Lion Dormant

Dormant : Asleep, or Dreaming

Earlier in the month I mentioned that I would be starting a new project for this year. The idea originated as a group project, something along the lines of the old Tale of 4 Gamers fantasy army project. In our case, a Tale4Nerds, we are each collecting and painting a different medieval retinue to use in the game Lion Rampant. This is the set of medieval skirmish rules that has become very much the zeitgeist on many a forum. We have set ourselves a target of one unit per month. As most retinues contain just 5 or 6 units, we should all be finished by summer.

As soon as we had decided on our system, I ordered a copy of the rulebook and it finally arrived last week. It's typical of the recent releases by Osprey Wargames - a slim paperback, 64 pages long with plenty of colour photos of minis and some lovely Osprey historical artwork. There's a couple of page spreads below to illustrate this.

I have skimmed through the rules. They are fairly abstracted, skirmish style gaming with a command friction overlay. My first impression is that the mechanics are elegant and simple, so games should roll along quickly with barely a glance at the rulebook, after a couple of practise sessions. I do have mixed feelings about command friction rules, there is a chance that a player can end up missing out on the fun if he rolls poorly for his activations. But overall I am optimistic about the game and I am especially looking forward to trying out the twelve scenarios. The Lion is not yet rampant, but he's certainly rousing from his winter slumber.