Showing posts with label Mersey Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mersey Books. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Osprey Publishing & Mersey Books - Dragon Rampant Announcement

Osprey Publishing and Mersey Books announcedDragon Rampant, a Fantasy version of Lion Rampant:

I'm very pleased to announce that Osprey will be publishing a fantasy variant of Lion Rampant in December 2015 as part of the Osprey Wargame Series. It's called Dragon Rampant.
I've realised that plenty of gamers have been using Lion Rampant for fantasy games as well as or instead of the medieval games they were written for, so we thought it would be a nice idea to rework the rules specifically for this setting.
More info will come at a later date but here are a couple of important pointers for now:

1) The core rules remain the same. The actual battle rules have not really changed (apart from some of the terminology), and to keep this as up front as possible my draft - and hopefully the final version - has pulled them into a section clearly marked as such. Really, if you've played Lion Rampant, you probably don't need to read this (smallish) section of the book.
2) There are some new troop types that better fit the fantasy setting, but any Retinue you built for Lion Rampant should be easy to transport to a fantasy world. The new troop types remain in line with my original Lion Rampant aims: simplicity, streamlining, and stereotypes.
3) There are new rules for building your Retinue to allow for single or reduced model units (representing heroes, dragons, wizards, trolls, and other pure fantasy elements). This throws open all sorts of opportunities for using/collecting natty little models that you want but can't build a whole army around.
4) Rules for magic, larger creatures, the undead, flyers, and other fantasy elements are presented as an additional section to the battle rules, clearly showing how to include them in your games. They're of a similar level of complexity to the core rules.
5) There's plenty of advice on fitting your chosen models into the troop types available, and a section of Retinues dedicated to the common troop types in most of the popular fantasy races.
6) There are some new scenarios and boasts!

This is a bit of a first for me, as in the past, I've enjoyed creating an entirely new experience and set of rules for every project I've worked on: I've not been that interested in reworking the same mechanisms for different periods of warfare as I try to pull out a combination of game mechanics that suit the period I'm writing about. But in the case of Dragon Rampant, it seemed crazy to reinvent the wheel - as so much fantasy warfare is based on the medieval period - so instead I've concentrated on how best to create the extra elements of 'fantasy' without destroying the balance of the game.
Link: Mersey Books