First Dragon Rampant Battle Report

The following is a description of the first game of Dragon Rampant I've played, thoughts and comments at the end:

Battle Report

Lord Catte deploys his line in typical fashion - the centre alternating blocks of pike and shot, with pistolier horsemen on the flanks. The general rides with his Cuirassier Lifeguard just behind the front lines.

Lord Catte and his Loyalists

Baron Von Trinksblüt orients his battle line obliquely, but in a similar fashion - a core of bony spearmen in the centre flanked by dire wolves, and a central reserve of ghouls and mounted wights. 

Baron von Trinksblüt and his Undead Legion

As dawn breaks, the lines manoeuvre for position. Not much occurs here, but for both armies sending their wings forward.

The Battle lines converge

The first major coup of the day is a series of devastating combats initiated by the Dire Wolves, who drive back their floppy-hatted opposition from the board. Catte is able to unleash his musketry in good order and blast the ghouls into flight in return.

Dire Wolves chase down the Pistoliers

Musket fire drives off the Ghouls

On the left flank, the Dire Wolves cause mayhem, ripping apart Pikeman and Musketeer alike, before finally slinking back to lick their wounds. The centre of the board becomes a charnel house, with musket-fire criss-crossing the main road killing the other Dire Wolves. 

Musketry showing its value

Lord Catte himself launches a charge to break the centre of the undead ranks, hewing down the Mounted Wights and a regiment of Skeleton warriors. He almost has the day, but his impetuousness is his undoing, and is lured into a pointless charge off to the right flank.

Lord Catte wild charges into some lowly Skeletons

While he is occupied, the Necromancer Trinksblüt summons another unit of Mounted Wights and sends them crashing into the fragile human infantry line. Everything is in the balance: Catte's forces hounded on the left by Wolves, pinned in the centre by Wights, and on the right are still bogged down by the press of rotten wood and bones. 

A critical point in the battle

Trinksblüt pulls out a major final coup de grace by sending arcs of green lightning from his fingertips into the Lifeguard Cuirassiers, burning their souls out in arcs of eldritch power.  At the sight of their general reduced to a lifeless blackened husk, the rest of the Humans rout from the field, no doubt christened 'Catte's Folly'

Trinksblut's Lightning Blast

Notes, Thoughts and Comments:

Command and Control - I played this battle with both commanders having the 'Commanding' trait, which grants a reroll of a failed action for them within 12", and always permitted the first action to succeed. In some cases this still meant that an army only got off one activation each turn, but permitted slightly more tactical nuance than just hoping the roll goes your way.

Summoning - I bought the 'Summoner' spell for the Baron, but neglected to leave any of my units off-board. As a result I granted him the additional unit of Mounted Wights (once the original was destroyed) as a freebie - roughly equivalent in points cost. They didn't form a crucial part of the battle at all, so either way I think that was fair.

Rules Familiarity - This was my first go at the Dragon Rampant rules, but I have played and enjoyed The Pikeman's Lament a couple of times and it was all familiar ground. One thing I thought was conspicuous in its absence in DR was the snakeyes/boxcars special results from the order rolls in TPL. I wonder if this is because the matchups in TPL are fairly predictable and so randomness is desirable to keep the game interesting?

No Rank and Flank? - I appreciate that the ability to flank your opponent for a decisive advantage is a key component of most pre-Industrial Age wargames and this rules system does not have a mechanism for it. I do not yet feel it is weaker for it, however: the different target numbers to execute attack orders, and separate attack/defence values already has you utilise units differently, and in some cases you can sacrifice movement/shooting to act more defensively (i.e. Light/Heavy Foot can form a Wall of Spears: no movement, but +1 armour when attacked)

Next up - Warmaster: Revolutions

Mayhem! Battle Report

Well after much prevarication, this morning I managed to get a non-trivial force of undead painted up and so today I decided to finally give Mayhem by Brent Spivey a proper go of it, pitting the Renaissance Englishmen up against the Forces of Undeath:

Vampirella's Undead Horde

 

Lord President Catte and his Retinue

The first problem (Spoiler alert: OF MANY) is that there are no example army lists included in the book, you are thrown immediately into the minutiae of game mechanisms. The solution is to download a BattleScribe file from WargamesVault and import that and figure the app out. I felt like given the Rulebook is a PDF (either as-is or Print-on-Demand) the extra cost for one page of typical units wouldn't have gone amiss. I know in theory everyone is a unique and special snowflake and wants to make their Elves 'just so', but what a hurdle get anything on the table! 

The game is IGO/UGO, with a roll for command points at the start of each player's turn. Command points can be spent on various actions which get progressively more costly the more challenging they are, or if the same unit is being ordered more than once. 

The main differentiator is the 'VERSUS' system, which means each stat (three for units, two for weapons) is actually a dice type and you can choose to take the midpoint (default) or roll the actual dice to chance getting a higher result at the risk of rolling lower (danger). 

This reared its head early in my game, with Vampirella's pet Dire Wolves getting a turn 2 charge by rolling a 10 for the distance:

Dire Wolves snack on some Pistoliers

Vampirella set up the skeleton warriors with a standing order to advance every turn, but with a default move of just 3" even on this 3x3' board they didn't make it into combat before the end of the game. Where's Vanhel when you need him? Vampirella' game plan was to take out the Pistoliers and horsemen on either flank with the Direwolves, using the skeletons as a .. bone? shield for the mounted Wights.

Lord Catte was planning a refused flank, dealing with the wights by the church first, then presenting an array of firepower against the oncoming foe.

With rolls for command points, and then (mostly) rolls for movement distances, the game took a long time to develop.  The following aerial shot is in the first half, but not much changed until the end:

The Dire Wolves eye up their next snack, while everyone else stands around dithering

The rules are written in a conversational manner and spread throughout the book, and there is a real lack of clarity. For example:

'Move to Engagement' is a unit moving their MOV distance (either default or danger) into an enemy, when it is then 'able to initiate a melee' which costs 1CP.

'Initiate a Melee' is another action costing 1CP - so does a unit that moves to engagement get this for free, or have to pay for it? If they have to pay for it does it count as a second action (and thus cost double for a total of 1+2CP)

'Charge' is the same as 'Move to Engagement' but you can instead roll two danger dice and pick the highest - getting a free Impact hit if you have the rule for it - but no more clarity on the melee afterwards either. 

'Advance' is the same as 'Move to Engagement' but you can do it with multiple units that are in Base to Base contact. 

I may be a joyless grog but surely there is a more straight forward way to describe this?

So I guess that's that?

The end of the game is when one side has either a) lost a general, or b) lost half their units. Unit loss in this game is a 'two strikes and you're out' affair -  a unit becomes disordered if its armour is beaten by a ranged attack, or if it's beaten in combat. Once a unit is disordered any further harm kills it outright - unless a critical hit is rolled which insta-kills it.

In the above photograph, the Mounted Wights had charged the white musketeers, who bravely defended themselves and pinned the undead horsemen down - and the white pikemen were able to flank charge. Their spears are hard counters against cavalry (+2 dice types) and due to charging and hitting in the flank they roll 3 times and pick the highest. Unfortunately, the undead rolled a 1 - which kills the pikemen regardless and that's half of the human force killed, so the game is over.

The rulebook contains rules for Monstrous creatures, Behemoths, more War Machines, Sieges, Magic, etc. and I hate to be that guy who writes off a system after one game - but unless someone has a really compelling argument I think the really rubbish 'print on demand' rulebook is going in the bin. Next up: Dragon Rampant.