The start of something MEDIEVAL!!!!

As I stated in my previous post, expect to see more of Lion Rampant!

Force building in this game is easy. A pretty big game is 24 points. 6 point can get you 6 heavy cavalry in one unit, or 6 heavy infantry in one unit. 4 points can get you 12 light infantry in a unit, etc. There are a variety of unit types you can choose from and then make your army your own. However, you cannot have more than 4 units of one type, or 12 points worth, whichever is lower. This means you cant have more than two units of mounted men at arms (your knights) as they will both cost a total of 12 points.

That said, I have the Perry miniatures mounted men at arms plastic box set. You can make 12 mounted men at arms with this set. Perfect! 12 points right there! A good fun started force out of one box.

I must say I am EXTREMELY impressed with these models! They are beautifully detailed and very realistic looking. I love them! below you will see some crappy pictures I took with my phone of the sprues. I apologize for how bad they are. I had not intended to post anything at the time and had just sent them to a friend. I have now put them all together and must say they look damn good! A good pic of them all assembled to come soon.

Hopefully I will get my first small game of this in this weekend after a Bolt Action tournament I am running. I will post about that later.

 

There are a tons of choices. As you will see later, I decided to only make my squad leaders have the armored horses, the rest do not. You also have a good variety of weapons, including lances, spears, swords, hammers, maces and axes.

I thought the models of the horse were just fantastic! Sometimes you get models where the horses just look God awful! Also, here is a random picture of the back of the box showing how the figures can be put together.

The box also came with a nice information pamphlet about how cavalry were used during that period. This pamphlet also included cut out flags of a different variety if you wished to use them.

There is a tad bit of negative though. The bases that come with the minis. There aren't enough to make 12 individual models! This doesnt make sense as the box makes 12 cavalry men.

So, as you can see, you only have enough individual bases for 8 minis. However, yet again, the box comes with 12! Can you tell this irritates me? ugh! So, if you buy this, buy separate bases as well. Now I have to figure out where to get some good ones.

Its been awhile. How are things?

No point in explaining where Ive been, yadda yadda. Lets get to the meat.

In the last couple years I have discovered a few games, namely Malifaux, Bolt Action, Saga and Infinity.

I played a bit of Malifaux, even played in a tournament in Houston and got third place! It just kind of died of though. I think this was due to the fact they released their second edition of rules before they had all the minis ready. Yea. Didnt sound too smart in my book. I had the Lucius box set and that is the only leader I wanted to play. Well, he still isnt out. So, people like me, never got back into the game after second edition. I have the rulebook and its great! I think its better than first edition. However, still no minis............

Saga is a very fun game. I love the dark ages period of history. And who doesn't love vikings!!! The fun unique gameplay of saga are the battleboards. You roll special faction dice and place them on the battleboard to choose what kind of actions you want to take. The gimmick is, however, you have to buy a set of the dice and they are expensive as heck!!!

I had infinity before but got overwhelmed with how complicated it seemed. However, now with the new edition of rules soon to come out I am looking at getting back into it. They have been re-releasing their models and MAN DO THEY LOOK GOOD!!! I got a force of the new Morat models and have played a couple demo games. This really is a great game.

Now Bolt Action has become my game of choice. Expect to see some posts on this to come. If you aren't familiar with this game it is a WW2 skirmish based game. The neat concept that I love is the random activation. Basically you have special dice for your army (much cheaper than Saga's dice). Each of your units has a dice. You place all of yours and your opponent's in a bag. For a turn you randomly draw a dice. If your side's is drawn you then choose a unit to activate with it. You continue until all dice have been drawn and put them back into the back to start the next turn. This really adds some excitement and "fog of war" into the game as you never know who is going to activate. I have become a "Sarge" with Warlord Games (creator of Bolt Action). I am a volunteer to promote and run events of the game. I have run my first tournament at my local game store to much success. It has really blown up there now and we have a large community playing it. I am pretty excited about that! Currently I have a German and British force. I would highly recommend you watch Beasts of War demo video of the game here! It is what ended up getting me into it.

A new game I have discovered is Lion Rampant, which is published by Osprey Wargames (yes they do wargames now)! This game has seriously caught my eye! It is a skirmish game based in the medieval period. This could potentially be the Saga killer! I seriously think the rules seem superior. The neat concept from this game is giving order. Basically you choose a unit, say serfs, and give them a order to, say, attack. Well for them you roll two dice and have to get a 7 or better to attack (they arent the best at attacking as they are serfs afterall). If you succeed then they move in and attack, if you fail then your turn is OVER!!!! Yikes, really makes you plan out how to activate units and throws in a little unknown. I still prefer Bolt Action's means of random activation, but this is still fun. And that is how this game seems, fun. The author said this about it:
"Games about knights should be fun! The emphasis is on a playable medieval -themed game rather than an over-detailed simulation of medieval warfare."
Its an easy game to pick up, quick to learn and play, and tactical as well. There isnt much to find on the net concerning this game (batreps, etc). Expect more to come from me.