Lion Rampant English versus Islemen

 Des came over for a game and for a change we decided to have a game of Lion Rampant first edition as we haven't played it in an age , we used two retinues from the rulebook, later English and Islesmen and the scenario defend the undefenderbal so we used a church as the objective, essentially the attacker, starting from the east has to touch the objective, the defender has to prevent this or reduce the attacking force below 50%. I took the Islesmen made up of my gallowglass and kern and then filled out with Picts, they're about a millennia out of date but at least they're from the right area and fulfil the criteria of hairy blokes with spears, shields  and not much armour, fierce foot, three units, one unit of archers and two of men at arms, that was my retinue and I was the attacker, Des had a unit of men at arms a unit of expert foot sergeants and two of expert archers. He could have two units at the church , the rest had to travel from the western side of the table, so he placed both expert archer units by the church and got the first go.

The activation element is both the fun and frustrating part of Lion Rampant, fun when you're opponent fails frustrating when you do, my dice rolling wasn't terribly good and Des's was decent so I wasn't able to descend on him mob handed before reinforcements arrived, in fact all I  managed to do was get a unit of fierce foot isolated in front of the church having taken hits even under cover of the hedge, I figured it I was lucky I'd take out the archer unit hit the church, game over, needless to say I wasn't lucky and my underarmoured unit was anhihilated by two units of expert archers while his armoured allies got closer, still it kept his archers busy while I managed to move the archers and another unit of fierce foot into the woods on my right flank, another unit of fierce foot behind the left flank hedge and started moving my men at arms forward.  Des managed to get his big unit of sergeants in front of the church, his men at arms on his right flank and his archers killed one of my archers. On my turn I managed to charge his expert archers on my left flank and his expert archers on my right, both with fierce foot wild charges, both archers ended up battered, unfortunately so did my left flank unit Des charged my first men at arms unit with his expert sergeants and was repulsed and battered . I charged my men at arms into his battered sergeants and eliminated them and the fierce foot hit the expert archers up against the church, battered them and won the game. Definitely see sawed throughout the game and kept our interest, we're planning some more of these games and I've dragged out some dark age types to add to the painting queue!

All the best 

Iain