the Tower still stands

The first game of the year was a small medieval ‘Lion Rampant’ game with WillB and his young son going against each other defending or attacking the siege cannon firing against my newly painted Tower.  (see my previous post link for its construction)  Hey, I just painted it so OF COURSE it has to be part of the scenario!

I addition to the painting, I added a separate rocky base of insulation foam sheet 

Quickly inventing some quick rules for the guns damage firing at the tower, I thought I had cleverly hidden a small unit of foot knights under the roof but WillB, noticing the slight tilt in the roof ( he is a civil engineer and I never claim to be a precise builder!) adjusted the model only to discover my ruse.  Luckily I made my several activations to have the knights climb down the ladder, over the rocks, and into action but only to have them fail their courage after only one combat and run off into the distance!  

The enemy had already retreated away and then I careless rolled this for their courage!

One of the medieval siege cannon firing on my new tower.  This is a scratch-built affair made from a plastic tube, balsa wood, and brackets of strips of paper.  The barrel, wheel-barrow and chest form the rest of the 6-man crew!

Archers form the main component of my Battle of Crecy era collection

The Dunkurque knights chop into one of the English archer units. A rather unequal affair.

However, Arthur’s steady arrow barrages wore down the Dunkurque Militia of his father and the final cannon’s crew were slaughtered by Arthur’s men-at-arms before the tower could be felled by the cannon shot. 

Tower building

and multi-tasking…

Hey, I like watching American football like the next guy, but as someone with a stopwatch has suggested, there is only some 9 minutes of actual playing in the average American Football game.  The rest is the huddle, timeouts, or the color guy relaying statistics or making insightful observations like "You have to run the ball up the field to make the yards" . There are always the replays to cover the intervening time.   It is therefore easy to accomplish other tasks while “watching the game”.   Gluing hundreds of individual card tiles on a model’s roof is a useful way to spend that quality time.  

I just noticed the different colour of card in the roof tiles so a tracking of my progress can be seen.

 

The tower’s column core is a very thick card roll (ex-plastic wrap holder) on which pieces of cereal box card is glued.  The wood upper deck is a packing tape roll covered in wooden coffee stir sticks. The roof is removable with flooring to place figures if necessary. The lower windows are metal versions stuck on and yes, the main door is well high up the tower but I have constructed removable stairs so the inhabitants can make it a bit more defensible.    Now to paint the thing!

Medieval artillery

The ballpoint pen ran out of ink.  Of course I did not throw it away but I looked at it, took it apart and used the parts.  Hey, it is still part of the recycle, reuse, repurpose phrase is it not?  :)

The main "chassis" on this particular pen is quite thick and the inner dimension of the tube not so large.  Medieval casting of a cannon sized actually, and needing a cannon for my crew I set to work cutting the plastic tube after removing the inner ink tube (that to be used to allow me to envelope with a flag thus allowing it to be slipped over an existing standard-bearer wire pole to have different flags for the same unit).

The cut tube was placed within a balsa wood frame, itself reinforced by additional bits to handle the cannon's recoil.  Metal straps were of paper softened by a water and PVA(white glue) mixture.  The whole was then primed and painted.  A very quick, easy project which I "needed" to do.

While that is the medieval 'modern' version of artillery, they still had the old-fashioned weapon very much still in vogue (at least for a couple more years) in the shape of the catapult.  Here is one I came across in the fantasy section.  It comes already primed.  While the wood is probably a bit rough and weathered for realism,  I will be using it for objective purposes for scenarios (I don't have any figures suitable as crew at present).

Just piddling away at the many diverse projects I have on the go....

Medieval BYOB

Having a holiday Monday available,   I invited some of the boys over for a “get them out of the box if you got ‘em” or in other words  "Bring You Own 'Battle'"  medieval tilt using Lion Rampant.  There were 14th century types, a 11th C. “El Cid” contingent, a Lord of the Rings force, and a War of the Roses retinue!
Did not really matter as they did great slaughter on the fictional Crypt Hill.

The battle scenario was set up by the players themselves as the respective sides could pick a, b or c options and then I would compare and match these maneuvers to prepared maps of my table.  Thus a very different set up to the usual bland and uninspiring  “You guys on that side and we on this side.  Start 8 inches on the table.” game.
Also introduced on the moment was my card system so each player was given a number of shuffled playing cards equal to the number of units he currently deployed, the player having, say, the #4 card could play any of his remaining unactivated units during the fourth round of the turn.  Each side would play its 4th unit with the one side always going first in this version of IGOUGO.  After the end of all units activation attempt,  the cards are shuffled and so a different sequence is produced for each side.  As the sequence is not known, so a nice unpredictability of action is the result.

Photos of the action.

The Rightful Heir….

Got an email from WillB. suggesting he was surprisingly available on Saturday evening and wanted a game, preferably a Lion Rampant or of the ilk.  Sure, always up for a game.  A couple of the “Bonsor Regulars” would join us in a great game.  If you have any sense of humour, you can delight in the herky jerkey action created by the activation procedure of these rules.

During the day I received good news about the long awaited miniatures order to complete the other side of the collection but I was still faced with having only the same ‘uniformed’ troops as all my early HYW are in dark red/dark blue.  Hmm, perhaps a family 'civil war' then?  Yes, perhaps between rivals for daddy’s empty holdings.  With this premise, I came up with the scenario that indeed, the old Earl of Raineth passed away that previous month and his favourite orphaned nephew and his eldest son are contending for the earldom and both forces wear the Earl’s colours as a sign of legitimacy…..that covers the same uniform explanation!

After laying out the table in my usual random way, I thought of a way to enliven the game by adding ‘personal objectives’ for each player unknown to all which could then determine the overall winner.  I created 7 cards for us four (thus even I could not know each player’s objective) and randomly distributed as were the troop selections.  I could create four ‘retinues’ of 14 points for each of us, with two per side.

JimF's rather disciplined advance.  Knights safely in the rear!

I will not go into detail about the game as trying to describe a LR game is a very difficult thing. However I will mention that PeterM. has a notorious tendency to often fail his activations and in this game sat on his easily achieved objective for fully 4 turns, unable to activate to complete his task!  He finally gave up and tried …note the emphasis…to move toward the action. WillB opposite him did not do much better as, while he did get his pigs*, activations did not come often to him.

WillB's first unsuccessful activation to capture the pigs. I guess I missed the shot of the first of the spearmen falling flat in the mud.  Will would eventually get his objective.

For activations, I was successful every time - a first for me! - but I think that got me in more trouble than not as Jim was clever enough to evade my charges. I was eventually eliminated.  But really, hiding knights in the forest?  Not very medieval, eh?  But his response to my good-natured taunts were to say “ And what, get them killed?”  He would eventually win the game by using them to burn down the barn, his personal objective.  Arsonist bloody knights of all things!  I may have prevented it by charging them with my archers a turn earlier but I thought they were just trying to hide again! Clever boy.

My retinue fighting Jim's yeomen.

Peter's retinue still in the graveyard! His activation rolls
 are truly dreadful.....

The battle ended with me eliminated, WillB my ally,  in a quick retreat, and JimF the winner having done his burning and his ally PeterM now able to move back to the graveyard and thus to his objective…eventually….

Quote of the game: 
 Me: “I am a fool”.  PeterM: “That’s with an ‘e’ at the end, of course”



all miniatures painted by yours truly a few years ago.

*each personal objective, for example, searching the church for ancestral documents for use in legitimacy claims,  usually needed a unit to be adjacent the building for two consecutive successful ‘move’ activations to complete the task.  Other tasks such as taking the pigs or burning of the barn can be rationalized as taking advantage of the discord.

Jim's knights...hiding in the forest....

an Italian late Medieval/ Early Renaissance retinue

This contingent has been one of my 'bus projects' being painted recently within the confines of a school bus while I wait for my passengers to complete their field trip.  While not very comfortable, I have gotten the 'logistics' of having paints, brushes, water, lap tray and the figures packed for transport in a small carry bag, to a well organized degree helps the process.

The six 2-crew unit of gunners

Depending upon the type of figures, I will paint only the "basics", that is to say, the pants, tunic, pack etc.; or more should the detailing be less sophisticated, such as these figures, I can do more details as I did with these including much of the basing.

The head-swaps and different paint schemes and figure-positions give more variety than would normally be the case.

While this retinue is created from many different manufacturers, the handgonne units were composed of very old Citadel fantasy types which certainly show a less fantasy and more historical if not entirely accurate look.  These were picked up very cheaply years ago and finally have a home in this collection. While only two sets of two crew each, with some head swaps and different paint jobs, I can create enough variety to not make them too boring. A few of the heads I have modelled early Renaissance headdresses for more variety and era identification.

The separate stand allows for casualties to be removed for each unit.

The color scheme is very basic with a red/white livery placed on tunic or leggings and the other clothing in various shades of green. (to mimic the modern Italian flag!).  A late medieval mix of clothing but at the same time, an appealing consistency.

Crecy ...LR style

**Warning**
The following blog post contains images of unpainted miniatures on the tabletop which sensitive wargamers may find offensive.  Viewer discretion is advised.

The historic Battle of Crecy with Lion Rampant

My current medieval collection is based on the English of the mid-14th Century.  Thusly I am thinking that I should do the French to oppose my rather large contingent of mostly longbow and to do so with a group of early version of GW “Bretonnian” mounted knights that I have at the ready.  But how would games play with only these MAA types - not withstanding the rule that only half your contingent can be of one troop type?   As one of the famous battles of the era , The Battle of Crecy in northern France comes to mind, as it is well documented as any of the period and is noted for its wild charges by masses of mounted knights.

I set up this battle for Lion Rampant, my current rules-de-jour.   I was going to bore myself with a turn by turn account to document the affair the effect of the rules to the historical account.  However in the herky-jerky motion that is Lion Rampant’s initiative play and my failure to make most of those due to my poor die rolling I decided just to give an overall of account. [ed note: I had 3 turns of both sides missing their initiative rolls which, in LR, means nothing happens. Lots of my 1s rolled. Yes, three turns of the boys just staring at each other... On the other hand the turns are quick to do -grin- ]

So if the short version is wanted:
The French mounted knights finally charged but were repelled and were slaughtered by the bowman. The famous Genoese crossbowmen gave poor account of themselves per history.  The new weapon of the cannon (apparently making its debut on the battlefield at this time)  fired twice (!) and the pits (anti-horse defence) was rather effective and the men-at-arms did their job. And yes, the arrow-storms were lethal.
In general the game account went quite well according to historical play with the French beaten off with over 3x the casualties sustained by the English.

While I still do not understand the strict gap requirement (and it certainly does not make for good photographic shots)  but in keeping with the rules the deployments for the English units were a minimum of 3 inches away from each other. The French will have two moves to meet the English line ( 20 inches ) and with the width equal to that of the English line could also have three units of mounted knight across and a reserve unit having the king one move to the rear.  This is unlike the actual battle which had three successive lines of knights however with the initiative rolls as they are in LR, this would allow at least some degree of charging and perhaps not allow the concentration of bow fire upon only one unit at a time.

The English 'line' of 2 archer units with the dismounted MAA in the centre.  Cannon holding right flank along the River Maye.  A mere 3 inches looks much larger when viewing a photo does it not? 

Oh, yeah, the Genoese crossbow were allocated a position in the front, per history, but I modified their stats to reflect their actions during that day in 1346:

Attack : ---      Attack Value : ---
Move : 6+ Defence Value: 5+
Shoot : 7+ Shoot Value/ Range : 4+ / 12”
Courage 6 Max move: 6”
Armour: 2 Special: no attacks allowed

The crossbowmen were without their shielding pavises (in the luggage) and already aware of the effect of the longbow from previous engagements during the campaign and with their
weapons affected by the rainstorms, they were reluctant to force the issue.  Thus the low courage, armour and shoot effects with no attacks allowed.
In keeping with the original rules and its mandates, I gave each side only 24 points (rather a small version of the battle!) but did allow the addition of two units of the crossbow and as they are certainly downgraded…and historically run over!….they were at 3 points apiece providing the historically more numerical French an additional 6 points.

Keeping with the historical affair, I had the English with two weird types of ‘units’.  The cannon which might have been first used in a major battle at Crecy; and the use of pits dug by the archers in front of their positions.  For rules the pits had an attack value of 6 (12 dice) with the hits added to any which the archers could add in combat.  This reflects the disruptive factor they effect.  One might just make it 6 dice for hits.  This minimizes the effect a bit more but continue to add any hits thus made onto the total from the archers in combat.

French knights fall prey to the pits in front of the archers and the arrows. In the background, the two remaining knights of the right group try to gain the courage for another charge at the English MAA. They will, unfortunately be shot down by arrows fired by the archers to their right. The banner bearer to indicate the unit is made of 'expert' archers to represent the skilled longbowmen.

The other interesting weapon was the cannon.  I copied other wargamer’s thoughts on the matter allowing an automatic fire of the cannon but requiring a 10+ to have loaded (and thus fire again).  Attack value is 6 and the range is limitless.  The special rule is “Boom” which has the target unit test for courage regardless of hits.
The effect of the cannon during the game was to take out one knight but it's unit passed the courage.  After all the English units had passed initiative during a turn later in the game, I could again roll for loading initiative ( no turn to ‘lose’ at it were) and indeed rolled a 10.  So it could fire again. (no effect this time)  However this rule does a wonderful job at simulating in fun way, the slow firing and perhaps little effect of this weapon.

The six figure crew of the cannon. The stand of spears I made so that it may be assumed by any opponent that they do have arms and may indeed for for the gun if charged! (I hope....)

Now, do I use these unhistorical Bretonnian leviathans?  Big horses, big men, big silly helmet crests.  And with the want to only have mounted knights in my retinue and now the knowledge that in a set piece battle they well might lose each time, do I paint them?  Hmm.

Nevertheless the Battle of Crecy was a successful try and went quick. Very much a ‘bathtubbing’ affair.

Dice to match my livery colours! Together with 'battered' markers

Teutonic Knights in the snow

ColinU. of the club has created a new project of the Baltic Crusades fought during the winter so white sheet, bare trees covered in white and plaster covered buildings.  Using the rules "Lion Rampant" and the nicely animated Fireforge plastics.  Great stuff.
And a project which I so very recently coveted.  Do I still do my own thing, or simply play in his games.  What are the 'ethics' of big desire to do it yourself?

ColinU's 'Grand Master' unit of knights

Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to play so to get a better idea of the rules.  Simple and 'fun'.  Depending upon your definition of course.  I had the enemy in my sights with my mounted knights posed to descend upon the hapless pagans horde only to fail my initiative for three turns in a row! I justified this by they having blown horses from the previous combat, but, come on....3 turns straight?!
What is it with my dice rolling??   Not as bad as PeterM's playing as my Crusading partner and his German retinue but pretty bad nonetheless.

The village garrisoned by some pagan dudes.

We, the good and peaceful religious types, were tasked to murder any of the pagan types and burn their village...for the love of Christ you understand.   Perhaps this would be easy but my opponent, CraigM. was a very lucky sod.  At 5+ and rolling 8-10 hits of 12 is lucky, once.  Twice is unbelievable.  But multiple times throughout the game is really just....annoying!

Oh and don't have fleet-footed foot enter woods nearby so your stupid mounted knights need to wild charge them at foolish odds...just saying....

But to his credit his tactics were good.  Sit out in the open, tempt the knights to move toward them, then jump back into the woods so the knights are forced to wild charge into the woods which decreases the knight's armour making them very vulnerable indeed.  This tactic indeed worked well until the last turn of the game, until I was forced to move to his side of the table, throw the curse of God upon his dice.  Miracle!  For the first time in the game (I kid you not) he did not get a kill on my Teutonic knights.  Didn't even get a hit!  The power of prayer apparently.  That or the odds finally evened out.  The result:  my boys in white sheets finally eliminated the pagans last hope at victory.

With Colin, the GM,  ignoring the retinue courage to keep the game going, both sides were down to only a couple of units left. It was conceited that we could burn the village. But only just.  Glory in the name of God and smite the heathens.  ( I do a bit a silly role-playing with the funner games!)

Medieval Irish for DBA

My new part-time job as a charter bus driver is quite the time-eater with lots of time away from the house and more importantly the painting table!
Having downtime between delivery and pickup during the day, sometimes I can get a bit of basic painting in while sitting in the cramped seats of the bus.  With only poor natural lighting and poor positioning hunched over as I am, no great detail can be done as you can imagine;  and for my version of the Irish with their rather plain dress and, well knowing that many poor brush strokes can be covered up by a heavy wash of paint, I set about doing this army of 15mm for my DBA collection.

lots of painting gaffs but really I couldn't see a lot of the details sitting on a bus.  Even with my reading glasses on.  Sigh.

These are converted Corvus Belli Numidians - which were needed for the bare Irish legs - on which I added "green stuff" cloaks

Corvus Belli Irish Kerns from their old HYW range. The first strip has been given a wash stain already.

The completed army. Yeah, well it's DBA ain't it!

Close up of the spearmen

Close up of the General as a light horse element

"Improbable Invasion Halted" Lion Rampant game

Never heard of the  Chinese invasion of the Country Essex during the mid-14th Century and their defeat at the Battle of River Baldmore in 1348?  It was because of this victory of the English longbow that you have not!

Having three full but same liveried 24 point retinues(!) ...but no other medieval forces; and Andrew with no available forces himself, we shrugged off history and he brought his Chinese (refitted after an unfortunate box dropping incident) to have another go at the Lion Rampant rules.

Both of us having the rule book in hand, we helped each other through.  The rules are simple and effective and with good friends not worried about the "half inch extra", it makes for a fun game.  Had us both talking of making new retinues (armies).

His retinue in this battle had seven units including 2 bidowers (read: small unit of skirmishers) who actually did stellar work on my larger units of expert archers.  My good rolling of 'courage' saved me from losing them.

I used one of my retinues consisting of a dismounted MAA unit (tough lads these) a unit of foot sergeants, and two units of expert archers (these hit 17% better!)

The highlight of the battle - well for me at least - was the attack of my dismounted men-at-arms (and dutifully counter-attacked by his mounted boys) but with ALL my dice gaining hits and taking off 4 of his contingent including, with Andrews incredulous roll of double ones, his General! Unfortunately for the Chinese, their battle went downhill from then.

a few pictures of the action

The key clash of the battle.  

One of the Chinese bidower units coming out of the woods to take a good shot at my archers

part of Andrew's retinue

the battle mid-game

the archers a few casualites down 

Raid on Bolougne -Lion Rampant game at Enfilade Convention

 Smoked Bolougne was the title of my convention roomie's Lion Rampant game.  Interestingly, having been at the convention and roommates for some 9 or 10 years, due to scheduling and other conditions (including my absolute dislike to stand in-line/queue for sign-up) that I have very seldom played in any of Kevin's games - unless we shared hosting duties of course.  However I managed to get into one of his popular games this year as I really wanted to try out the LR rules.  I have the army - actually a group of three complete retinues - but have played the rules but once!

The scenario was the English raid on the French port during the Hundred Years War c.1350.  English were to burn, and the French to save the town and ships.  Simple.  Three retinues aside.  I volunteered to take the weakest of the French contingents with most of the militia.  My usual ugly die rolling with help might with the effect....

my French militia retinue.  all paint jobs by Kevin S.

Kevin did a nice job on the militia's city emblem on the pavises

My retinue advances grandly advances 

Apparently this game did not follow the playtest as the French gained the upper hand on the southern group of English but the northern group - served by poor French initative rolls could not intercept them before setting alight most of the town and ships with fire arrows.  Not really involved in either fight as I struggled to move up my militia, before I knew it, buildings were ablaze and covered in coloured cotton batten flames!

ships and buildings ablaze

My militia moved around the warehouses trying to intercept isolated bands of English.  A group of English knights had the audacity to try to burn the local bordello! Well, my militia soon set that right by incredibly beating these seaborne soldiers in combat and saving the warehouse whorehouse from the spoils of English seamen!  -- if you cringed at that pun, you are not alone......

The English commander turning back in almost disbelief that he was beaten by a bunch of French militia!

I think the English won on points but were to be soon killed or captured eventually,  which apparently was the historic outcome.

The Lion Rampant ruleset is very much enhanced by a good scenario as the rules are simple so as to make the victory conditions all that more interesting.   Kevin has found his ruleset after many years of looking and can now use his vast collection to full effect.   And perhaps I have too.

Quote of the Convention:
Gamer to a host:  "I'll play if there is an odd person"
Host: (gazing upon the convention room) "Ah look around.  We are all odd. "

my forgotten HYW artillery

I find it funny that with any new rule set, wargamers will immediately set about creating variations for different eras than that intended.  "Lion Rampant" is no exception.  Already there is the setting about for rules for artillery, gunpowder weapons "handgonnes" and the like.

The author has created his own forum site ( forum link   http://duxrampant.yuku.com ) and has indicated that he dropped the artillery from the rules as not really in the scope of the action he envisioned.  However a suggestion for its addition was added.

Why I mention this is I had overlooked my one artillery small gun and crew of my HYW collection as I also did not really consider its addition.  Already thinking about the next game scenario, I could see it as a "target" for a besieged minor lord while it slowly fires balls to destroy his tower.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it has the required 6 crew members which for LR can be a full unit of dubious fighting ability in its defence should the opposing retinue get past my retainers.
I suppose a stand of spears might be required to suggest they could fight rather than merely run away.....

early artillery of the HYW