Can Lion Rampant be used for Agincourt?

[Captain Gideon]

I'm still trying to figure out what rule set to use for my Agincourt Game sometime in the near future and I'm down to 2 choices Medieval Tactica or Lion Rampant.

We'll remove Medieval Tactica for now and just focus on Lion Rampant so I ask you would Lion Rampant be a good set of rules to use for Agincourt?

I know that Lion Rampant is a Skirmish level game but could it be possible to use Lion Rampant for this HUGE game?

I would like to hear from those of you who have played Lion Rampant for sometime and give me reasons for using it and reasons for not using it.

Also if you were to use it who would control the French and English?

My intention is to have the players play the French since there'll be a lot of French(maybe 300 plus figures)and myself and my other friend play the English.

One thing I must do is play a Lion Rampant game since I have plenty of figures I need to learn how to play the game just for my own need to know.

So I hope you can help me out on this.

Thanks
Michael

[levied troop]

I’ve played Lion Rampant with lots of figures 

But would it be suitable for Agincourt?  Not sure.  It’s a tricky battle to run as the Anglo-Welsh army starts off with a big advantage and LR definitely favours the Longbow in its stats (we’ve cut down the range in our battles to stop it dominating the battlefield).

It would be helpful to know why you’ve come down to those two sets of rules, what is it about them that you like.

It would also be useful to know how you would structure the armies - it’s not just the number of figures but what number of units are you thinking of.  Personally I’d keep your basing flexible so as to be able to change rulesets.  And I would test play Agincourt with cardboard bases and different rules, it’s a great battle but tricky.

[Ninefingers]

Another vote for no. The range of bows represents aimed level ahots, not the massed archery rain associated with Agincourt.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

I think it works well for a home table game.

Here is my Agincourt project using Lion Rampant and Perry figures.
The English army is 66 figures and the French is 138 figures.
PM me if you want the army lists.

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=78682.0

[Nord]

Only one way to find out. Buy (or borrow) a copy and give it a go yourself. LR is a very easy set to use and if you found something you didn't like you could always modify the rules - archery fire for example. It's also very quick to play, even with 300 figures per side that's still only 30 odd units. If you give each player 7 to 12 units each that should be just about okay. Its randomised a little which might mean some players missing a turn, but again you can always amend that rule as you see fit. I would say you could get that game done in half a day with that ruleset.

[Arlequín]

I'm going against the naysayers here and will say that if you're planning a participation game (or something similar), then yes, you could use Lion Rampant.

It's an easy game to pick up and the simple six or twelve dice shoot/fight mechanic is easy to remember.

I would use the normal archer stats and not the longbow ones suggested on the forum.

With so many figures, I would drop the single figure mechanic and use units of 6 or 12 'bases of figures' instead; the number of figures per base is irrelevant, but having units of six or twelve bases is important.

You really do need to play a game, as everyone suggests though. Opting for a set of rules sight unseen might commit you to a set you don't actually like.

[Captain Gideon]

First off Mick I'll be PMing you to get your army lists after I finish this.

Now to answer some of your questions first off I have copies of Lion Rampant and Medieval Tactica and to answer your question  levied troop I got both rather cheap some time back when I was just getting started with the Medieval period.

I also have one other set of rules which is called Revenge by Emperor's Press which is a third option for rules.

As for my figures all the French and English(mostly)are singlebase the French are mostly on either one pence coins or 25mm bases 1 inch diameter and most of the English are either based on pennies or on Squares,and this is how I acquired the bulk of the French and English figures however I did aquire some figures recently that are mainly French(more of less)that are based several to each base.

I plan on trying out Lion Rampant in the next few months(I hope) so I can see how it works.

As I said this is an ongoing work as I'm still adding to my French my goal is to have between 70 and 100 mounted Knight's,etc and 200 plus Foot Troops(which include Foot Knights and other Foot Troops),as for the English I think I have enough as I have over 100 Archers and a smaller number of Foot Knights etc.

Please keep the comments coming.

Michael

[janner]

I really enjoy LR, but always give leaders the commanding special rule in addition to another randomly determined one. However, they are squarely aimed at skirmishes and not large battles.

In my opinion, boasts are a very important part of the system and the the rules begin to creak once you take them into major engagements.

Horses for courses, but we use Hail Caesar for battles and keep LR for the nitty gritty

[Goliad]

I think LR is worth a go. If you use standard points system and bases of multiple figures to replace a single figure, you end up with a few large units which will probably look like a medieval battle of "battles". You might want to adjust the freer movement rules of the skirmish set. For Agincourt - 2 (or 3) units of 36 Longbow (base =3 figs), 1 (or 2) unit of 24 MAA (1 base = 4 figs) and a unit of 12 bidowers (1 base = 2 figs). For the big French Battles I would think counting the dismounted MAA as equivalent of Sergeants ("expert"?) would be reasonable way of recreating the big French lines (2 x 48 figs!).

The LR forum has some interesting rules suggestions for increasing sizes of units or "bolstering" units with higher quality troops that would allow fine-tuning of units.

[Antonio J Carrasco]

I don't see how LR can be used for big battles, either. If you manage it, please report how you did it! I would be interested to know.

By the way, for convention games I have found To the Strongest (TTS, for shorts) works pretty well. Easy to learn and fast to play.

[Cubs]

Yeah, of course, most people tinker with a set of rules and come up with house rules, but to enable LR to return a mass battle game would require a lot of work.

Not mention where arguably the most important factors in the original battle cannot be represented by the rules as written. How do you accurately represent the accumulated factors of the (increasingly churned up) muddy hill combined with fatigue combined with the splintered French command and piles of bodies in the way? Take out the longbow special rule because it's imbalanced? The battle was imbalanced because of the longbow! That's why Henry won, so if you take that out then it's ... not Agincourt.

[Charlie_]

I've said this before - I think a battle as unique as Agincourt could justify it's own specially-designed ruleset (though obviously it could use some published ruleset as a starting point).

It's also a very static game from the English perspective. You just stand there and shoot. Perhaps the English side doesn't even need a player? Though of course for a game at a show, you could roll the dice and such for the English yourself, but they won't actually need to be moved. The player will take command of the French, and will have to think how to co-ordinate his attacks to successfully defeat the English, with the mud and terrain playing a huge part. Even then though, there isn't a great deal for the French player to do but march forward and hope he makes it to the English lines in one piece....

So the rules could be quite simple in terms of command, movement, etc. The unique flavour would come in the form of rules for fatigue, mud, supporting lines of French infantry, etc.....

[Arlequín]

Take out the longbow special rule because it's imbalanced? The battle was imbalanced because of the longbow! That's why Henry won, so if you take that out then it's ... not Agincourt.

LR was written for 'High Medieval' rather than 'Late Medieval', with the longbow rule added as an afterthought. The idea was to increase its effectiveness over ordinary bows in an age of mail and partial plate. To give the longbow those same advantages in the 15th Century, where even common soldiers were usually as well-protected as the earlier knights is a bit anachronistic.

Despite mud and arrows, the French did get to handstrokes at Agincourt. If the longbow rule is used however, then apart from the worst dice rolling in the world by the English, the French are unlikely to make contact.

That aside a strong defensive position, desperation and mud, probably did more for the English than the longbow. Certainly with those conditions taken away, the English never repeated that success.

[Cubs]

LR was written for 'High Medieval' rather than 'Late Medieval', with the longbow rule added as an afterthought. The idea was to increase its effectiveness over ordinary bows in an age of mail and partial plate.

Well, that's armour rules for you then innit? I've always thought that full plate armour never gets the right bonuses in rule sets. I suppose these things need to be streamlined for simplicity and to avoid the old style tables and formulae.

That aside a strong defensive position, desperation and mud, probably did more for the English than the longbow. Certainly with those conditions taken away, the English never repeated that success.

Well, I'd probably argue that Agincourt was the zenith of the longbow's time and it suffered a decline in the rest of the century due to the increasing effectiveness of armour and the increasing availability of the heavy crossbow and gunpowder weapons. It doesn't mean the longbow wasn't still a killer at Agincourt, more that combining it with the 'fish in a barrel' situation that the French put themselves into turned it into a massacre. After all, any weapon can be neutralised by good tactics, good planning or sheer good luck, doesn't mean the weapon is less effective.

Anyhoo, that's dragging up that tired old argument again!

Suffice to say, I do feel these classic battles are very difficult to recreate properly on the gaming table, simply because their fame often stems from them being so one-sided, for one reason or another. Unless you change circumstances so much in house-ruling that you completely change the nature of the encounter, or you use a rule system that doesn't recreate the feel of the battle and replicate the advantages one side had enjoyed, it's not going to be much of a game for one of the participants.

[Arlequín]

I think that the pertinent point would be that, if you replicated all of the conditions and effects of everything in their entirety, the French could never win a re-fight of Agincourt. Of course we do have a fair idea of their mistakes too, which have been evaluated and re-evaluated several times and which most gamers are unlikely to repeat. Hindsight could be France's secret weapon.