Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: danmer on August 28, 2015, 05:53:25 PM
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I'm slowly starting to get posts up on my blog explaining how Dragon Rampant works, especially in relation to its Daddy Game, Lion Rampant.
So far I've posted about Strength Points, building a warband, and the available troop types, but there's more to come, including a whole swathe of sample warbands from my collection.
Peruse those spilled beans here: http://merseybooks.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/dragon%20rampant
Dan
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Great stuff Dan, painting up forces as we speak for this
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What are you painting Lowtardog? Always interested to hear what people are up to!
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Painted already I have a dwarf Landsknecht force and orc and goblin army again landsknecht inspired
In the wings a dwarf roman army and dwarf highlander army who in the main are a lead pile. Originally for God of battles but your rules allow much more flex in lists😁
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This is great!
I've been planning a warband along these lines:
Goblin chief and giant goblin guards: Elite Foot @ 6
Goblin witch and guards: Elite Heavy Missiles @ 5
Goblins ambushers: Scouts @ 2
Goblin warriors: Light Foot with Mixed Weapons: @ 3
Goblin-soldiers of greater stature:Bellicose Foot @ 4
Troll thralls: Heavy Foot @ 4
I hope I've got my sums right! Here's the retinue (apologies if photos aren't wanted here - I'll delete if so). The plastics are being gradually replaced with old lead for maximum glory points!
One thing I'm really keen to exploit in DR is the potential for having things like mounted leaders of foot units (as in some of John Blanche's goblin illustrations from early Warhammer), units with war hounds and units with mixed sizes (like the goblin chief and his giant guards). In that regard, I've got a unit of Ali Morrison's marvellous hobgoblins on the painting table, led by his mounted half-orc and with a hobhound handler and beasts making up the front rank. None of it has any effect on the mechanics, of course, but it looks quite striking.
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I've also been following your posts Dan and made an order from Perry today to make a human faction for Dragon Rampant (hopefully to fight westfalias halflings :D )
The list ended up something like this:
Fancy knights: Heavy riders @ 4 pts
Squiers: Light riders @ 4 pts
2 x City guards: Light foot @ 3 pts (4 if they add some crossbows?)
Palace guards: Heavy foot @ 4 pts
Light gun: Heavy missiles @ 4 pts
@Hobgoblin, Nice painting, love the old school miniatures!
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Lovely ideas being thrown around on here! I'm really enjoying the creativity being unleashed :)
@Hobgoblin, great work and a nice collection of minis… I spotted a Runequest troll in there, one of my favourite ranges ever. One thing I saw in your list: the rules don't have Elite Missiles, so you can either create your own upgrade there, or maybe use the 1 point to make their missiles Enchanted (giving a 1 in 6 chance of more damage). Your call!
@tomek917, your Light Foot could add short range missiles for 1pt (usually javelins), or you could look at various fantastical upgrades for them: a spot of Hatred might go down a treat (but don't make them hate anything too tough as they'll be eaten alive!).
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Very excited about this.
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@tomek917, your Light Foot could add short range missiles for 1pt (usually javelins), or you could look at various fantastical upgrades for them: a spot of Hatred might go down a treat (but don't make them hate anything too tough as they'll be eaten alive!).
Would that give them some benefits in combat against certain enemies?
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It gives them a Wild Charge
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I'm planning several forces, but the first to hit the painting table are my goblins:
(https://deadsimplerpg.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/2015-08-24-10-20-01.jpg)
(https://deadsimplerpg.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/2015-08-24-10-19-41.jpg)
As some of you may note these are Games Workshop Night Goblins who have languished on their sprues for years. Partly because I lost interest in Warhammer, but mostly because I could not bring myself to paint their skin green.
So onto the Dwarves, Wood Elves, Human Barbarians (including chariots!) and others...
I am also thinking that I have a ton of Lord of the Rings figures that it would be interesting to playing using Dan's rules.
Excited? Moi? lol
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I've been buying up a load of old Grenadier models specifically for Dragon Rampant. A few other thigs in the way on the painting table but looking forward to painting them. First up the lovely Copplestone Wood Elves!
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As some of you may note these are Games Workshop Night Goblins who have languished on their sprues for years. Partly because I lost interest in Warhammer, but mostly because I could not bring myself to paint their skin green.
Hear, hear! I'm old enough to remember when even GW didn't always paint its orcs green and have been appalled to see the greenification of goblins everywhere in the time I've been out of gaming. Nice work on the night goblins - I like their ochre hue!
I am also thinking that I have a ton of Lord of the Rings figures that it would be interesting to playing using Dan's rules.
I'd painted up a couple of the GW LotR wolfriders (the ones that have mounts that actually look a little like wolves rather than hyenas) for SBH, with the remainder neglected. I noticed the other day that they come, quite serendipitously, in sixes. The remaining four are now on the painting table ...
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I'll second (third?) the comments on the armies posted here, great stuff. :D
I always really liked Hordes of the Things more for the ability to create interesting armies than the rules themselves, so I'm looking forward to Dragon Rampant coming out.
I've masses of LOTR figures (mostly non-GW) to use. I'll also be looking at a couple of Irish Myth armies. I've a load of the old Erin range (remember them Karl?).
They are currently based up as Hordes of the Things armies so they are a re-basing project to look forward to!
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Really like the look of what I see so far. :)
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Luverly. :) Strength points and troop types make me think of dusting George off and putting him back in the modelling queue. And I've said before, but I've been gathering Warhammer high elves for this. Swordmaster elite foot, spearmen heavy foot, white lion, er... bellicose foot.
I'll beg a second (probably not last) time, Dan. Is there any strict reason why the term 'fierce foot' can't be borrowed from LR? ;) :D
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@Vermis - No, you absolutely must use the term Bellicose Foot, otherwise your games will be unfulfilling and worse than that, Unofficial.
:D
Of course I'm just being silly there - yes, keep using Fierce Foot if you prefer. I suspect many will do so, but I liked the term Bellicose as it reminded me of the sort of pompous, overblown fantasy literature I read as a teenager.
I seem to remember a few bees in bonnets about the term Bidower in Lion Rampant - terminology really isn't something to get yourself stressed by, surely? So long as you're enjoying yourself.
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@Hobgoblin, great work and a nice collection of minis… I spotted a Runequest troll in there, one of my favourite ranges ever. One thing I saw in your list: the rules don't have Elite Missiles, so you can either create your own upgrade there, or maybe use the 1 point to make their missiles Enchanted (giving a 1 in 6 chance of more damage). Your call!
Thanks, Dan. Noted on the rules: I was thinking of the Expert upgrade in Lion Rampant, but Enchanted will do nicely!
Yes, those old Runequest miniatures are terrific. I have all bar the cave troll, and will be phasing those in, so that the Mistress Race troll adds a second sorceress and the others can replace the black orcs as guards. One thing about those trolls is that they're actually nothing like Gloranthan trolls as described and illustrated (and indeed Citadel also sold some of them as ogres and goblins). But they're none the worse for that! I like them because they serve to erase Citadel's distinction between "orcs" and "goblins", which has always irked the Tolkien enthusiast* in me. The Perrys and Kev Adams used to make quite a lot of goblins that had pug-nosed "orc" faces, but no bigger ones with long noses. The RQ miniatures plug the gap nicely (and goblins with both sorts of face also fit with Alan Garner's svart-alfar, whose "fish-white" colouring I've stolen).
Did you ever see the John Blanche concept drawing for genuinely (snouted) Uz (http://heartsinglorantha.d101games.com/2013/01/29/john-blanche-does-dark-trolls/)? One of the great "what ifs" of miniature gaming, I think, as the sketches are fantastic but none were ever made, as far as I know.
I have some Dragonewt scouts and Broo fierce (ahem, bellicose) foot on the way too:
*crank
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Heh. You have a point, Dan. Especially about the oldschool fantasy. :D (It's definitely not a dealbreaker under any circumstance, anyway!)
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Now I have an excuse to get the "Pig Faced" orcs from Otherworld Miniatures...
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I always really liked Hordes of the Things more for the ability to create interesting armies than the rules themselves, so I'm looking forward to Dragon Rampant coming out.
I've masses of LOTR figures (mostly non-GW) to use. I'll also be looking at a couple of Irish Myth armies. I've a load of the old Erin range (remember them Karl?).
They are currently based up as Hordes of the Things armies so they are a re-basing project to look forward to!
Figures based for Hordes of the Things work pretty well, I've found. I've used a couple of decades-old HOTT armies for Lion Rampant with no ill effects. Indeed, in some ways, multi-basing is actually preferable, given the speed of movement it affords. We just add one or two singly unit based figures to the back of a unit after removing a base if the casualties don't match. With the DR strength points, it sounds as if you wouldn't need to bother even with that.
These are some of the HOTT bases (painted hurriedly circa 1991, when the rules were just out) that form my usual LR retinues. They win few points for painting, but many for glory under Lion Rampant's 70s/80s rule! My preferred Orcish retinue from this lot involves 1 x Foot Men-at-Arms (heavily armed orc guards), 2 x Fierce Foot (orcs and half-orcs), 3 x Bidowers (orc skirmishers) and 1 x Archers (orc bowmen). The chaos horde tends to get the heavy wolfriders for some reason (1 x Mounted Men-at-Arms), along with chaos warriors (2 x Foot Men-at-Arms) and either beastmen (1 x Fierce Foot) and a couple of packs of degenerate creatures (2 x Serfs) or chaos beasts (the jabberwock and/or minotaurs for an additional unit of Mounted Men-at Arms).
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More lovely work on show! Cheers :)
The 70s/80s bonus has been very slightly modified to make it relevant to the pre-slotta era. It's an important rule to get right!
And a fair bit of my own playtesting used HotT armies, as mentioned the bases don't really make a difference. So no real need to rebase, and you can keep playing HotT too.
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Here are some of the Formorians in my HoTT armies that will be making the cross over to Dragon Rampant. I need to find the boxes with my Sidhe and Sons of Mil now!
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/753/20422943163_b23ab72679_c.jpg)[/url]
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/655/20421357514_075c31049a_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/x7GVtH)
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/613/20422941473_311877a8d3_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/x7yN7W)
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5618/21043994465_d7179a016a_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/x7GUYz) (https://flic.kr/p/y4zYoM)
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I think I'll be doing a small Dark Elf force that can do double duty in Age of Sigmar.
I have the plastics in the pile and it looks like I'll never get to do that Warhammer Army I always planned :'(
So I'm thinking:
A unit of 6 Cold one Knights (elite riders) 6
6 Dark riders (Light riders) 4
12 Corsairs (light foot but maybe plus missiles) 3
12 Spearmen (hvy foot) 4
12 crossbowmen (missiles) 4
That leaves 3 points for an upgrade of some sort or two.
I put one of the corsairs together today and he looks quite good on a round base (and I don't have to worry about ranking him up).
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Those Fomorians look terrific! The leader with the sword (next to the wizard) is a classic miniature. Those were originally produced by Grendel Games, were they not?
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Those Fomorians look terrific! The leader with the sword (next to the wizard) is a classic miniature. Those were originally produced by Grendel Games, were they not?
I believe so, well at least some of them. I got them from Alternative Armies (who have added to the range) when they first brought them out.
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can't wait will use the rules for Game of thrones!!!
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can't wait will use the rules for Game of thrones!!!
I think you could get by for GoT using Lion Rampant for most things, unless you were going north of The Wall! :o
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Yep, I'm not up on GoT (possibly the only gamer, ever, not to be!), but I've heard from plenty of people who are using Lion Rampant.
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I am using Lion Rampant at the moment but I would like to include the occasional Dragon or white walkers!
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Thanks for sharing more about DR on your blog. I have been looking forward to these rules coming out since they were announced.
-Audrey
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Blimey, haven't any of you lot bought a new figure in the last 25 years? Some of us have got mouths to feed, you know! :)
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More than happy to work out some lists for your New School Old School stuff :)
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One question that occurs to me: how would you represent the typical fantasy soldier armed with mail armour, a "hand weapon" such as a sword or axe, and a shield? Offensive heavy foot? Or something else?
A point that's often struck me is that "hand weapon and shield" wasn't a typical medieval combination, unlike spear and shield (e.g. LR Foot Sergeants or Foot Yeomen) or bills/halberds/poleaxes (LR Foot Sergeants with the Expert upgrade).
Is the equivalent of the Schiltron rule more abstracted so that spears aren't indicated?
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Either upgrade to Offensive Heavy/Light Foot, or Bellicose (Fierce ;D) Foot, or just stick with Heavy/Light Foot and describe Wall of spears as Wall of Shields.
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I am building a chaos army for this game, would appreciate some feedback. It's a WHFB force, Khorne warriors, which for those who don't know this sort of thing are bloodcrazed warriors intent on spilling blood at all costs.
My force will be something along the lines of:-
Chaos Chosen (six), the best troops and thus have to be Men at Arms
Chaos Warriors (12), again these are elite troops in WHFB, so probably expert sergeants for these
Chaos Marauders (12), I suspect these would be fierce foot - I do have 2 units of these, one armed with great weapons, one armed with two weapons, not sure if I can differentiate them in any way?
Ogres - again I have 2 units of these, one armed with great weapons, one with two weapons. Suspect these have to be sergeants at the very least, but not really convinced they are a defensive troop so would have to upgrade them to expert - how can I differentiate these from the chaos warriors? Is there a fear/brute/ogre type upgrade?
Great beast/small giant - basically it's a daemon - how would I represent this?
I do have a slight concern that the original tropes of basic infantry units being defensive do not map well on to this type of force (or indeed any aggressive foot force, such as orcs). Upgrading to expert gets around this to a degree but it would be nice to be able to have aggressive yeoman to simulate less armoured but still bloodthirsty troops.
Cheers in advance, looking forward to the game, hoping that my concerns on some infantry being too defensive is easy to overcome.
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I do have a slight concern that the original tropes of basic infantry units being defensive do not map well on to this type of force (or indeed any aggressive foot force, such as orcs). Upgrading to expert gets around this to a degree but it would be nice to be able to have aggressive yeoman to simulate less armoured but still bloodthirsty troops.
Aren't Fierce (or indeed Bellicose!) Foot exactly that? Unarmoured, but hard-hitting when charging (or counter-charging)? They have the same Armour and Movement as Foot Yeomen, but hit much harder when on the attack.
I think Dan said on his forum that there will be an armoured upgrade for Fierce Foot in DR. If so, that might give you a further means of differentiating between troop types. Although it was a relative rarity historically, warriors carrying an offhand weapon would probably have used it defensively (like a main gauche dagger), so you could have your dual-armed marauders as a more armoured variant.
As for the ogres: I've used Fierce Foot with a smaller number of models for ogres, trolls and the like. That gives you a faster rate of movement to simulate longer limbs, a pretty vicious offensive capability, but also vulnerability to missiles (nice big targets!). We've also used the Mounted Men-at-Arms profiles for minotaurs and similar things. That could work too, if your ogres are suitably spiky - you get a devastating but unruly unit with a vulnerability to skirmishers if lured into confined spaces.
For orcs, I'm using Fierce Foot for lightly armoured but aggressive-looking ones, Foot Sergeants for those that are better equipped and armoured, Yeomen or Serfs for those that look reluctant and poorly equipped, and Foot Men-at-Arms for those that are really heavily armed and armoured (like the old Citadel C15 Armoured Orcs). One thing I really like about the LR/DR rules for fantasy games is that they encourage you to differentiate between troop types of the same species. After all, why shouldn't goblins have as many different types of infantry as humans?
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Hmmm, treating ogres as mounted men at arms/sergeants is possibly a good idea, extra movement and a propensity to charge the nearest thing sounds about right. Might go with that, didn't occur to me to look in the mounted section. ::)
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On the variety of troop types within a single fantasy race: here's how I see LR/DR troop types in 1980s Perry goblins.
First, the missile troops: bidower, archer, crossbowman. Or if you prefer, scout, light missile, heavy missile.
And then the melee troops: serf, yeoman, fierce foot, expert foot sergeant and foot man-at-arms. Or ravenous horde, light foot, bellicose foot, offensive heavy foot and elite foot.
I'm some way off having the full units in genuine 80s lead. But I have the foot men-at-arms, serfs and fierce foot well underway, with the missile troops currently forming units of bidowers/scouts. I also have quite a lot of small but heavily armoured goblins that will act as conventional foot sergeants.
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Chaos Chosen (six), the best troops and thus have to be Men at Arms
Chaos Warriors (12), again these are elite troops in WHFB, so probably expert sergeants for these
Chaos Marauders (12), I suspect these would be fierce foot - I do have 2 units of these, one armed with great weapons, one armed with two weapons, not sure if I can differentiate them in any way?
Ogres - again I have 2 units of these, one armed with great weapons, one with two weapons. Suspect these have to be sergeants at the very least, but not really convinced they are a defensive troop so would have to upgrade them to expert - how can I differentiate these from the chaos warriors? Is there a fear/brute/ogre type upgrade?
Great beast/small giant - basically it's a daemon - how would I represent this?
I do have a slight concern that the original tropes of basic infantry units being defensive do not map well on to this type of force (or indeed any aggressive foot force, such as orcs). Upgrading to expert gets around this to a degree but it would be nice to be able to have aggressive yeoman to simulate less armoured but still bloodthirsty troops.
Cheers in advance, looking forward to the game, hoping that my concerns on some infantry being too defensive is easy to overcome.
As mentioned by Hobgoblin, the Fierce Foot option would give you some good options.
Running through your list I would see the following:
Chaos Warriors and Chosen in Warhammer game terms fulfill very similar roles: slow, close combat only warriors. This most closely maps to Foot Men at Arms. I would therefore suggest that instead of differentiating these units they are both Foot Men at Arms.
Chaos Marauders would best fit Fierce Foot. An alternative would be Expert Light Foot with the Hatred upgrade (downgrade?) mentioned which appears to give the unit Wild Charge. Light Foot would be worse in terrain, less potent on the attack, a bit more mobile outside of terrain, and more reliable if charged. No right or wrong, but I feel Fierce Foot would be a better option. Or, you could say two hand weapons are better on the defense, so they are Light Foot while Great Weapons are Fierce Foot. Not sure the game style really supports the idea that slightly different weapons justifies complete unit type changes however.
For Ogres you could go for Expert Sergeants and field them as a unit of 4 models. Alternatively there are a couple of new unit types in Dragon Rampant, one of which is Light Warbeasts and may better represent this unit - I say may because obviously the rules are not available yet.
Great Beast I would suggest a single model and the stats for a unit of Mounted Men at Arms or Mounted Sergeants. The mounted Men at Arms are much more potent in combat, the Mounted Sergeants a lot more reliable in non-combat situations. Really therefore it is a question of what suits your view on how they operate.
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We've already been using the original Lion Rampant for fantasy, deploying our large GW Lord of the Rings forces for a game that works very well. It was even our club's main game at the Trumpeter Salute Con in Vancouver earlier this year.
We used the excellent list of troop types and applied them to LOTR units and then added a few spells and effects for "leaders" attached to units such as wraiths, Gandalf or heroes. These included effects such as making foes near Wraiths weaker in morale tests or boosting the fight of units with a hero attached.
Looking ahead to DR, we are wondering about the range of spells, effects and attributes that leader or "special" figures will have to add a heavier "fantasy flavor" to a very good large skirmish game.
- GC
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And now I've posted the first of many Dragon Rampant sample warbands on my blog: http://merseybooks.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/dragon%20rampant
First up are goblins.
My goblins are Warrior Miniatures, there's something about the bow-legged look and oddball armour that really reminds me of early 80s models, even though these were sculpted in the late 90s. My goblins meet with mixed success, it very much depends on how the mounted units get on...
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Solid. :)
reminds me of early 80s models, even though these were sculpted in the late 90s. My goblins meet with mixed success
Well there you go, then. :D
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I played a game of Lion Rampant with the kids over the weekend, using the Dragon Rampant rules revealed thus far. It worked terrifically well - and absorbed a four-year-old as much as her seven-year-old brother (rolling 12 dice all at once certainly helps in this regard, but she was giving some canny orders too, keeping some goblin yeomen with mixed weapons out of the fray to pepper their foes with arrows). This was the first game I'd played using the official strength points; I'd previously used a home-brewed and somewhat different means of reducing unit sizes.
Our forces were as follows:
The goblins:
Chieftain and two bugbear guards: foot men-at-arms* (3 models)
Goblin warriors: yeomen with mixed weapons (12 models)
Goblin-soldiers of greater stature (old Citadel orcs): fierce foot (12 models)
Trolls: fierce foot (4 models)
Scouts: bidowers (6 models)
Goblin levies (a mix of ancient Citadel orcs and night goblins): yeomen (12 models)
The reptiles:
Clan chief mounted on small dinosaur and five guards: foot men-at-arms* (6 models)
Tyrannosaurus: mounted men-at-arms (1 model)
Dragon lizard: foot sergeants (1 model)
Dragon men: mounted sergeants (3 models)
Jabberwock: mounted sergeants (1 model)
We used the bloodbath scenario and ended up fighting to a standstill - with only the reptile leader and most of the mixed-weapon goblin warriors remaining on the table. A draw was declared (always a good result with small children on either side ...).
I was impressed by the minimal amount of book-keeping entailed by strength points. My seven-year-old did all of it for the reptiles, and it worked just fine. The reduced-numbers units acted appropriately; the orcish scouts lured the tyrannosaur into the woods, where they were able to harry it successfully, until it eventually drove them right through the trees and devoured them. By that point, though, the poor thing was down to one strength point and fell easy prey to the goblin archers.
Simply treating the winged dragon men as cavalry worked very well; they moved suitably quickly around the table and were able to countercharge. It looked and felt right. I understand that DR will have proper flying rules and look forward to them, but this worked just fine.
The range of troop types that you can use to represent larger monsters gives some nice flexibility. We were using the trolls in the first page of this thread, so fierce foot felt right: these particular trolls look fast and aggressive, but don't have much in the way of armour. Thus, the wild charge, ferocious, fleet foot and counter-charge rules all fitted them perfectly, as did the 8" move. Their main role in the game was to prowl through a large area of woods before charging out to scatter the dragon men and assail the dragon lizard (who eventually wiped them out).
As ever with LR, the interaction of troops with terrain was deeply satisfying, whether it was the orcish fierce foot surging over a hill with surprising speed to assail the jabberwock, the ferocious lizardmen standing guard in the ruins, or the goblin scouts proving a real handful in the woods. The rage of the tyrannosaur as it found itself needled by a smaller foe in the confines of the forest was palpable!
A question for Dan: you mentioned that there would be an armour upgrade for fierce/bellicose foot in DR. Is that still the case?
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Sounds great! And yes, there is an armour upgrade for Bellicose foot.
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Sounds great! And yes, there is an armour upgrade for Bellicose foot.
Good news! And if I read the rulebook pages in your latest blog entry correctly, there's no speed penalty attached. My long-standing conundrum over how best to represent Tolkien's Uruk-hai appears to be solved (they're described essentially as heavy infantry who can move at great speeds for long distances). Although there is still the question of their bows. I'm vaguely inclined to give them a mixed-weapons upgrade with the proviso that they can attempt to shoot (but not move) if they resist the lure of the wild charge. That might make them too powerful/expensive, but it would also allow for a "death of Boromir" situation.
It occurred to me after my most recent game that the reduced-unit rules get around a particular glitch in many fantasy systems: the overpowered unit. I remember this as a particular problem in the early versions of Warhammer (when playing second and third edition as kids, we generally banned powerful wizards, monsters and demons and concentrated instead on ordinary troops and low-level heroes), and I gather that it only got worse in later versions. Now, I know many might think that a dragon, say, ought to be more powerful than six or twelve men. But I'm not sure that the best fantasy literature really bears that out. After all, dragons are generally killed by lone heroes - or heroes who get a little bit of assistance: Beowulf and Wiglaf, for example, or Hercules and his squire against the Hydra of Lerna. Then there's Smaug (I'm sure a damaging volley from a reduced-model archer unit and a subsequent catastrophic failure on the courage roll could give a convincing one-shot kill ...), Fafnir and the Lambton Worm. Or Bellerophon against the chimera.
In short, the monsters of myth and fiction are generally taken out by a reduced-numbers unit of Elite Foot or Elite Riders. So a fantasy wargame that reflects that, rather than spiralling off into massively powerful profiles, strikes me as a very good thing.
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In short, the monsters of myth and fiction are generally taken out by a reduced-numbers unit of Elite Foot or Elite Riders. So a fantasy wargame that reflects that, rather than spiralling off into massively powerful profiles, strikes me as a very good thing.
Yes, but before heroic knight defeats the dragon single-handed many other knights have tried and failed before him. And the moster is a creature that terrorizes the land because it doesn't go down easily.
I'll wait and see how Dragon Rampant handles both, big monster and heroes.
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Yes, but before heroic knight defeats the dragon single-handed many other knights have tried and failed before him. And the moster is a creature that terrorizes the land because it doesn't go down easily.
Sometimes, but certainly not always. In Beowulf, for instance, it seems that the eponymous hero and his warband are the first warriors to take the monster on. The beast has terrified farmers and thralls, and is obviously formidable, but Beowulf and Wiglaf put paid to it on their own, albeit at a significant cost. And in some Norse tales, dragons seem more like dangerous pests than apocalyptic threats. But my point is that a dragon's only natural predator is the man-at-arms. That doesn't mean that the man-at-arms will always prevail, but he does at least have a fighting chance!
Of course, men-at-arms are a relative rarity in most dragon stories, so there are plenty of ordinary people to be terrorised beforehand. But a dragon on a battlefield brimming with accomplished warriors is a more vulnerable beast than one who confines his activities to lurking in his cave, devouring livestock and burning fields.
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I've tried to avoid any of the new rules making power-crazed gamers too happy ;)
I never much enjoyed the fantasy games I played that allowed one or two models to dominate a whole army. A dragon is still going to be a challenge to bring down - it's not only about Strength Points remember, they have a good attack and reasonable defence if you pay the points, plus the ability to fly, breathe fire, etc - but it's unlikely it will have enough puff to trample the enemy all by itself.
I got my advance copy over the weekend and am very pleased with the look of the final thing. Hopefully people will enjoy it...
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When will we be able to get our copies???
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I've tried to avoid any of the new rules making power-crazed gamers too happy ;)
I never much enjoyed the fantasy games I played that allowed one or two models to dominate a whole army. A dragon is still going to be a challenge to bring down - it's not only about Strength Points remember, they have a good attack and reasonable defence if you pay the points, plus the ability to fly, breathe fire, etc - but it's unlikely it will have enough puff to trample the enemy all by itself.
That all sounds great. An obvious aesthetic benefit of dragons (and other visually striking creatures) not being too powerful is that you can get many more on the table. I have the old Tony Ackland war wyvern and the Tom Meier blue dragon seeping in Dettol as I write ...
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When will we be able to get our copies???
The release date is 20 December but I think my previous rules with Osprey have published slightly ahead of the official date. Mid/late December though, I should think.
The advantage of writing the rules is that I see them sooner :D
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Really looking forwards to these Dan. :D
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Role on December then!!!
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I'm busy preparing for the rules:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=83340.0 (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=83340.0)
I'm sure the rules will be great.
Thanks
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Hi all,
Some great old school minis in this thread!
I have a question - I have a load of orcs and dwarves in 10mm based up for KoW. Will I be able to use them for DR? Will it matter that I can't remove casualties figures? Will that require more book keeping? I'm not familiar with LR, but I like what I see of the fantasy version, and have really enjoyed playing Dux Bellorum.
Any help appreciated,
EvilD
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Hi all,
Some great old school minis in this thread!
I have a question - I have a load of orcs and dwarves in 10mm based up for KoW. Will I be able to use them for DR? Will it matter that I can't remove casualties figures? Will that require more book keeping? I'm not familiar with LR, but I like what I see of the fantasy version, and have really enjoyed playing Dux Bellorum.
Any help appreciated,
EvilD
I don't think it would be much of a problem (going on recent experience of using HOTT multi-based figures and Strength Points for big creatures). The only book-keeping you'd have to do is keep a record of casualties (or Strength Points) for each unit - just a simple five-bar-gate tally under the unit name on a sheet of paper. That happens anyway for reduced-number units.
How many figures do you have on each base? If you used two (or four bases) per unit, you would have a simple visual means of representing a unit at half strength. But you'd have the paper tally in any case, so it wouldn't much matter.
If you do have quite a lot of bases, I'd be tempted to use four for a 12-strong unit and two for a six-strong one, so you'd have some visual sense of casualties. It wouldn't actually matter if there were five or ten figures or twenty figures on each base - it would just give you an impression of the unit's surviving numbers. But you could do it just fine with unchanging blocks and casualties on paper, I think.
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Thanks Hobgoblin, all sounds very do-able. I'm looking forward to this!
EvilD
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I'm busy preparing for the rules:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=83340.0 (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=83340.0)
I'm sure the rules will be great.
Thanks
I'm thinking of the new Russians from Fireforge as fantasy knights.