Growing a bit tired of standard historical gaming I decided to try a fantasy skirmish game. Lion Rampant had received great reviews, so I decided to get Dragon Rampant when it came out. Not being content to wait for the rules to arrive in the post from the other side of the world I decided to get started with the Kindle version of the rules.
The rules seemed quite straight forward and so I dove straight in (making plenty of mistakes on the way).
For now I will use my Saxons and Vikings as a basis for the war bands. I have used reduced numbers of figures as I have a limited number of figures and I wanted flexibility with troop types as I am playing this solo and needed to have plenty of figures on stand by for random events.
The “Player” force was the Vikings. They had an Elite infantry group with leader, light and heavy infantry (both were “offensive”) berserkers (bellicose foot with “Fear” as an attribute) and a group of scouts. A wizard was with the heavy infantry.
The “Non-player” was the Saxon force. This was randomly generated from a table I drew up, resulting in heavy infantry with leader, and three light infantry. The Saxons have a wizardling attached to one light infantry unit.
At the end of every round there was a random event roll. This also occurred when an event node was reached (this also gave a victory point) or treasure was found. These events could be of benefit (recovery of lost strength points, allies appearing) or could bring woe (more enemy units, a ravening giant wolf, or trolls). The random events were largely in the favour of the “Non-player” – I can never be completely neutral, so I play one side as the one I want to win and then weight random events against that side.
In keeping notes about the game I recorded the number of activations as I had read one AAR where the author complained there were few activations due to the turn ending once there was a failed activation. On average I had 3.95 activations per side each turn.
Knum Knut the ferocious Viking chieftain has set his sights on raiding the church of Saint Simeon the Simpering and the nearby village. To get there he has to pass through woodlands inhabited by vicious beasts and pass ancient monuments to long vanished gods.
The Vikings don’t travel far before a giant wolf comes loping out of the woods. Knum Knut’s berserkers take one look at it and decide that the pelt would make a cod piece for each and so charge. This is a fight that will swing back and forth over several rounds.
Both sides reach activation nodes, gaining victory points and treasure, but also causing a random event – another two wolves! (Being short on wolves I had to substitute a vicious cow and seem to forget about the third wolf who must have disappeared in a puff of divine intervention).
The next few turns see both sides become disjointed through either poor activation rolls or trying to grab activation nodes. The wolves inflict casualties on both sides and random events see one Saxon light infantry unit appear and later two heavy infantry units.
The numbers look very bad for the Vikings. However, the Vikings tend to get the better of the combats, and even when the Saxons win they roll poorly on their Courage tests and fall back battered.
Although the Saxons have lost the most men and combats, the random events have been kind to them and fresh units mean the Vikings are worn down and eventually have to abandon the fight.
More Saxons arrive (random event with random placement - they come on near the wolf).
A three-way fight between Viking, Saxon and beast, with the battered Saxons becoming the meat in the sandwich as a second wolf appears
Grrrrrr!
Heavy infanrty plodding along as the light infantry get stuck in.
Battle of the wizards.
Second wolf down and a new force of Saxon heavies await he rash onslaught of the berserkers
A view of the center table. Saxons recoil everywhere.
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December 31, 2015, 10:47:28 PM