Lion Rampant in the Wars of the Roses.

 Wars of the Roses - Bloodfeud!

For today's game of Lion Rampant we had 4 warbands fighting a Bloodfeud (scenario 16). Ian was using his Yorkists led by Richard of Gloucester aided by Charlie and his warband commanded by the Duke of York. With Nigel unable to come I ran two warbands, one led by Trollope and the other led by Clifford. We rolled randomly for leader traits and all got good ones. The aim of the game was to kill one named commander from the opposing force.  In secret the Yorkists wrote down Trollope's name whilst I chose Richard Duke of Gloucester, the opposition did not know who was the target. To make things even more random fun we put 2 white dice and two red dice in a bag and drew them out one at a time to decide the order of play. For example, if a red dice was drawn I could activate either of my warbands; this made for some exciting dice draws. 

I had set up quite a busy table terrain wise which made for some tricky moves clambering over hedges and fences. 

Deployment: Yorkists on the right, Lancastrians to the left. 

The Duke of York and his men.

The Duke of Gloucester (ignore the flags). 

Clifford

Trollope

York sends some archers through the farm. 

Clifford's skirmishers chase of their opposing skirmishers.  

Clifford leads his mounted knights on a rampage.

Clifford managed to counter charge through two units of heavy cavalry then crashed into Gloucester's knights, defeated them  and then slew Gloucester with a 'Lucky Blow'. This was an amazing series of melees and with Gloucester dead the Lancastrian objective was achieved quite early in the game. 

A view across the battlefield. It was fairly quiet at this end of the table where York was advancing on Trollope but Trollope was not doing too well with his activations. 

The Duke of Gloucester's leaderless knights about to try and finish off Clifford 

(he has only 2 figures left). 

Clifford meets his end 

(but still won the man of the match award for his amazing charge through enemy lines). 

And of course I forgot to take any more photos thus missing the challenge between Trollope and York. Trollope was the main Yorkist target and when the fight turned against York he challenged Trollope to a duel. With a great dice throw Trollope won with 2 hits scored compared to Yorks one. By now the Yorkists had only 4 units left, three of which were battered. Clifford may have died eventually but his heroic charge crippled Gloucester's warband and killed the man himself. 

This was a fun game with some really exciting moments and the random activation of warbands by pulling the coloured dice from a bag added to the chaos. It was so much fun that we play again next week.