Month: March 2018

Lion Rampant in the Late Roman Era

Well it’s still cold and we’ve had more snow, so I thought some further gaming on the winter terrain was appropriate. I also recently re-read The Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem, so out came some Late Romans and their Goth enemies and over the weekend I played a few solo games using the excellent Lion Rampant rules.

I wanted to try some of the scenarios I hadn’t played before, so picked two 24 point forces and had a few goes of ‘Hammer and Anvil’, and one of ‘The Messenger’. Both require the forces to move a lot to achieve their objectives, which is always a challenge with the unpredictable activation rules in the Rampant series! My house rule is that all leaders have the Commanding trait to gain a re-roll on the first failed activation roll each turn (if the unit is within 12″). This suits me better, but a good plan can still be ruined when things don’t happen for you.

The figures are 15mm and I played at half-scale (ie. 2″ in the rules being 1″ on the table). It worked well on a 4’x3′.

The Hammer and Anvil games proved very tough to win for the side trying to exit the opposite table edge, but I did manage it once out of 3 attempts. I swapped the forces around to give each side a chance to attack and defend.

The Goths managed to get the Messenger through in the last game I played, having had a rough time of it initially.

All the games proved exciting, with some challenging decisions (even playing solo) and lots of incidents. I may just have to play a few more now!

15mm Frostgrave – First Game

After all that scenery making it seemed logical to give 15mm Frostgrave a go. So, we played a 3 player game on a 3’x3′ table, using the basic treasure-grab scenario. We had a Chronomancer, an Illusionist and a Thaumaturge, each with a reasonably typical starting warband.

There were a good variety of figures in use, including lots of adventurers/characters, but also some Orcs and even the odd Lizardman as thugs and thieves.

The table was put together fairly randomly, but with plenty of raised areas, especially towards the middle to create an interesting setting to game over. We placed 2 treasure as centrally as possible, the players then placed more 2 each, and off we went!

We were using a few light house rules, designed to encourage a broad use of spells, keep the focus on treasure and the mission, and provide a greater likelihood of random monsters appearing. Apart from the last, which still only generated a single bear, they seemed to work well and everyone was prioritising their spells and movement over just lots of shooting and fighting (although there was a fair bit of that too!)

Crossbows on the roof – nasty!

Anti-crossbowman fog spell:

Cat and mouse in the old courtyard:

Creeping up to the treasure:

The surprise bear was dealt with very efficiently:

General action shots:

The Chronomancer tries a last spell before legging it:

The game took a good while to get through, but everyone needed time to learn the rules and get used to things. I think there were more than 15 different spells cast in all, which provided a lot of variety to the action. Playing against two opponents was a lot of fun and made things very unpredictable.

For me the most dramatic moment was when the Chronomancer’s apprentice managed to cast Scatter Shot, with my wizard and half my warband in range. Only a few cuts and scratches were suffered, but it was pretty worrying at the time! My archer was able to remove the risk of it happening again with a well-placed arrow.

At the end, honours were pretty even in terms of treasure and experience points. We’ll certainly be playing again with these warbands and we have a bit of gold to spend in the meantime!