LION RAMPANT... A WEE SCUFFLE ON THE BORDER!

 

With the Second Edition of Lion Rampant due out next week, I thought it was about time I had a game with the First Edition. I'm currently working on a Scottish retinue for the period of Henry II's Civil War of 1174 and have three units completed and ready for battle. With King Henry embroiled in a war against his wife and sons, King William the Lion of Scotland inevitably saw an opportunity to press his claims to sovereignty of Northumberland, Cumberland and any other bits of northern England he could get his hands on. King William managed to get himself captured at Alnwick in 1174, so I decided to completely ignore him and build my retinue around one of his commanders, Donnchad, Earl of Fife instead.

With only three Scottish units to choose from, building Fife's retinue didn't take much thinking about.

The Earl and his men-at-arms took up position on the right of the Scottish line, with the Bidowers on the opposite flank. In the middle, with a ploughed, stone walled, field for cover, was a unit of Lowland Spearmen (Foot Serjeants), who advanced quickly to take up a defensive position facing their English counterparts. I don't think I would have done anything differently but, had I read the rules a bit more thoroughly, I would have realised that the Serjeants wouldn't be able to form 'Schiltron' in the rough terrain of the ploughed field! However, even without the ability to form 'Schiltron', the Serjeants would have their Armour Value increased by 1 for defending the stone wall.

I gave the English three units to face the Scots, although they did have a greater points value than their opponents. On the left of the English line, facing the Earl, was a unit of Mixed Weapon Yeomen; equipping Yeomen in this way, gives them the option of using bows to hit an opponent from a distance, but increases their cost by an extra two points and prevents them from using the 'Schiltron' formation. Along side the Yeomen was Sir William de Stuteville and his loyal Men-at-Arms.

English Yeomen with Mixed Weapons.

The Yeomen and their bows proved to be a real nuisance, causing casualties in the ranks of the Scottish Men-at-Arms and then the Lowland Spearmen.

The opposing Men-at-Arms clashed early on in the encounter, with the Earl charging into Sir William's men who, being dismounted, were unable to counter the charge.

Both sides scored enough hits to remove one casualty, although the charging Scots almost had enough hits to take a second English knight out of the action. From this point onwards, the Scottish Men-at-Arms were pushed back and came under fire from the English Yeomen.

It took a while for the English Serjeants to get going, but they began a steady advance on the Scots defending the walled field. 

By the time the Serjeants clashed over the wall, the English had taken casualties from the Scottish Bidowers on their right but, even though they made two attempts to dislodge the Scots, they were pushed back with mounting casualties. Eventually, the English Serjeants were forced to switch their attack towards the Bidowers... a move which was to cost them, and the English Retinue, dearly, as the Bidowers gradually inflicted so many casualties that the spearmen broke and fled!

With the loss of his Serjeants, Sir William decided that it was time to concede the field to his opponent and return to the fight another day.

This was only a very small encounter, which took about an hour and a half to fight, but it has left me keen and eager to get the rest of my Scots painted and get some more Lion Rampant battles fought. I played the rules to the letter and experienced the horror of failing an Activation and having that turn's plans dashed to pieces! The 3" separation rule will be very difficult to maintain on my small table, so I'm already thinking of a plan to get a bigger playing surface for future battles. All in all, I have to say that Lion Rampant is going to be at the forefront of my gaming for some time to come; it's easy to learn the basic rules (I did need to refer to the book on a couple of occasions) and I really enjoyed the way the Activation system makes you think about the order in which you attempt to do things or, what is going to befall your forces when that Activation roll fails!

It's going to be a little while before the rest of my Scots are ready, but I can't wait to get the Earl of Fife and Sir William back on the table top for more Lion Rampant with the 2nd edition of the rules. 

LION RAMPANT... A 12th CENTURY SCOTTISH RETINUE.

With the Second Edition of the Osprey Wargames rules, Lion Rampant, due out any time now, I started thinking about upgrading my Henry II period one-to-one skirmish games to something on a little larger scale. Creating an English retinue for Lion Rampant simply involved combining the small units I'd already painted into larger ones as set out in the rules.

Donnchad, The Earl of Fife

The opposition, however, needs a bit more thinking about. What I really wanted to do was field a Scots Retinue of the time of William the Lion, to fit in with the English host, now to be commanded by Robert de Stuteville, who never quite made it onto the table top for the battles in King Henry's War. Quite understandably, if you opt for William Wallace or Ken Bruce and his spiders and the 'War of Scottish Independence', there are loads of figures around to build your retinue out of. However, you'll struggle to find anything specifically manufactured for the period from around the Battle of the Standard to the later 12th century and information about what they should look like is very thin on the ground!

The only useful information I can find is from two books I have on my bookshelf, both of which I bought way back in the early 1980s, but I'm happy to base my research on what I have to facilitate getting a retinue painted and onto the table top.

My force is to be lead by Donnchad, the Earl of Fife and I have assumed that he and his Men-at-Arms would be similar to those I've painted up for the English retinue. Four of the six figure unit are simply re-purposed from the figures I painted for King Henry's War, with another, slightly less well armoured, which I painted as a character returned from the Holy Land and, for the last, I decided to risk using a Footsore Pictish armoured figure, as a Highlands or Isles character who, through familial links with the Earl, has found himself joining in on this raid over the border, to secure Northumberland for the Scottish crown! The Earl's standard bearer is the figure I used as Hugo Flambard, with a bit of drilling out to accommodate the standard and a new left arm to wield that mighty blade... what a hero!

Again, I have assumed that the better quality members of the Earl's household retainers, would be similar to those in the English host. These are to be classed as Foot Serjeants but, according to my two scant sources, they need to be equipped with a longer spear than the Englishmen. In Phil Barker's army lists for WRG's 6th Edition Ancient Rules(!), Scots Lowland Yeomen are equipped with LTS (Long Thrusting Spear), while the equivalent in the Norman English list have JLS (Javelin Light Spear); the implication being that the Scots did indeed wield a longer weapon. My other source, Ian Heath's Armies of the Feudal Ages, says "the main weapon of the Scots infantryman was the long spear, probably about 12 feet in length" and he adds that at "the Battle of the Standard, the 'naked' Scots are described as carrying 'lances of extraordinary length'". The figures I am using for the Foot Serjeants are, like the English, Fireforge spearmen but I am lopping off the spears they have, drilling out a suitable hole and 

fitting some longer metal spears to equip them as 

described by Mr. Heath. He also goes on to say, "The shield, which gave its name to the schiltron, was probably fairly small. Those carried at the Standard are described as “targes” of 'barkened' bull’s hide”. A picture of a 'Lowland Spearman' in the Osprey "Scottish and Welsh Wars" shows a small wooden shield, similar to some that I have from Footsore Miniatures, so those will be pressed into service.

Other descriptions I've read of the Battle of the Standard are less than complimentary on the quality of armour worn by the Scots. Indeed, it appears that the average Scot at the battle hardly wore anything at all, so I've decided that, even if the term "naked" refers to a lack of armour rather than clothing, the majority of the spear armed foot soldiers ought to be classed as Foot Yeomen, and not Serjeants. For these figures I had, tucked away in a cupboard, a box of Gripping Beast Pict infantry and they seem to fit the bill for the more lowly members of the retinue. Again, the plastic spear is replaced with a longer metal one and more Footsore shields complete the ensemble. The Foot Yeomen have the ability to form "Schiltron", which leaves them immobile, but better protected against the enemy onslaught.

I'm keen to include a unit of "Fierce Foot" in my Scots retinue and the Galwegians seem to be ideal candidates to play this role. At the Battle of the Standard, one suggested reason behind the Scottish defeat was that the Galwegian warriors refused to participate unless they had the honour of leading the assault and charge headlong into the opposing ranks of English spearmen. Being "unclothed and remarkable for much baldness", they were cut down in droves by the English archers. Wargames Atlantic's Irish and some of the Victrix Germans fit nicely into the category of "unclothed and remarkable for much baldness", so they, along with some more Footsore Picts, will play the role of the Galwegians in Fife's retinue! To be fair, it appears that the Galwegians did initially drive the English back and continued to attack even when they were "bristling all round with arrows"! So far, I've only completed a couple of the figures for this unit and, as you can see, they vary considerably in appearance but, hopefully, their "fierceness" will be the quality which draws them together as a group!

Finally, the Scottish retinue of the later 12th century requires a unit of Bidowers. For these, I have some Footsore Miniatures' Pictish javelinmen which, I think, will fit the bill quite nicely. As Bidowers are described as a fairly generic missile type in the rules, it seems appropriate to equip them with a mixture of missile weapons, so they wield javelins, slings and I've even managed to fit a crossbow in there as well!

So far, I've been painting parts of units, rather than working through a whole unit at a time, to get an idea of how each group might work. Next job then, is to finish off each unit in turn and then get the Retinue onto the table top, hopefully, just in time for the arrival of the new edition of Lion Rampant!