Miniatures Adventure => Medieval Adventures => Topic started by: TacticalPainter on July 10, 2019, 07:35:46 AM
Title: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: TacticalPainter on July 10, 2019, 07:35:46 AM
Played our first ever games of Lion Rampant on the weekend. It was good to compare how these played against Saga which we have also played recently. Overall I felt Lion Rampant gave a more free flowing and lively game with a very enjoyable narrative. While LR is certainly a light game it felt a little more historical than Saga which seemed more about the game system than the period. We will play a bit more of each before deciding our final thoughts but here are a couple of AARs of the recent games https://thetacticalpainter.blogspot.com/2019/07/lion-rampant-first-game-and-thoughts.html
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: levied troop on July 10, 2019, 07:42:46 AM
Good looking game and nice write-up. I had a similar experience with Lion Rampant and Saga and much prefer the former as I like the more ‘chaotic’ and less chess-like activation.
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: Harry Faversham on July 10, 2019, 11:02:34 AM
:-* Excellent tale of derring-do! :-*
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: armchairgeneral on July 10, 2019, 12:34:09 PM
Great narrative and nice looking game.
Saga felt more like a fantasy game when I played it. That's not a criticism. A fun game if that's your bag.
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: Breazer on July 11, 2019, 05:55:33 PM
That's a great looking force. Thank you for sharing!
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: Easy E on July 17, 2019, 04:41:21 PM
Very nice reports and comparison.
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: Plynkes on July 17, 2019, 10:15:47 PM
Marvelous. Lovely figures, great set-up and interesting reports. Just the ticket. Thanks. :)
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: Codsticker on July 18, 2019, 05:28:33 AM
I like both games (though I haven't played either in ages); for me they both have different upsides.
Title: Re: Lion Rampant first games and thoughts
Post by: TacticalPainter on July 18, 2019, 11:51:44 PM
I think Saga is a clever game design that creates plenty of decision points and opportunities for creative thinking. My problem in terms of a wargame is that the player spends too much time focusing on the dice and the battle board. That’s fine from a ‘game’ perspective but I’m not sure it’s relevance to the ‘war’ perspective. It’s not like it’s really about command and control, more about assigning extra powers to units, but why that should happen in the context of what’s happening on the table is not clear to me.
Saga is a rewarding game experience if you want the challenge of outsmarting your opponent, I get that and can be a very competitive game player myself. It’s not the game I struggle with it’s the relevance to history.
Now Lion Rampant is hardly a deep historical game and it takes plenty of short cuts in the interest of playability, so I’d hardly hold it up as a glittering example of historical gaming. Despite that, the abstractions still aspire to create something a little more plausible - the problem of command and control and units not doing what you want. That I like. In its favour it avoids the big speed bump in play that the Saga dice and battle board creates and so the LR system allows play on the table to move at quite a pace, keeping both players fully engaged.