Lion Rampant 2nd Edition

Played a regular 24-point game of Lion Rampant in the first time in forever. Pitched Andrew's Byzantines against my motley band of Vikings and Lombards. This was just the 'Bloodbath' scenario which is straightforward but a little dull since it's just both sides trying to grind each other down. Still, it was a necessary refresher and learning game respectively and nice to not have to think to hard about the rules, meta or otherwise.

A turn or two in. The "raiders" army is advancing into the center.

Heavy infantry with warlord attached.

Byzantine horse archers.

Byzantine heavy cavalry measures a possible charge.

Byzantine heavy cavalry after a melee against raider heavy infantry.

The raider heavy cavalry tries to get into charge range - I should have been more aggressive early on getting entire force into relative charge range. Instead, one unit would give it a try and suffer concentrated fire from various Byzantine ranged units.

My Lombard archers out on a raiding adventure.

The Byzantines seemed to have the upper hand early on but things evened out and three unit of the raiders' army were still on table (12 pts) to the Romanlanders' two (eight points) so the win went to the former. We look forward to trying other scenarios that are not so grindy.

Oh and we played using the optional activation rule from the book where a failed activation does not end your turn. No real difference in play, I think (you can stillnot activate any units in your turn, with some bad dice luck), but it does feel less severe than a "one-and-done" failure ending your turn.