Lion Rampant

Been a while since I posted. I had two wisdom teeth out the other day, and my Dad is also visiting and he's not a gamer, so we have been watching TV and movies together and I've had less time for playing - though more for reading.

I last used these 1314 Paperboys with a Featherstone ruleset (happy belated birthday, Don!): Medieval Battle Report

Lion Rampant is a skirmish game, so multibases will be a little tricky. Luckily, all units are either of six or twelve men. I am leaving out Boasts and Commanders for the purpose of the test.

The sides are English and Scottish. The English get:

Two mounted Men at Arms

Two Foot Sergeants

One Archers

The Scots get:

One mounted Men at Arms

Three Foot Sergeants

One Crossbowmen

One Bidowers

The recommendation for Scots is for "Fierce Foot," which I don't have cut out. I would have liked to skip the Bidowers (light, elite archers) and give the Crossbowmen pavises, but lost the pavise strip some time ago. So here we are.

For the test game, I'm using the first scenario, Bloodbath, and no terrain. The table is about 5'x3'. I'm also experimenting with Google Photos, sending them straight from my phone to the computer. It works, but slowly...

Starting Positions

After a few abortive attempts at movement (kept rolling low to activate, which turns initiative over to the other side), the Scots shifted to the left and most of the English moved towards them (left photo). The Bidowers moved to the right to try shooting from the flank and one of the English MAA units went after them (right photo). The English archers to the rear are actually in range, but Bidowers cannot be shot at outside 12".

 

Turn 2: I "formed" the Scottish spears into schiltrons. They can't move now but are armour 4 against any charge from the English knights. On the right I tried to "skirmish" the Bidowers but failed. The knights charged them, but they successfully evaded - though they caused no casualties, needing four hits and scoring only three (with six dice at 6+!). 

The other English knights failed their move roll, so Scots turn again.

Turn 3: The Scottish knights move forward to challenge the English, but not in range to attack just yet at a move of 10". Then I recall they are required to Wild Charge the closer English spears:

They score five hits on the spearmen, causing one casualty; in exchange the spears score three hits, not enough to kill a knight. The spearmen test courage and pass - but having lost, retreat half distance, three inches. The Scots crossbows fail to shoot and initiative passes to the English.

English knights charge the Scottish knights, who fail to counter-charge so will be using their defense statistic (left). The Scots take one casualty, pass courage and retreat five inches. They are in range of an English MAA unit, which charges them for the heck of it (right); again they fail to countercharge. The knights take a second casualty.

 

Forgot about the second English knights, who must charge the Bidowers, who failed to cause any casualties and took three of their own. They fall back (not quite off the table) and are Battered.

Turn 4: Scots again, the knights back after the English spears who just beat them. They cause a casualty against the spearmen, but take two in return and retreat again! They're down to two men and Battered. The Bidowers, also Battered, fail their rally test and are eliminated. I'm assuming I only roll to rally the knights next turn.

Scottish foot sergeants attack English ones, but fail to score enough hits to cause casualties (and take one of their own; spears are better on the defense than on the attack). Scots crossbows try to shoot the English spears but fail, and initiative returns to the English.

The English knights fail to Wild Charge, but the spears follow up on their victory, both sides score five hits for a casualty apiece. The Scots retreat through their own units behind - not sure if they are supposed to roll for extra casualties in this case, or only if blocking units are enemy.

The English knights and archers on the left move towards the enemy before init changes again.

Turn 5: "Now the Scottish Lion rallies." Not that that will do the knights any good. A fresh Scottish spear unit charges the ten-man English spears for six hits (two kills), taking one casualty in return. The crossbows try to take a potshot at them as they run but fail.

On the English turn, their knights charge into the crossbowmen, scoring six hits for three casualties - the Scots retreat, battered.

The other English knights careen into a block of Scottish spears. They kill one spearman in exchange for one knight. Both pass courage tests, so the knights retreat. Turn ends when another English attack fails its roll.

Turn 6: The two surviving Scottish knights fail to rally and are removed from the board. I've mostly been ignoring leader rules, but under normal circumstances the leader would be in this unit and his loss would require all surviving units to test Courage. Only the crossbowmen fail - they lose another model and retreat. The Scots are down by 8 unit points of the 24 they started with. When I roll to rally the crossbows, they fail by enough to eliminate them from the board, so now the Scots are down to half their initial points - while the English, though a few units have taken casualties, are all still extant. I'll call that an English victory.

A good basic game, I think. As usual for me, I didn't play it all in one go, but took turns at intervals over several hours of multitasking. (I was actually surprised that my cats did not wreck the board while I was out shopping!) This could have easily been completed in half-an-hour of "normal" play. 

One thing I like in comparison with the same author's The Men Who Would Be Kings is that activation is not nearly as frustrating. It's easier to activate on two dice instead of one, and if a single activation is failed initiative instantly goes to the opponent, keeping the game exciting and active.

Things I left out or mistakenly missed:

• Leadership. The commander's unit and anyone within 12" of it gets +1 to dice rolls, and the unit also gets a random characteristic bonus. This is also done in TMWWBK, for characterfulness. I ignored these for simplicity's sake.
• I effed up on Attack characteristics, rolling one attack per figure. The correct way is that any unit over half strength gets twelve attacks, and any under half strength gets six. This made a serious difference in the effectiveness of the six-strong knightly units.
• Terrain, which could have helped the Bidowers and in fact all the shooting units; cover automatically evens everyone's fighting and wound characteristics, helping even Serfs survive.
• The shooters barely got a look in, mostly out of range or line of sight, and I don't think anyone took any casualties from shooting.

Overall, I would happily play again, though with Paperboys will need a way to tell similar units apart. The figures in a strip are so colorfully varied that it's hard to differentiate them; perhaps giving each one a single large banner instead of lots of little ones. I also had to pencil in casualties, but some of the Wofun individual-figure sets would do well with this game.

Paperboys at Work

 No home gaming this week, as expected, but I have built a few types of Paperboys. For our St. Patrick's Day display:

ACW Irish Brigade.

French Irish Brigade from the 
Revolutionary War, converted
from AWI Paperboys and a WSS flag.

And for International Women's Day:

A coworker builds his first Papergirls.

Girls on parade.

When I posted this one on FB, a couple replies
expressed terror on behalf of the small ACW guys.

Pretty well done by a teen and adult, both newbies to papercrafting.

Finally, a pirate ship I'm building for a coworker
as a possible summer craft.

The completed vessel.

Junior Generals at the Library, take one

 I've been talking and thinking about it for ages, but I finally got there: two days ago I ran a tabletop wargame at work.

Not that I haven't before, but that was years before I started this blog. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

I was lucky to have, on the one hand, a captive audience of interns who needed something to do that could be argued to be relevant to library programming, and on the other, a couple adult staff with particular expertise in teen programming - mostly the technical sort, but non-electronic activities fall under their purview too, so this was a useful experiment.

I had a choice between running a simple role-playing game (which I mentioned during a recent teen advisory board as a summer-program possibility) and a wargame. I ran the wargame after one of the interns expressed interest in the plastic soldiers I'd brought - a handful of the Black Powder frames I've been assembling.

Here we see one advantage of painting -  if I'd done it
the sides would be easier to tell apart despite the bad photo.

Again, I used Sawmill Village as the inspiration - for the units at any rate. Each side has three regiments, two guns and two generals - the contents of two frames apiece. The rules were a subset of Junior General's horse-and-musket scenarios. I counted each infantry base as two, so that each regiment of three or four bases counted as six or eight for the purposes of combat, with Paperboys casualties used to indicate loss of odd hitpoints. This created confusion, and in hindsight two regiments of five bases each would have worked.

Infantry move 6" in line, 12" in column. Guns may move 12", but may not fire in the same turn. Commanders move 12". Guns have a max range of 24", musketry 12". Above, the Union open their advance on the open brown plain of Tabletop.

Another issue was that there were two players a side (and a fifth turned up midway thru the game - he appointed himself strategic overseer of the Union). With an odd number of units each side, play had to be cooperative, and when rolling dice in particular the players each rolled half (this was their own idea). Two regiments, one to each player, would have been preferable. Fewer units also would have helped us get thru the game faster, as we only had an hour to work with.

Anyway, above you see turn one, in which we simply spread the units around 24 inches apart. The Union are moving forward.

Here the Union column has charged a Confederate line.
The Union artillery are classically deployed in the center.

After a charge, before end of the combat.
The paper casualty markers indicate half-a-base worth
of casualties. The rebel general has also been eliminated.

A wider view; the Union column lost the action and retreated.
Union guns fire thru the gap to hit the right-hand rebels.

From the rebel side of the table this time. I think
the rebels are trying to flank a Union unit here.
A casualty box is visible.

In what became the last turn, a Union regiment (center)
lost combat to a rebel regiment (right) and has retreated
backwards into a second rebel unit (left). The Rebs aren't aligned
to hit the Yankees in the back, but I'd still say the Union's in trouble.

We stopped here due to closing, but the kids (and staff) were enthusiastic enough to declare the game a success, with tentative honors going to the bad guys in grey. There was still confusion over the rules so I had to gamemaster, and with more time I'd have gone over them beforehand with the players rather than taking them on as they came up. I also don't think I'd do this on a regular basis, but with more planning it would work for "special events" like Fourth of July, etc. Overall it worked as the playtest I intended; at least I know what not to do next time!

Speaking of which, I hope next week to run Hampton Roads (with a different Junior General ruleset) on its 160th anniversary. This will enable us to talk up the 3D printer, too. Wish us luck...