Tuesday night saw a trip to the Whitley Bay 3D Gamers Club in, well, Whitley Bay. I’m going to do my best to make it down there once a month this year! This visit was to try Dragon Rampant. I played Lion Rampant last year at Simon’s Newark bash (see this post) and really enjoyed it and it is to be the theme for Ayton 2017. But having eyed my lads model dragon for a couple of weeks with thoughts of working it into some medieval games I thought grabbing Dragon Rampant and giving it a go was worthwhile. So Karl L offered to run the game and supply myself and Alex R with some splendid orc types and undead respectively, while Callum arrived with some rat themed army and Andy K a werewolf themed one. I’m not too big on the old fantasy races etc. so feel free to correct! We worked out basic 24pt armies. My orcs were based around the sample in the DR book so I had two lots of Light Foot with short range missile weapons, two lots of bellicose foot with Shiny Armour and a leader and hangers on as Heavy Foot with offensive option. So quite hard hitting if I get in first! We basically bunged a bit of scenery down and set up in opposite corners and went at it!
I was closest to Alex’s undead horde so sent my Light Foot forward to await their arrival.
The orcs I was using were a rather eclectic and colourful lot borrowed from Karl. 
They had a lot of things shambling towards them!
Callum’s rather impressive rat things took quite a pummelling from the were-chaps. This was partly because for the first few turns we just went clockwise round the table for initiative and the were-chaps just kept hitting with no chance to get a strike back or avoid.
Despite their reputation my orcs formed orderly lines and waited!
After some rather impressive early activations (9/10 on turn 1!) the undead horde seemed to shuffle to a halt. I got a couple of shots at one unit and found that they were rather brittle with armour of 1.
I eventually moved the Light Foot aside and sent in the first of the heavy chaps who proceeded to hack their way through three units before grinding to a halt, exhausted and then dispersing. The next few turns saw the undead gradually whittled down (though not without loss) until only the leader remained…
A final bash between his heavies and mine saw the orcs victorious…
However, over the other side of the table the rat-chaps had been wiped out and the were-chaps were heading my way!
I lined up some Light Foot to face the first lot and against the odds they saw off three attacks but were a tad depleted at the end!
It then came down to a battle between my leader and, well, three of his units!
Despite a valiant defence they eventually cracked and ran away. Not helped by my previously decent dice starting to let me down.
The field was left to the creatures of the moon!
It was good fun! Half way through we started rolling initiative every turn which made things more interesting although by that time the damage had been done to Callum’s force. The rules work pretty well. We kept it pretty basic and for a first try didn’t make too many mistakes. Working out the actual casualties with reduced model units was sometimes a pain but I think once you have your list sorted and get used to it it will be fine. The undead were very brittle and I think need a little magic to help them out. There are some nice variations on Lion Rampant and I’m sure you could mix and match stuff with little problem.
On the night I picked up some old GW LOTR Orcs and Gondor types from Lawrence. I think these should paint up pretty quick (if I ever get chance) and I hope to use them for some little ‘imagination’ themed games late in the year.
All in all, a good night and thanks to Karl for pulling it all together and the chaps for a fun game. Looking forward to trying the rules again.
Good game!
Beware the lunar brethren!
Good AAR, I have eyed these rules before and its nice to see how they play!
Nice one Andy, obviously the full moon appeared before you could grab the victory. I’m sure you’ll have those GWs painted in no time..
Dave