Rampant - fantasy version of
Lion Rampant.

I drafted this post before last year’s mid-year wargaming hiatus. It’s out of place in time, but I thought I’d go back to catch up with this interest.

As most of you will know, Dragon Rampant is the fantasy version of Lion Rampant. I'm not generally given to fantasy games, but I'm drawn to anything in the Rampant series.

I did collect a couple of 15mm HOTT armies (Pirates and Skeletons) but I never got round to painting them. I'm not keen on being drawn into the ever-expanding Games Workshop universe, and I find Lord of the Rings too well-trodden and at times a little twee.

I'm rather more attracted to Poul Anderson's darker vision in The Broken Sword. I read that many years ago, and last year reread it on Kindle. (To be exact, I mainly listened to it.) So if I did do Elves and Trolls they would as far as possible be as depicted in that book, which is set in the Viking Age.

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword
- a dark version of Faerie Folk.

Mike McGraw (Skrapwelder on TMP) used Elf heads on Dark Age figures,  but I already have a 25mm Viking army and don’t want to duplicate it with pointy ears!

The best range of Elves that I've been able to find is the Grenadier range now sold by Mirliton in Italy, but at least partly available from a few suppliers in the UK. They look more Celtic than Viking but the castings are very good. I'd model the Elves on a Viking army, using High Elves for the Huscarls and Wood Elves for the Bondi.

There are a number of Orc options for the Trolls. These need to be a little shorter than the Elves, mostly semi-naked and armed with clubs. They are rather more simple and primitive than the way in which Lord of the Rings Orcs are usually depicted and the best option I've identified so far is the small range from CP Models supplemented by selected Reaper castings.

There would also be wolves, giants and sorcerers. Dragon Rampant very cleverly introduced the idea of reduced size and single model units as long as they add up to 6 or 12 Strength Points. For example, you can field 6-figure units counting 2 points per figure. Convenient sized units are, therefore, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 models, which gives you a lot of flexibility and is potentially very economical.

Foundry North European Bronze Age figures

Other possibilities would be to recycle my 25mm Vikings with the addition of some fantastical elements, and my 28mm Late Mediaevals as an Arthurian Romance army. More recently I've also been thinking about Nordic and Greek Bronze Age armies using Foundry figures, or something skeletal using the North Star Skeletons. So many options!