Wednesday 21 January 2015

Lion Dormant

Dormant : Asleep, or Dreaming
Earlier in the month I mentioned that I would be starting a new project for this year. The idea originated as a group project, something along the lines of the old Tale of 4 Gamers fantasy army project. In our case, a Tale4Nerds, we are each collecting and painting a different medieval retinue to use in the game Lion Rampant. This is the set of medieval skirmish rules that has become very much the zeitgeist on many a forum. We have set ourselves a target of one unit per month. As most retinues contain just 5 or 6 units, we should all be finished by summer.

As soon as we had decided on our system, I ordered a copy of the rulebook and it finally arrived last week. It's typical of the recent releases by Osprey Wargames - a slim paperback, 64 pages long with plenty of colour photos of minis and some lovely Osprey historical artwork. There's a couple of page spreads below to illustrate this.

I have skimmed through the rules. They are fairly abstracted, skirmish style gaming with a command friction overlay. My first impression is that the mechanics are elegant and simple, so games should roll along quickly with barely a glance at the rulebook, after a couple of practise sessions. I do have mixed feelings about command friction rules, there is a chance that a player can end up missing out on the fun if he rolls poorly for his activations. But overall I am optimistic about the game and I am especially looking forward to trying out the twelve scenarios. The Lion is not yet rampant, but he's certainly rousing from his winter slumber.



3 comments:

Minitrol said...

The best part (for us) is this period has gorgeous models available that we can watch you paint :)

redmanphill said...

Yyour faction reveal had better be good, I have been on tenter hooks for over a week now....
I got the rules myself over the weekend but I haven't managed to read them yet. They seem fine so far.

Derek said...

I'm taking my copy along to the games store this evening, with the hope of convincing some of the locals to give it a try. Looking forward to seeing your faction build!

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