Lion Rampant: Bloodbath scenario

Simon's Burgundians far side. My Swiss near side.

This was my second game of Lion Rampant, fought back in January, and was a first outing for my Late Medievals. Simon commanded the Burgundians whilst I had the Swiss. The armies were 24 points each.

Burgundians
2 Pike (Foot Serjeants) @ 4
2 Veteran (Expert) Archers @ 6
1 Crossbows @ 4

Swiss halberdiers on the right are reluctant to advance.

Swiss   
1 Pike (Expert Foot Serjeants) @ 6
2 Halberds (Fierce Foot) @ 4
1 Handguns (Bidowers) @ 2
1 Crossbows (Bidowers) @ 2
1 Foot Men-at-Arms @ 6

My Bidowers (left) close but the main attack lags behind.

I had designed the Burgundians as a steady warband with good missile-power and the Swiss as do-or-die desperados.

My plan as the Swiss was to conduct a delaying action on my left with my Bidowers while attacking on my right with the halberdiers and, more cautiously, in the centre with my pike and Men-at-Arms.

Casualties mount on my left-hand halberd unit.

My Fierce troops certainly had Simon worried, a threat I jokingly exaggerated! In the event they were slow to move off and were then very badly shot up. One of the units never recovered. The other was delayed. This was basically the end of Plan A.

My best and only remaining chance then lay in the centre - Plan B. I wiped out the enemy Crossbows with my Men-at-Arms but the opposing pike went into schiltron. This made the pike-to-pike contest more-or-less even when it would otherwise have been in my favour.

My main attack is shot to pieces.

I was successful in using the Bidowers to tie up the units on Simon’s right, but the only point of that was to win elsewhere which I obviously didn’t.

Full marks to Simon for his steady defence. High quality Archers certainly need to be treated with respect.

Some success for the Swiss but a rather sorry end.

My introduction to Lion Rampant

The English defending their hearths and homes.

I played this first game of Lion Rampant back in May 2018. This report has been kicking around for some time. The game was set in the Dark Ages but we used just the ordinary Lion Rampant rules rather than the Landwasters and Raven Feeders extension. We didn't use Leader Traits or Boasts.

The English viewed from their left flank. What a nice little village!

I set up a trial scenario based on forcing a river crossing. The Attacker's objective was to get across a ford and contact a settlement. The Defender's objective was to prevent that, but the game was basically about crossing the ford (and trying out the rules).

The Viking marauders.

The game featured my old 25mm Viking army which I'd split into two armies and rebased on coins. My opponent, Bernard, had a generous 34 points of Vikings while I had 24 points of Anglo-Danes. They would never have called themselves that, so let's just refer to them as the English.

Squaring up at the ford.

Vikings
2 Huscarls (Men-at-Arms)* @ 12
1 Hirdman (Serjeants, Expert) @ 6
2 Bondi (Yeomen, Mixed Weapons) @ 10
1 Berserkir (Fierce Foot) @ 4
1 Scouts (Bidowers) @ 2

The English unit at the ford is well-supported.

English
2 Huscarls (Men-at-Arms)* @ 12
1 Select Fyrd (Serjeants) @ 4
1 General Fyrd (Yeomen, Javelins) @ 4
2 Skirmishers (Bidowers) @ 4

Face-to-face.

We played lengthwise on a 6' x 4' area. The river was impassable apart from the ford which was difficult ground. The felt templates represented copses. I didn't have any large trees at that time. The wattle fencing was a linear obstacle, but the Vikings never got that far.

The Berserkir, already weakened, finally make their move.

The Vikings enjoyed a prompt start. Bernard held the Berserkir back to avoid any wild charges but they eventually emerged as his unit of choice to contest the ford, but when they got into position they refused to do so! Evidently too many magic mushrooms. This gave my skirmishers a good opportunity to shoot them down.

The English counter-attack across the river.

We played for about 2 hours before calling time. The Vikings never did get across the ford but had the game continued they probably would have done. As we had not defined a game end point, we agreed to call it a draw.
 

A ford too far exposes the English unit to annihilation.

We found that shooting can be quite decisive. Faced with missile troops, fighting defensively is not really an option. Had the game continued (and if my Retinue had not been so depleted!) I would have been forced onto the offensive.

Repurposing my 25mm Vikings

Back in the days when I played 25mm WRG Ancients it was common to raise a discrete army of your choice and to pit it against the armies of other players. These match-ups were usually unhistorical, and one's opponents were often WRG super armies like Seleucids and triple-armed Late Romans. This left me with a couple of isolated armies which haven't been used for decades.

I offloaded my Later Greek Hoplites years ago and I'm planning to sell my Sassanid Persians, but I thought I'd repurpose the Vikings. Although the army would be relatively small for a game like Impetus, it will comfortably stretch to two skirmish-level warbands.

I had originally thought of using Saga, but I'm now more likely to try Landwasters and Raven Feeders, the official Dark Age variant of Dan Mersey’s Mediaeval rules, Lion Rampant. Some people have criticised Dan’s rules for being too simple, but I’ll live with having fun and finishing a game, or even two, in an evening.

When I first started collecting this army there weren't many multi-pose packs about, so I bought figures from different manufacturers and ranges so that every figure was unique. This mixture will now work to my advantage. The unarmoured infantry are pretty generic anyway, while the more stylistically-specific armored figures should split well enough into typically Anglo-Danish and Viking forces, though I do have some doubts that they would have been very distinguishable by the 11th Century.

The Lion Rampant Mediaeval categories readily translate into Dark Age types. OK, I’m aware of armour development, but this is a game not a scientific simulation, and the important thing is 'relative' difference.

These are the Mediaeval game categories and the Dark Age types I will have:

Foot Men-at-Arms
Anglo-Danish and Viking Huscarls with two-handed axes.

Foot Serjeants
Armoured spearman - Select Fyrd or Viking Hirdmen.

Foot Yeomen
Unarmoured spearman - Great Fyrd, and Viking Bondi who will be additionally armed with mixed weapons (i.e. will include archers).

Fierce Foot
Viking Berserkir and Ulfhedhnar.

Bidowers
Anglo-Danish skirmishers and Viking scouts with various missile weapons.

Next step is to take the figures off the old bases, throw away those afflicted with lead rot and then rebase the survivors on 2p coins. For skirmish games I really don’t like the look of rectangular bases, and I’m not keen on movement trays either. If I’m short of figures I can press some half-painted ones into service as I have plenty of those in the lead mountain. These were on my workbench over twenty years ago, but were packed into a box when I moved  house and have not seen the light of day since. I'll post some pictures when I've reorganised and rebased them.

Fastest to table

Lancers. 2mm is now my way to go for mass armies.

I might have written something like this before but no matter as it is a topic that demands revisiting. I often wonder what miniature wargames I would do if I was starting from scratch now. Obviously I would do games that appealed to me historically, but, more generally, I would do games that could be brought to table as quickly as possible. This is partly because I lack time to paint but also because I'd like the fruits of my labour to end up on the table rather than in the lead mountain.

At one end of the spectrum I would focus on skirmish games like Dan Mersey's Rampant series for which 28mm figures have the most appeal. Somewhere in the middle are games that are 'compact' or otherwise economical on figures like Crossfire, Irregular Wars or DBA. For these I would use 15mm, 10mm or 6mm, and these scales would satisfy the aesthetic appeal of playing with toy soldiers.

Any games featuring mass armies, however, would have to be base-orientated so I could use 2mm or 3mm models, and thìs end of the spectrum would satisfy my desire to play large historical battles. I think this is the way I will now go with Bloody Big Battles! if and when I get round to it. The other advantage of these small scales is of course that they put less pressure on storage and carrying.

This  is not an entirely futile speculation as it should also help me to regulate what to do in future. I feel sure I've written that before as well. The difficulty is remembering it.