Deep Thoughts: Lion Rampant

Sometimes its nice to play a game that has been sitting on your bookshelf (in this case a virtual one) for a while and you just haven't had a chance to get around to trying out. Last weekend, my buddy Ron and I dusted off some medieval-type figures and tried out a few games of Lion Rampant by Osprey publishing. Lion Rampant is a medieval era game focused on what I'd like to call "Grand Skirmish". It's bigger than a skirmish game where every guy matters, but smaller than a traditional mass combat game.  Like a lot of the games that Osprey has done, I feel like there is something at the core of the game that I love but something isn't quite gelling with me. This'll be an attempt at collecting my thoughts on Lion Rampant and maybe thinking what I can do to house-rule the set into something that I could really enjoy.

My fierce Normans carried the day three times! I'm sure I've burnt all my gaming luck for year now.

The Pros

1. Figure Count - with most units being either 6 or 12 models and most "armies" consisting of 5-6 units in a typical game, Lion Rampant hits a really sweet spot for me regarding how many models I need to paint up to play a standard game. Each game we had about 50 models a side, which is perfect for a game that isn't going to end up an obsession. I can commit to these size of forces and it felt nice - the rules give a sort of "Grand Skirmish" feel rather than a full mass combat game or skirmish system.

2. The Combat System - the combat system for Lion Rampant is ridiculously simple and flows elegantly. Full strength units roll 12 dice, half strength or less units roll 6. Count up the number of dice that rolled equal or higher to your Attack score (if you're attacking) or Defense score (if you're defending) and divide the number of successes by the target's Armor. The result is the number of casualties (rounding down). Easy peasy. No cross-referencing, no detailed counting of figures in range, just a simple donnybrook roll to see who kills who. Units generally have different Attack and Defense scores, which adds some nice diversity the roles that different troop types fulfill during a game. Finally, after removing casualties, EACH side that lost soldiers needs to test their Courage to see if they stay in the fight. I like this because it means that the side that "wins" a really bloody scrap doesn't just get to walk away from the consequences.

3. The Scenarios - we got a chance to play three games and they all felt flavorful well-thought out. The system really tries to focus on narratives and for the most part succeeds. There are a few places that it becomes a little heavy with these rules, but its nothing that I don't think couldn't be streamlined.

The Battle of Pig Pen Lane all set and ready to go. If nothing else, I always know that a game against Ron will
LOOK really nice.

My Norman knights close in on Ron's Foot Sergeants. It was nice to break in my new gaming mat with lovely
figures.

The Cons

1. Rolling for Activations - I'm sure that I'm in the minority here, but I feel like these style of mechanics are the absolute worst concept unleashed on the wargaming world in the last 20 years. They really just need to shrivel up and blow away as far as I'm concerned. Lion Rampant's command system works by the player choosing a unit and attempting to roll higher than the score tied to a specific action (such as Moving or Attacking or Shooting) on two dice. Success indicates that the unit can activate and failure immediately ends your turn and passes it to your opponent. In theory, these type of systems are designed so that you take less risky actions first or focus on crucial segments of the battlefield before pressing your luck elsewhere. In practice these command mechanics actually do two things - first, they run the very real risk of unlucky players being unable to anything for long stretches of the game. In our first game, Ron (through some spectacularly creepy luck) failed nearly every test. He spent most of the game just waiting for me to strike when and where I chose. It was boring as sin. In later games, when his luck evened out a bit, it led to the second failing of these types of command tests - predictability. By the end of game two, I knew exactly the order that both Ron and I would activate units when given the chance. We started with conservative rolls and worked our way up to riskier ones. EVERY. TIME. Which sort of begs the question of why do we need this mechanic at all? Why not just assign units a fixed place in the turn? All the friction and fog of war these rolls are supposed to generate either becomes rote activations or total inaction, with almost nothing in between.

2. The 3" Rule - In Lion Rampant, units are required to stay at least 3" from any other unit (friend or foe) unless they are engaging them in melee combat. This is another place where theoretically I can see why this was done - it creates clear zones of control, forces you to play across the entire board, reflects the medieval tendency to fight in long lines of troops rather than in depth, and makes for less visual clutter. Instead, it led to log-jams where single figure can prevent reinforcements (friendly ones at that) from getting to the battle, or strange column formations in tight deployment zones along the short edges. Its just frustrating and I can't seem to find an actual mechanical reason to justify it. Its not like other games where you have random charge distances and the authors want to make sure you might fail on a roll of double 1. Instead, it mostly seems to be about log-jamming your units and it just makes for a less interesting game.

Game 2. Ron's forces attempt to hold a crucial winter food store. My men are out for blood and snacks. 

A Clash of Minor Nobility! Our knights ended up meeting in the center and a might ruck
developed. Unfortunately for Ron, none of his reserves could actually help out because of the
damn 3" zone of control his own guys were creating. 

Fixes?

1. Ditch the Activation Roll - next time I'd like to try eliminating the activation rolls and replacing it with a Command Roll where at the top of a player's turn they roll a d6 and add one to the score if their army leader is still alive. The resulting # is how many units they can activate this turn (with each unit only allowed to activate once per turn). I'll need to rework some of the abilities (like the Schiltron formation or activating Crossbowmen costing 2 activations, for example) but this should keep the friction in the battle without running the chance that one side may simply get to do nothing for a turn (or several).

2. Reduce the the 3" to 1" - or simply ignore it totally. Some friends who've played the game in past simply ditched this rule all together and reported that it didn't negatively impact their games.

3. Re-work a little of the Narrative Stuff - the game has Boasts and Leader Qualities, but there's simply a little too many for my tastes. By game 3, Ron and I had totally forgotten about the Boasts - probably because neither of us wanted to chew through the 18+ list of ones in the book. That stuff needs to be there - it just needs to be presented in a more manageable way.

Ron's Biddowers lured my Lord into a forest and tried to fill him full of arrows. Luckily he and his men rode the filthy
peons down before any real damage was done.

If nothing else, I'm really happy to have another game to use these figures with. I painted them up for SAGA,
played a few games and our group was losing interest in the rules. Sigh.

So there is my huge wall of thoughts on Lion Rampant. Like I said, there is something here I could really, really like - my head was immediately buzzing with building a Roman army for the game system - but some of the core stuff is just getting in the way of a fun game for me. I look forward to tinkering with the system so I can try and get something I'm really excited to play.

Cheers!