Christmas Gaming Part 1

The Christmas period has seen a positive feast of games here at Stately Counterpane Manor.

On Friday Jamie and I had our first game of Lion Rampant Late Roman Style.  I'd lent my copy of Lion Rampant to Andy so we ended up playing a scenario from the Dragon Rampant rule book. I played the Bacaudae and had to get as many units as possible to the far end of the table.

Jamie's Roman forces were split between both side edges of the table and had to try and stop me.

On my right Jamie had a unit of legionaries backed up by Auxilia archers and skirmishers (below).

On my left I faced Alan cavalry and more Auxilia, this time with spears.

I had to deploy spread out along my baseline.  From left (top of the picture below) to right I had units of skirmishers, bacaudae horsemen, bacaudae infantry (two units, classed as auxiliaries), and the mercenary Sarmatian cataphracts.

In something of a first for our games of Lion Rampant, the first turn saw all of the units on both sides managing to activate. Jamie went first and moved all of his units towards mine.

My skirmishers caused a casualty to the Alans and I then threw my horsemen in to try and finish them off.  This proved to be a disaster.  Pretty soon I was down to just two figures in the mounted unit although I had killed two Alans.

On the opposite flank I threw the Sarmatians forward to take on the legionaries.

Again things didn't go well. Despite their heavy armour the Sarmatians came off second best in the melee and were forced to withdraw.  A storm of arrows from the auxiliary archers then reduced them to a single figure....

On the bonus side, though, I had managed to reduce the spear-armed auxiliaries on my left to "battered" status.  

This allowed my two main units of bacaudae auxiliaries to push through in the centre and make for the far end of the table.  With my skirmishers having dealt with the Alans, Jamie had nothing fast enough to catch those two units so the result would come down to whether I could also extricate either my skirmishers or the last of the horsemen.

Sadly I couldn't.  The Roman legionaries moved across to block their escape.

I was only able to get away the two units and we found that this gave us six points each and a well-enjoyed draw.  I like to think that my skirmishers would have melted into the countryside to rejoin the rebels at some future date.