A handful of my gaming buddies and I got together at Knavecon recently. Amongst other things, our Dragons Rampaged.
My Shonen Knives defended the shores of Kuripu Jima against dwarfs, halflings and the forces of c-c-c-chaos, while becoming allies of convenience with slann (and some conquistadors) and desert orcs.
Orcs collide with conquistadors aligned with the amphibious Bizazza, in incongruous surroundings.
Roused from their unquiet and dishonourable slumber, the Yurei Raida charge to the defence of their homeland.
Tragically backlit like all of the best villains, even in a crappy photo Curis Chaos forces look the biz.
Dragon Rampant remains lots of fun and Im dying to play some more of it. Daniel Mersey (the author of Dragon Rampant, Lion Rampant, The Men Who Would Be Kings and some other games that I have yet to try) has become a big selling point for me.
Add in the small, succinct and inexpensive Osprey Games rulebooks and its a winning formula.
Although we played other games over the weekend, its samurai and their ilk that I have been inspired to get painting next. I would like to reinforce the Shonen Knives and having given Test of Honour a fair bit of consideration, I have to decided to take the plunge with that, along with PB2, so more samurai is a bit of a no-brainer.
But before all that, dinosaurs next time.
Filed under: After Action Report | Tagged: 2017, Dragon Rampant, Fantasy, Kuripu Jima, Shonen Knives |
sho3box 
Cool stuff – great to see the SKs getting a run out! I keep meaning to try Dragon Rampant… must get around to it soon!
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Its robust, simple and fun.
Something for BOYL this year perhaps Alex?
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Mmmm… maybe! I’ll keep it in mind
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Looks like fun. 🙂 Glad to see at least one dragon made it to the dance. As to the alliances . . . necessity sometimes makes strange bedfellows.
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Its only a little dragon, but it really is rather nice, so its good to get it on the table.
It was fun. DR is a solid way to push some figures around for a few dramatic hours.
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Lovely games here! I’m quite taken with Curis’s chaos warband.
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Curis is a skilled painter, with a great eye. Ill see if I can dig up some better photos of those guys for you Grover.
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How easy is DR to learn?
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Incredibly easy.
It’s a superbly-written system that’s surprisingly subtle in some of its rules’ effects.
Basically, all units have either 6 or 12 Strength Points (representing that many humans in the historical variants of the game, but in fantasy 12 SP can represent four trolls or two treemen or whatever feels appropriate).
Each unit rolls to activate either a Move, Shoot or Attack order (or occasionally something fancier), rolling 2D6 under a score of about 5+ to 7+ to pass, depending on how keen or competent that unit is at the intended action. A failed activation ends your turn; fortunately, you get to pick which order you activate.
In a Shoot or Attack, each unit rolls 12 dice (or 6 if they’re under half SP), with each dice that scores a certain value or higher being a hit. The number of hits you get, when compared to the target unit’s Armour, determines how many SP the target unit loses.
There’s other stuff as well, but the basic system is as simple as that. The unit types are generic but customisable with all kinds of special fantasy abilities (the units are largely lifted straight from the medieval Lion Rampant rules), and although there are sample army lists provided, the book encourages players not to be bound by them, but to just use whatever unit types and special rules feel most appropriate to the models they use.
(If you can’t tell, I -love- this game.)
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Also, it’s fast to play. At my wargaming group, the Dragon Rampant table is usually dismantling scenery and packing up armies by the time the 40k players reach the psychic phase of Turn 2.
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Richard has it covered Mark 🙂
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Great looking forces, must’ve been fun! Lovely to get a glance at your Kuripu Jima terrain again, it’s beautiful.
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I have bought myself a green mat to go with that terrain set. It looks more appropriate I think. I also have a few more items that I would like to add to it: bamboo groves, a small cemetery, a few road shrines etc.
Hopefully I get to them soon. You will hget an opportunity to game on them again soon regardless Mikko, all going to plan 🙂
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Looks like fun 😉
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Thanks Warburton, it was 🙂
I like painting and hobby, but I enjoy gaming too. Both are important to my enjoyment.
On top of that I need to have some decent people to game with and I am fortunate enough to have a number of people that consistently make me laugh to game with these days. Its great.
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Great photos, that’s what Sunday wargaming day dreams are made of!
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Thanks Subedai.
Its true too. A lot of the projects that I am getting to these days are bucket list items, involving a certain amount of achieving ideas and goals largely locked in about thirty years ago.
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I keep coming back to this post over and over to absorb the photos with my eyeballs. Every time the yurei raida ride out I pump my fist and egg them on. Run down that Slambo boys! Hoo-ha!
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The Yurei Raida were hard work to assemble and paint. They are also difficult to store and transport.
But it has been quite a while since I have enjoyed playing games with a unit as much as the Raidas.
I point their dead asses in a general direction and off they going, making their own decisions and, so far at least, ripping the heart out of the enemy with regularity.
Worth it.
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