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Dragon Jam |
| 2026-02-22 |
Dragon Jam
96 models on each side, 192 in total. That must be a lot of paint, that must be a lot of hours of painting. Gary organized a Dragon Rampant game pitching 96 Iron Hills Dwarven models against 96 Gondor infantry with Rohan cavalry.
Gary not only painted the 192 models, he also printed and painted the pieces for the terrain where the fight took place.
43 army points versus 43 army points, whereas the standard Dragon Rampant game goes with 24 army points a side.
There was a bit of grumbling because why blue on blue? Personally, having avoided the Hobbit movie (and whatever came afterwards), I was surprised to meet dwarves on goats (I need to re-read the Hobbit).
The table is six feet by four and each side was given a six feet by five inches band to set up. Dragon Rampant wants us to have at least three inches between units, unless they are in contact. 10 units were difficult to place. Gary allowed us to start with less than 3 inches for the setup, we'd then have to move away.
What was nagging me as I was preparing stats for the 20 units is that if you run the numbers for move or attack on 5+ and as soon as an activation roll fails the hand goes to the adversary, on average, the fifth roll is a miss. You move 4 units and your turn ends. Granted there is one reroll if the unit is within twelve inches from the leader, good luck on the wings.
In our last game of Dragon Rampant, I saw my elite riders camping out, inactive, once they were away from the leader. Elite riders activate for moving on 7+. That did not help.
We had asked Gary to relax the activation rule, no sudden death, each unit gets a chance to activate. He refused. We asked him to have two captains a side (we were already two players a side). He refused again. We got back at pushing miniatures and squeezing our way to the center of the table.
The objective was seizing and holding the central building set up by our game master. It featured a balcony whose stairs was barred by an obstacle with twelve hit points.
Gary had also disseminated event markers on the table. We found a regeneration point, any unit getting back there could revert all its losses. We also found a troll next to the central building and he wiped one unit almost immediately.
If I remember correctly we avoided tripping the event, but Gary triggered it for us because he deemed us too slow in our progress. Sorry, the garage door was only large enough for one car.
My side took the central building initially, but with the intervention of the troll we were denied it. First turn of holding, 1 point, second turn 2 points, etc. We conceded after our adversary reached 6 points.
We had trouble moving our armies outside of the setup zone because of the number of units and of the three inches rules (our game master refused to relax it to one inch only).
I would have preferred:
- 2 captains a side, with clear delineation of responsibility
- 3 inch rule relaxed to 1 inch rule (as the rule suggest)
Also placing the captain in the elite riders was a mistake since they move on a 7+. But that mistake is entirely mine. Gary asked me to prepare the army list and simply said "one unit of riders including the captain". With the captain almost stuck in the back, our army slowly lowered its probability of activation reroll.
We had a beautiful table full of models (thanks Gary!) but our armies were difficult to handle. That was somehow compensated by our armies being identical.
I had printed holders for unit stats and Mutazoid immediately moved them out of the table. I was admirative of his memory capacity, remembering who was who. As the session ended, he admitted to me that he hated having those holders on the table and that it broke immersion for him. Sorry!
Congrats to Karl and Bernardo for their victory. Gratitude to Gary for having organized that game!
