Roaring lions

Another run out for lion rampant down in the dungeon last night so we decided to try some of the scenarios which we hadn't played before. First of these was 'meeting the neighbours' a scenario where the two forces set up in the furthest corners of the table and then attempt to race across to escape from the enemies corner.

If you have seen my previous lion rampant posts you will have seen my new retinue is based around a Norman Lord Ranulf de Gernon, but they have come up against some very late medieval opponents. So at the last minute I thought I would tweek the figures to see if I could make the retinue look a little more period appropriate. I pulled out some of my empire troops and swopped them in for the Norman serjeants. (you'll notice I didn't take many pictures and none of the enemy, as Clifford the Butcher is entering some of his retinue in some fancy dress contest...Lead Adventure)

Here you will see my armoured halberdiers moving out to block the enemy advance.

Pretty much the whole retinue now on the field, the Bretonnian infantry fit quite well with the Norman Cross bowmen and Knights.

In terms of the actually battles, my guys got off to an incredibly slow start, with multiple fails in the early ordering stages. Hence much of the enemy was well across the board before we got going. I was able to sneek the sarjeants behind the house and having chased off a small group of bidowers they slowly made their way right across the field. Much of the rest of the battle took place close to the house where two units of sarjeants formed schiltrons and shouted rude words at each other, the defensive capabilities of the sarjeants in schiltron meaning nobody wanted to charge in. The better foot men at arms and knights eventually killed off the enemy foot men (and themselves) who had tried to sneek through the new field shown in far left of the above photo.

 

Armoured sarjeants push around the house, they eventually made it all the way across the table.

Schiltron formed proving a very effective road block to enemy advance

With the enemy unable to get any units off the board it was two glory points to my mixed bag and on to the second scenario, we picked out hammer and anvil another new one to try. (sadly I couldn't get any photos of this one as the enemy retinue became increasingly camera shy !) In a nutshell I continued to roll loads of double 1's across both scenarios I think 8 in total. Clifford had boasted at the start of the second battle that he would kill my lord .....and yes he did with one of those double 1's but not until my lord had killed him in a challenge!. But the early entry of my heavily armoured foot men had already started to whittle the enemy down. Eventually they managed to get one unit of sarjeants away, but as I had killed most of the rest of the retinue it worked out 6 to 5 glory points at the end of the two scenarios. Most enjoyable....... the rules are proving fun and easy to use, scenarios are quirky, my only criticism is whether it can expand to something larger ?