Friday 2 July 2021

Alexander Rampant

My newly completed Macedonians took on my club mate Freddy's old WAB Persians in our first try at using Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant rules for Ancients.

I had not played Lion Rampant before but had heard good things and liked the look of the game scale.  I struggle to finish painting big armies so skirmish games are a nice level for completing projects.

While not up to speed with the rules at the start we had a good fun game and were doing most things without the book after a few turns.  We played the brutal, as written, end your turn on a failure activation tests, which didn't prove as jarring as I expected.  On occasion we failed the first test and at other times activated every unit.  Nobody seemed to dominate on luck and I don't recall the sequence spoiling anything.  Rather the risk was part of the fun.

We used the standard medieval stats, which probably need a bit of tweaking for the armies we used but worked well enough for the test.

    Macedonians
    Companions (Mounted Men-at-arms, Drilled) 7pts, 6 figures
    Thessalians (Mounted Serjeants) 4 pts, 6 figures
    Phalangites (Foot Serjeants) 4 pts, 12 figures
    Phalangites (Foot Serjeants) 4 pts, 12 figures
    Phalangites (Foot Serjeants) 4 pts, 12 figures
    Agrianians (Bidowers) 2 pts, 6 figures
    Cretans (Bidowers) 2 pts, 6 figures
    Macedonians (Bidowers) 2 pts, 6 figures
    29 pts

    Persians
    Persian Cavalry (Mounted Serjeants) 4 pts, 6 figures
    Persian Cavalry (Mounted Serjeants) 4 pts, 6 figures
    Sakae Horse Archers (Mounted Yeoman, Expert) 6 pts, 6 figures
    Greek Mercenaries (Foot Sejeants) 4 pts, 12 figures
    Kardakes (Foot Yeomen) 3 pts, 12 figures
    Mardian Archers (Archers) 4 pts, 12 figures
    Takabara (Bidowers) 2 pts, 6 figures
    Takabara (Bidowers) 2 pts, 6 figures
    29 pts

I've just realised I cheated myself out of a third unit of Bidowers but I don't think it would have changed the result.

Freddy missed his massed ranks but his army mostly performed well with the Saka the Persians' star unit.  The Macedonian Companions were impressive but were whittled away as they rampaged across the battlefield. Despite chasing off Darius and his bodyguard Alexander was finally brought down by Takabara javelins and the Macedonians were defeated.  A lesson for future games is to focus the companions' power where it counts.  

My Thessalians were my newest unit and their inexperience showed in the game.  Hopefully they will improve next time.

Sadly my phone battery died after just four game photos but we'll definitely be trying this again. 


2 comments:

  1. The important thing was the Macedonians were defeated

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