Dark Ages Lion Rampant.

I'm a fan of the Osprey Rules especially the ones written by Daniel Mersey and his partners. These include The Men Who Would Be Kings, Rebels and Patriots, and now Lion Rampant and it's official variant titled Landwasters and Ravenfeeders for the Dark Ages.

Recently, we played our first game with Lion Rampant with two 24 point armies from 1066-Anglo\Danes and Normans. Some of the pictures are from the game and others are posed.

My 24 points of Normans (thus far). Two units of knights, two of foot sergeants and one bow unit. The Duke William and Bishop Otto figure are in the center of the picture. All my Normans thus far are Strelets. I call them the "large" Strelets figures because they differ from the smaller Normans and Saxons Strelets came out with later. 

One of the Foot Sergeant units. In Landwasters and Ravenfeeders they are classified as upperclass spearmen.

The other Foot Sergeant unit.

Bows

One of the knight units. In Lion Rampant they are classified as Mounted Men at Arms

William and Otto. In Landwasters and Ravenfeeders you have the option at I point to add a character to your units. The character can be a religious figure like Otto, another leader or a Bannerman. The figures give a +1 to the unit's courage roll-not a bad bonus!

Historians debate to what extent early knights charged home with a couched lance versus the more traditional javelin and sword role of Dark Age Cavalry. I chopped the lances the figures came with and inserted brass to give them both looks.

My Saxon command figure. In Lion Rampant the command figure is part of the unit, not an extra figure. We use the command figure to just mark where the command figure is. This figure was painted by my friend Jim. It's a Ral Partha figure from the 1970's and comes from their Byzantine set. This fellow is a Varangian! 

One of my Saxon Thegn units of 6. They went by various names like Hearthguard or Hiroguard. Most of these figures are from Emhar. They have an early look than 1066 to them.They could easily fit in to a pre-900 A.D. army

My second Thegn unit. The two figures on the far right are from the Zvezda Viking set-a superb set! Unfortunately Zvezda never added to the Hastings period.

One of my General Fyrd units. Most of them are Emhar figures but a few are Strelets and one is Zvezda.

One of my two Select Fyrd. By 1000 A.D. the Select Fyrd would have been well equipped with chainmail, shield and spear. These are clearly late Anglo\Danes with both round and kite shields.

Select Fyrd unit 2

Another unit of General Fyrd-most are Emhar figures.

This picture is from the game. I have one unit of Select Fyrd and one unit of General Fyrd trying to hold a small hill. Norman Sergeants can be seen in the distance. One of my Thegn units is pushing back Norman Knights. It would be that way until the Norman bowman managed to shoot them down!

Close up of the General Fyrd unit. They would hold for quite a while in shield wall holding back the Norman Foot Sergeant unit to their right.

Unless you form a shield wall your formation should be loose. These Normans would get pushed back by the Fyrd.

This unit of Norman Foot Sergeants held the Norman right by advancing and falling back when threatened. Adjacent to them are the pesky Norman bow unit. The Norman commander was content to hold and harass on that flank and in the end it worked out for him. The Saxons had nothing to reply with versus his bowmen. (Hastings?)

I painted them and hated them in the game!

My friend Mike painted these Minifig Knights about 40 years ago. These is a better frontal picture below. The command fig is the Duke William figure Minifigs made. It was painted by my other friend Jim a great many years ago. Classic Minifigs and well done to boot! Duke William would die in the game (I rolled lucky hit) but it didn't matter as Mike passed the necessary courage tests. His command figure however remained quite dead. I never did like William of Normandy.

This Minifig unit was used as Mounted Sergeants. They would take the hill, then lose the hill only to have a Norman unit take it again for the win.

Beautiful old school Minifigs. You can still get them from Great Britain but they are pricey.

Hero unit of the game in my opinion. While the knight unit was held off by the Saxon Thegns this unit, once it got going did yeoman's work for the Norman victory.