The Baron's War

[levied troop]

FFoL - small skirmish, ‘sides’’ are small gangs, 1 character and 4/5 minions with maybe 4-6 sides. There isn’t a specific medieval version but it’s fairly simple to set one up using the base rules:
https://wiley-games.myshopify.com/colle ... oad-it-now
There’s also a new Bigger Battles variant that I’ve bought but haven’t used yet.

Lion Rampant - bigger battles, a retinue is around 6 units (6 or 12 figures per unit) and you can get away with 3 retinues a side without problem. The Osprey blurb suggests they are For ‘small’ games but I confess to being puzzled by that - unless they are used to bigger battles being 1,000 a side:
https://ospreypublishing.com/lion-rampa ... ming-rules
Fairly simple rules, quite fast play. One factor that seems to annoy people about them is that you can lose most of your turn if you fail certain critical rolls, but really that just means you need to select your units most likely to succeed first in the turn and save the weaker units for the end of the turn.


Footsore Baron’s War - haven’t tried them yet, but based on my experience of the Samurai rules they seemed to rely too much on luck (and this from a player that likes luck, chaos and frustration in his rulesets!). I think they tend to smaller games, a bit similar to FFoL.

Never Mind the Bannerets - haven’t even read these yet, but the WotR original ‘Billhooks’ came free with WI and my one test game seemed to work well. Bigger battles, along the lines of Lion Rampant, they do seem to have become quite popular quite quickly and are getting nicely supported. Unit sizes around 8 mounted, 12 foot.
https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/nev ... billhooks/

And Cry Havoc was a brilliant little system, 1 man = 1 figure, just a handful of figures a side with some nice map-based terrain to fight over. It would get you into the period/game very quickly. I can’t remember if I’ve still got mine or it went in the big sale - must go down into the lower basement and see if it’s still there.

[valleyboy]

Thanks for going to so much trouble. I might add a few of them to my rules collection!

[valleyboy]

Have done abut more thinking and wondering about pitting Llewelyn Fawr against King John

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

Is that Jemima's dad?

[valleyboy]

I wonder if I wrote to the nice man at Flags of War and asked him of he'd consider doing shield transfers for Llewelyn Fawr as it would be a bugger to paint https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... _the_Great

Apart from VVV I don't know of anyone doing shield transfers that could be used. LBMS don't seem to have anything suitable

[valleyboy]

Is that Jemima's dad?

Fraid not - everyone knows that on account of the fact that RMD is a fekkin useless ....stard :o

[valleyboy]

Just more thoughts on this
Are you going to be painting both foot and mounted versions of knights for non characters or leaders?

[Jeremy]

I hope to

[levied troop]

Probably. Maybe. Let’s see how I feel on the day.
Now dabbling with DBA as a ruleset. Oh, the horror

[Paul]

Footsore Baron’s War - haven’t tried them yet, but based on my experience of the Samurai rules they seemed to rely too much on luck (and this from a player that likes luck, chaos and frustration in his rulesets!). I think they tend to smaller games, a bit similar to FFoL.

They're designed for larger forces than that, perhaps in between FFoL and LR. Starting at around two dozen figures a side for a small 500pt force, but look very scaleable at least up to LR size.
The strength of the Barons War rules is that they are incredibly flexible for army generation with no set unit sizes (Once you get beyond the three figure minimum for foot and two for mounted). I haven't played them yet either but I don't think they're too reliant on luck....no more than any D10 based system anyway It's similar to Mortal Gods the Greek Skirmish game (both by Andy Hobday). I think you're talking about Test of Honour, which I thought he did too and was the starting point for MG but he doesn't seem to be listed as the designer for that on BGG!! They're main weakness is also something which many people will love, there are potentially a lot of special rules to learn. However this does add to the "flavour" and you'll probably only need to know a few most of the time so not too much of a downside.