Got an email from WillB. suggesting he was surprisingly available on Saturday evening and wanted a game, preferably a Lion Rampant or of the ilk. Sure, always up for a game. A couple of the “Bonsor Regulars” would join us in a great game. If you have any sense of humour, you can delight in the herky jerkey action created by the activation procedure of these rules.
During the day I received good news about the long awaited miniatures order to complete the other side of the collection but I was still faced with having only the same ‘uniformed’ troops as all my early HYW are in dark red/dark blue. Hmm, perhaps a family 'civil war' then? Yes, perhaps between rivals for daddy’s empty holdings. With this premise, I came up with the scenario that indeed, the old Earl of Raineth passed away that previous month and his favourite orphaned nephew and his eldest son are contending for the earldom and both forces wear the Earl’s colours as a sign of legitimacy…..that covers the same uniform explanation!
After laying out the table in my usual random way, I thought of a way to enliven the game by adding ‘personal objectives’ for each player unknown to all which could then determine the overall winner. I created 7 cards for us four (thus even I could not know each player’s objective) and randomly distributed as were the troop selections. I could create four ‘retinues’ of 14 points for each of us, with two per side.
 |
| JimF's rather disciplined advance. Knights safely in the rear! |
I will not go into detail about the game as trying to describe a LR game is a very difficult thing. However I will mention that PeterM. has a notorious tendency to often fail his activations and in this game sat on his easily achieved objective for fully 4 turns, unable to activate to complete his task! He finally gave up and tried …note the emphasis…to move toward the action. WillB opposite him did not do much better as, while he did get his pigs*, activations did not come often to him.
 |
| WillB's first unsuccessful activation to capture the pigs. I guess I missed the shot of the first of the spearmen falling flat in the mud. Will would eventually get his objective. |
For activations, I was successful every time - a first for me! - but I think that got me in more trouble than not as Jim was clever enough to evade my charges. I was eventually eliminated. But really, hiding knights in the forest? Not very medieval, eh? But his response to my good-natured taunts were to say “ And what, get them killed?” He would eventually win the game by using them to burn down the barn, his personal objective. Arsonist bloody knights of all things! I may have prevented it by charging them with my archers a turn earlier but I thought they were just trying to hide again! Clever boy.
 |
| My retinue fighting Jim's yeomen. |
 |
| Peter's retinue still in the graveyard! His activation rolls are truly dreadful..... |
Quote of the game:
Me: “I am a fool”. PeterM: “That’s with an ‘e’ at the end, of course”
all miniatures painted by yours truly a few years ago.
*each personal objective, for example, searching the church for ancestral documents for use in legitimacy claims, usually needed a unit to be adjacent the building for two consecutive successful ‘move’ activations to complete the task. Other tasks such as taking the pigs or burning of the barn can be rationalized as taking advantage of the discord.
 |
| Jim's knights...hiding in the forest.... |