Dragon Rampant Second Edition’s rulebook should be available for digital purchase when this post goes live. I’m a little annoyed the digital release is two days after physical–I was hoping to do an “Off the Shelf” today. Instead, I’ll talk about my plans for the system with regards to my father-son gaming.

I’ve been playing One Page Rules Age of Fantasy with my son for much of this year and the system has served its purpose well. It’s lightweight, fast moving, and simple enough for him to understand. Unfortunately, I’ve grown to find it rather dull and overly lethal. I have played Lion Rampant and Xenos Rampant with my son in the past quite successfully, so I’m hoping to take those armies we’ve worked on and port them over to Dragon Rampant with its new second edition.

Why Dragon Rampant? Because I’m subscribed to One Page Rules’ Patreon and I get new files every month, which means I really want to print off and paint both dwarven and elven armies I have sitting in my STL library, but I’d like to keep the forces relatively light. Enough to enjoy the project, not so much it’s a major project. Dragon Rampant looks well shaped to allow this. With the Rampant series, a full army is normally less than 50 figures. Often, it’s less than 40 or even 30 depending on the force in question.

The other reason is I enjoy the baseline system. It has problems, undoubtedly, but as a fast moving system it has enough variability with its activation system while also carrying a robust and enjoyable set of missions in each book. The activation system is simple: you roll to activate each unit until you fail to do so. When you fail, you end your turn (barring any rerolls from leaders or rules). From there the system is really simple and flows quickly, with minimal dice calculations. The missions from this series are often some of my favorite, as the author does an excellent job of coming up with a large variety of mission types.

Another pro is the upcoming campaign system he’s been touting in the previews. I’m hoping to throw together a small campaign to play out with my son. Then there’s the flexibility in how you build your units–the system is very generic, but allows a ton of customization to make each unit unique. My ratmen warriors should feel very different from his saurian warriors and I don’t doubt there will be just enough meat on the bone here to show that.

Finally, again, it’s an excuse to make a small dwarf army. Rather than the 60ish models my OPR army would have been, it will be 30-40 models depending on how many larger units I bring. I appreciate this as a person who enjoys hopping from small project to small project. The Rampant series gives you just enough to feel like you’re moving a full sized warband or platoon around the board, not just a skirmish team. It gives just enough excuse to put down my son’s Saurian on Tyrannosaur or my rat ogres without also coming with a large model count burden.

It helps, too, that I only like some of the OPR Dwarven army I now own from the Patreon. I think some of the infantry is cool but a lot of it is just… not for me. I’d like to hone in on the beards I like while skipping the ones I don’t.

Downsides do exist, though: I anticipate having to temper his desire to go “Elite.” He likes the idea of veterans and the like but they tend to work poorly in the Rampant system. This is because to cause wounds, you have to roll a number of successes equal to your opponent’s armor value. When the elites have an Armor of 4, that becomes a big problem. A unit at half strength might roll only 5 dice–good luck getting four 5+’s. That might be reasonable if you could stack units into a brawl, but you can’t, so that elite unit gets to take down every other unit in a one v one where it becomes worth considerably more than the points values usually used in the system.

The answer here is “Be reasonable.” As a result, I’m not convinced the Rampant system makes for a good “pick up and play” style game with strangers. It’s too easily abused. As a game to play with my son? It’s great. I’ll whip up an Excel for unit construction and we’ll go to town while making sure our forces appear well balanced.