Dux Rampant

Since 2012 I have been steadily painting two forces for Dux Brittaniarum, I am at the stage where I just have three units and four leader figures to paint up. I am of course getting quite keen to use the figures in anger.

During the same period I have flirted with the late medieval period, I like the the Wars of the Roses period and the age of the the Condottiere in Italy. I have jumped from painting figures for each, even painted some up has Burgundians, but with all my other periods that I have on the go I could never envisage ever painting up two armies in which ever war I chose, so I have planned to put the figures on EBay several times, my hand was stayed with the arrival of Lion Rampant and the favourable reviews and various battle reports on the web. I recently succumbed and bought a copy, to kick start my Medieval painting.

Being keen to try the rules out, and scratch the itch of wanting to use my figures painted for Dux Brit, I thought I could use the figures for Lion Rampant, I know the units are smaller but has the figures fight in groups and not individually in the rules, I could track the figure loss using dice.

I know that the author has an article for using Lion Rampart in the Dark Age setting in the May issue of Wargames Illustrated, (as an aside, good luck to Dan on taking over ownership of the mag, I am sure it will go from strength to strength with him at the helm). In the meantime I searched the Dux Rampant Forum for some suitable adaptations and came across these
The stage was set for the first outing of my Dark Age figures and a game of Lion Rampant, the result is detailed below.

The Hamlet Of Hazel Slade, The Inhabitants Have Fled To The Forest

The Saxon War Leader, Bikka ( a man of dubious birth) sent two groups of his duguth to the left across the slight rise. Anticipating this the British Leader, Ambrosious Baldinus ( a man of royal birth) sent his three groups of milites to counter them, meanwhile he sent his archers ahead into the hamlet, following up behind with his group of companions. Bikka advanced on the hamlet with his gedricht, supported on his left by a group of duguth and his left by a group of archers.
The British archers took up position in the centre of the hamlet while Baldinus moved up, they fired on the advancing Bikka and his men to little effect, moving to the left to let Baldinus take up position. Here they engaged their Saxon counterparts with little success, their counterparts in their turn doing much more damage which would eventually see them quit the field.
The main action took place on the flank, here the Brits took the fight to the Saxons initially. Although they caused one Saxon group to retreat they were unable to take advantage due to the group on Bikka's left, the flank gradually developed into a stand off, the Brits forming shieldwalls which the Saxons were unable to break up. This did however free up the group of duguth on Bikka's flank to aid him in his assault on the hamlet, Baldinus did have the upper hand at first, but fighting two opponents even in cover eventually told. Seeing the success of Bikka in the centre one of the duguth groups on the flank again attacked the shieldwall but were beaten back and in the subsequent rally test were forced to quit the field. This did not help the British cause has Baldinus and men also broke, this forced the rest of the British force to test leaving only one unit on the table, Bikka and his raiders took control of Hazel Slade.
Some pics of the fight are below

Bikka  Leads His Hearthguard Forward To Attack

British Milites Guard The Flank 

Ambrosious Baldinus Prepares His Companions To Defend The Hamlet



We really enjoyed our first game, we did not include any leader skills to try and keep things simple, the rule mechanisms are quite straight forward however, this enables you to concentrate on what your opponent is doing and how you can counter his threats,  I look forward to receiving my copy of WI in the next few days to see Dan Mersey's "official" mods for the period and plan our next game.

TTFN