Inspired by a picture of some jousting knights on a box of colouring crayons, and the memory of a blog post from the other day, I finally got around to getting my Atteint! jousting rules out today for the first time in four years. Actually it's pretty much the first time I've had them out since the week in which I wrote them.
The blog post about jousting I'd seen drew my attention to some figures for jousting knights on the Junior General site, so I downloaded them and out them together. And here they are:
As you can see, I hadn't got around to painting the bases, but I was keen to get playing, and decided to forego that nicety for now.
I picked four knights - Black, White, Red and Yellow - for a quick mini-tournament. Black and Yellow would joust, then Red and White, and the winner of each one would go through to a final, third, joust.
I'd got a couple of notes for some rules changes. Nothing much though, but I decided to try them. The first was that a strike takes place when the knights are diagonally adjacent (see picture below). This is simply aesthetic, although it does have a small effect on the game since they contact one space earlier. The next change builds on this; if the knight that initiates the strike ends in this position then resolve the strike as normal. But if their move would leave them immediately adjacent to the other knight (because they got to move two spaces) then when rolling against Force to test for a broken lance they get to reroll a fail. I need to word that better. Finally I only allowed a knight to hold one Favour from the Ladies Court at a time.
The first bout was between the Black Knight and the Yellow Knight.
On the first pass, Black rolled well for Force and advanced quickly down the list, but Yellow got the initiative in the strike. Despite that, it was Black who threw off Yellow's aim, only to then miss with their own attack. Neither knight scored any points.
The second pass saw both knights miss each other again. The approaches were slower, but neither knight build up much in the way of Force or Aim. Yellow was a favourite with the Ladies' Court by this stage, and could count on a reroll in the next pass, but Black's actions had caught the notice of the Marshal of the Field, who would certainly award the joust to Black if the scores were tied at the end,
The third pass started with everything to play for - Yellow had the support of the ladies, whilst Black was currently considered the better knight. Black could afford to play for a tie, but Yellow had to score a point. Yellow managed to catch the Marshal's eye on the approach, negating Black's edge there. Black threw off Yellow's aim on the strike, but despite that both knights hit each other. All was set for an epic tie-break, except that Black's lance broke, unbalancing Yellow, who was unhorsed (a triple '1' rolled by Black saw to that). This gave Black 3 points and an overall 3-0 win in the first joust of the day.
The second joust of the day was the White Knight against the Red Knight. In the first pass both knights concentrated on their Aim, hoping to get a quick point to start things off. As expected both scored hits but, against the odds, both also broke their lances, starting the joust off at 2-2.
The second pass was steady and saw both knights build up good scores in all three attributes. White threw off Red's aim in the strike, but Red opted to go for a reroll anyway. Both scored a hit, but this time only White's lance broke. So the pass was scored 2-1 and White now led 4-3 on aggregate.
The third and final pass saw both knights roll incredibly well for attributes. White played safe, opting for a high balance to throw off Red's attack. Red naturally opted for a good hard attack. On the strike White was able to blunt the force of Red's attack, making it less likely that he would shatter his lance. Both knights hit, and White's lance broke. The score was 2-1 to White again, and 6-4 on aggregate. So teh White Knight was the winner.
So the final joust of the day would see the White Knight face the Black Knight - a classic pairing.
The first pass saw White score a hit, and shatter his lance, whilst Black missed. This put White 2-0 up.
The second pass saw White play defensively, opting to risk a hit from Black but prevent his lance from breaking. And that's what happened; Black hit but his lance remained intact. Black won 1-0, leaving the aggregate score at 2-1 to White.
All White now had to do in order to win the joust was score at least as well as Black in the third pass. Black caught the Marshal's eye on the approach, though, which meant that if the final score was tied, Black would now win. White got the edge on Balance and threw off Black's aim, but despite that Black hit and White didn't, leaving the scores tied! To add insult to injury Black's lance shattered, giving Black a 2-0 win in the pass and a 3-2 win overall.
So the Black Knight was the champion for the day.
I need to go through these rules again, and tweak sequences and how the attributes work, so that there can be different strategies in how to apply them. To some extent, at present, there is a strong advantage in putting points into Aim, as this ensure a hit. This makes sense, obviously, but there needs to be an incentive to consider Force and Balance as well. Still, overall I'm pleased with how these rules work, given that they were basically written in a day or so.
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