RAGE in Leeds

I met up with Jamie in Leeds today for the latest Royal Armouries Gaming Event.  This one was focussed on the Hundred Years War.  It's not a period I've ever gamed before but Jamie's keen to recruit a couple of HYW Lion Rampant retinues.

Note, if you will, that he has finished his neither 10mm American Revolution armies nor his 28mm Ronin forces - he's a proper wargamer is Jamie.

The event takes place in a separate room on the fourth floor of the Armouries.  I had expected to find games spread throughout the galleries buy I suspect that on the whole this probably worked better as the concentration of games and gamers gave the room a nice buzz.

The first game that caught my eye was a small game (compared with their enormous Agincourt diorama two floors down) by the Perry brothers.  I took several, rather boring pictures of bits of the terrain I'll probably steal, but here are a few more dramatic ones.

I love the fortified manor house and the figures are gorgeous.  I shall be adding these pics to my file of terrain-making inspiration.

What do you think, though, of the dirt roads?  I have heard it suggested that the green strip down the centre of the road is an artefact of the age of the internal combustion engine and that medieval on roads it would have been trodden to mud by draft horses.  I'm thinking up replacing or improving my existing dirt roads.  Anyone know if I should flock the road centre lines or not?

Next up, is the Peterborough Wargames Society's 54mm game.

This was built by Mike Whittaker of Meeples and Miniatures fame and used the old Donald Featherstone Skirmish Wargames rules.  In true Featherstonian fashion, the bombard is built from cotton reels and balsa wood.

Speaking of Meeples, it was nice to meet and speak to Neil Shuck and Dave Luff, whose enthusiasm on the podcast has lured me into the world of Chain of Command.  I'm going to have to start working out the platoon organisations of the Andreivian Army in the 1920s in CoC format.

Probably the biggest game at the event (though I didn't see much action on the table) was this version of Agincourt by the Lance and Longbow society.  We met up with Will McNally from L&L who reported that he ran this game using Hail Caesar at Salute but I believe Impetus was, at least theoretically, in use this weekend.

Finally, the very friendly guys at the Harrogate club put on a game of Lion Rampant that I was very pleased to join in with.

Based on a doubling up of the Defending the Indefensible scenario in the Lion Rampant rule book, this scenario had a French sally threatening an English siege tower and bombard at Harfleur in 1415.

Playing two Lion Rampant retinues side by side worked very well as did using multi based figures and casualty count markers.  In the end we English triumphed by millimetres.  Literally; a French unit was 30mm away from capturing my bombard when action elsewhere caused a crucial fourth French unit to rout.
 
Our afternoon at RAGE (and lunch at Pizza Express over the way) was most enjoyable.  I shall certainly go again if they do another.