With a slow rotation of games (telling me I have way too many armies/eras/‘projects’ already) we tend to forget the rules and spend quite a bit of the game asking ourselves “what happens now? The rule is?”
Trying to keep fresh on the Lion Rampant rules, I invited the guys over for a simple ‘refresher’ game. Not knowing the numbers of fellows I placed down terrain, said “you English over there, we French over here”, gave out personal objects randomly (I was the only one who gave THAT any thought) and went at it. No planning or battle strategy. Very medieval that.
The only real innovation came with my introduction of a deck of playing cards for initiative. As we had four players, each player was assigned a card suit from the deck. With each card of that suit drawn the player then could try to activate any of his units. If fail or activated, a marker is placed indicating that unit is done. Eventually, all the players units would have been used. Once that happens, all the markers are removed and should his suit card be drawn he once again can nominate any of the un-activated units to be diced for. Once the deck has been used up all players would have had an equal number of activations. Not necessarily on a consistent basis, but eventually at the end. We did have one player have five of his cards come up in a row (!) thus he was able to try to activate all his units one-after-another with one of the units doing this twice but with only 13 draws per player, it eventually evens out.
With this, rather than the I-go-you-go or heaven forbid the one fail you're out (per original rules), it creates more action and natural flow of the play. Of course this can be for any game to get away from predictable player sequence. Anyway it was agreed it did help with the play.
Pictures of the game. All figures are mine and painted by moi. (I was using my newly painted Dunkerque liveried types - in yellow and white with the bright blue dolphin and black on yellow shields) Historically note: Dunkirk/Dunkerque was not actually French but Flemish during this time of c.1350 - the time of the Battle of Crecy and the armour styles portrayed on the figures. D’oh. Didn't discover that tidbit until after painting them. Let’s over look that historical inaccuracy shall we…..
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| Dunkerque mixed yeomen militia (sheep optional) |
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| massed English archers |
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| Having achieved my 'personal objective' by burning the farmhouse, the yeomen will enter the battle. The 'shield' 'marker indicating that unit has rolled for activation and cannot be chosen until after all the players units have done so. |
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| Apparently this lad wanted to make sure the flames got it all. |
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my new straw fences using real pine fir needles! ....and lots of glue... |
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| and yet more English archers behind stone fences. The French really could not win this battle/game. |
