After what seems like forever, I finally got to push toy soldiers around and throw dice on Saturday night. My nephew is in town so he joined Ziggy and I for a game of Lion Rampant. Jason's in his early 20s and enjoys boardgames. It took no convincing for him to join Ziggy and me. I set up the same scenario I played back in July with Mark and Mike - Scenario 8, Sausages with Mustard, Spain vs Venice. Jason and I shared command of the Spanish attackers while Ziggy's Venetians defended. Forces are 45 points each, there are a total of four commands, two per side.
Our battlefield. Besides killing Italians, we were tasked with setting the three buildings aflame.
Early turn 1... Ziggy's mercenary Greatswords move out.
The first of many failures of mine. My light cavalry fail to evade Italian heavy cavalry. Los Jinetes are very quicky a memory. Yeah, failing an Evade is painful.
After a few turns, the battle lines form up in the center. Jason immediately gets to work trying to burn the buildings. We're also in the difficult position of pikes vs pikes and similar where it's really hard to get an advantage.
Thanks to a less than fortunate couter-charge, the Greatswords and Jason's heavy cavalry inadvertently meet in the woods and an ugly melee results in both units breaking. I'm not sure a failed counter-charge would have been worse. Is what it is.
Ah, a proper fight. Heavy cav vs. top-shelf halberdiers led by El Capitan con Corazon de Leon. Both units suffered mightily and ran away from each other.
After at least an hour of trying (and I did look at the metadata on the photographs to see how long it look), we finally get the flame to take on the library!
Into the home stretch... My commander and his halberdiers searching for that lost shaker of salt... Italian cavalry doing the same.
After more failure, finally the orphanage catches fire and burns on its own!
The game's conclusion... Jason's halberds ran off the greatswords who would never recover. The long-quiet Venetian crossbowmen shot up Jason's pikemen and ran them off. Ultimately, we failed our army morale check and retreated, but not before also forcing Ziggy's Italians to take a morale test as well! We'd managed to inflict some real damage late in the game. Not really sure how we made it a competitive battle because it felt like we just stood there and accepted a complete beatdown by the Italians the whole evening. I'll take it! We all had a good time and as always, looking forward to another game soon,. Be well!
Comments
Post a Comment