Atteint! Updated

I spent a lot of my spare moments this weekend trying out new tweaks and ideas for Atteint!; not unsurprisingly whilst I came up with a lot of alterations I ended up simplifying or ditching most of them, and what I've ended up with isn't a lot different from the original. However I believe that it does clarify it and improves the balance a little too.

The new version is available via my Free Stuff page, or you can be lazy and just click HERE.

What I did do is make notes on one of the games, and I thought it was worth running through a single pass in detail so that you can see how the game works.

Here are the knights at the start - Purple and White. Both have one point each in Force, Aim and Balance. Purple has their focus on Balance, whilst White starts focused on Force.

Since neither knight as scored any points, they are tied in terms of who goes first - normally the knight with the lowest accumulated score goes first. I rolled and White went first.

Turn 1 - White

The knight tests against their Force and rolls a 4. Since this is not equal to or less than the Force the knight is only moved one space forward.

The 3D6 roll gives 2,3,4. Dice scoring 4 or more allow the knight to increase an attribute. So in this case the knight has one point available. The first point must be spent on the focus attribute, so White increases their Force from 1 to 2. 

Since there was no double rolled, White cannot do anything else.

White's attributes are Force = 2, Aim = 1, Balance = 1. They are focused on Force.

Turn 1 - Purple

Purple rolls 3 against their Force of 1, so moves 1 space

The 3D6 roll is 3,3,4, so they have one point to spend, and this goes to their focus attribute of Balance, increasing it from 1 to 2.

The double 3 means that Purple could shift their focus, but they want to stay concentrated on Balance at this stage, so instead Purple uses it to gain a Favour from the Ladies' Court. This allows the knight to reroll the 3D6 at some later point in the joust.

Purple's attributes are Force = 1, Aim = 1, Balance = 2. They are focused on Balance.

Turn 2 - White

White rolls a 5 against a Force of 2, so moves one space

The 3D6 roll gives 1,4,5. This gives two points to spend on attributes, but no chance to shift the focus. So White spends the mandatory one point on Force, increasing it from 2 to 3, but puts the other point into Aim, increasing it from 1 to 2.

White's attributes are Force = 3, Aim = 2, Balance = 1. They are focused on Force.

Turn 2 - Purple

Purple rolls a 1 and has a Force of 1, so moves two spaces.

The 3D6 roll is 3,5,6. This gives two points, but again there is no double, so Purple can't shift their focus from Balance. However the knight decides to put both points into Balance. They only had to put in one, and could have applied the other to Force of Aim is they wanted to.

Purple's attributes are Force = 1, Aim = 1, Balance = 4. They are still focused on Balance.

Turn 3 - White

White has a Force of 3, so has a good chance of moving two spaces, but rolls a 6 and only moves 1.

The 3D6 roll gives 1,1,4. This gives one point to spend, which must be applied to Force, but allows the knight to shift their focus. They do so, switching it to Aim.

White's attributes are Force = 4, Aim = 2, Balance = 1. They are focused on Aim.

Turn 3 - Purple

Another roll of 1 sees Purple move forward two spaces again.

The 3D6 roll is a good one: 4,4,4. This allows Purple to apply two points to Aim, increasing it from 1 to 3, add another point to Balance, increasing it to its maximum of 5, and because of the double they can shift focus. Their Aim is looking fairly good now, so they shift their focus to Force.

Purple's attributes are Force = 1, Aim = 3, Balance = 5. They are focused on Force.

This is how the knights are positioned. It is now White's move, so if they move forward two spaces then they will initiate a strike because they will be diagonally adjacent to Purple. If they move one space then they get another 3D6 roll, and Purple will be forced to initiate the strike on their turn.

Turn 4 - White

Despite their Force of 4 White only moves forward one space, rolling a 6.

White gets to roll 3D6. They score 2,2,4. This gives them one point to spend, which they have to put onto Aim, increasing it from 2 to 3. They also have a double. Since there will be no more rolls, there is no point in changing the focus, so White spends the double catching the eye of the Marshal of the Field. This gives him the edge if the final scores are tied at the end of three passes.

White's attributes are Force = 4, Aim = 3, Balance = 1. 

Turn 4 - Purple

Purple rolls a 1 against their Force of 1 and moves forward two spaces. This puts them directly adjacent to White, so the knights immediately resolve a strike.

The current scores are:

Purple: Force = 1, Aim = 3, Balance = 5

White: Force = 4, Aim = 3, Balance = 1

The first stage is to see if the knights get any advantage from their Balance. Because it is Purple's turn, they test first, and because they finished directly adjacent to White they can reroll a fail. Purple's Balance is 5, and they roll a 6, so fail, but the reroll is a 1, so Purple gets a pass. They use their successful Balance check to dodge, reducing White's Aim from 3 to 2.

White tests against their Balance of 1, rolls a 4 and fails.

Both knights roll to hit, needing to score equal to or less than their Aim on a D6. White scores a 6, with an Aim of 2, so misses. Purple scores a 2 against their Aim of 3, so hits! 

Any knight which hits their opponent tests to see if their lance shatters. This is a roll against Force. Purple has a Force of 1, and rolls a 5, so their lance remains intact. 

So Purple has scored a point. However the final test is to see if any knight that hit managed to unhorse their opponent. To do this they add together their Aim and Force and subtract the opponent's Balance. Purple has an Aim of 3 and a Force of 1, which gives a meager 4, but White's Balance is only 1, so the final score is 3. Purple rolls 2D6, looking to get that score or lower ... and rolls a 3! White is unhorsed; they rode fast and accurately but their lack of control was their undoing.

Unhorsing your opponent is worth 3 points, so at the end of the first pass Purple leads 3-0. Purple has a Favour, whilst White has caught the Marshal's eye.

I hope this made some sort of sense and gave an idea of how the game plays. It's a lot quicker to play than read.

In case you were wondering, I did play out the other two passes.

In the second pass Purple rolled badly for attribute increases, despite spending their Favour, and stood virtually no chance of gaining a hit against an aggressive and well-aimed White attack. White not only hit, but also shattered their lance, scoring two points. Purple's focus on Balance prevented them being unhorsed, however. So a the end of the second pass the score was 3-2 to Purple.

It went much the same way in the third pass. Purple only managed to increase their Balance once, but did catch the Marshal's eye a couple of times, negating White's edge in terms of a tie break. This meant the White had to at least shatter their lance to win; the single point for a hit would no longer be enough. White had a moderately good aim, but Purple managed to make their Balance roll, and dodged, so White missed. Purple missed too, so neither knight scored. But this left the aggregate score at 3-2 to Purple.