Jousting

One of the things we wanted to do when we went to the UK was go to some kind of re-enactment event. Originally we'd decided to go to a Viking day in Wales, but after deciding that we also wanted to visit a stately home as well, we killed two birds with one stone and did a day of jousting at Blenheim Palace instead. I'd not been to Blenheim before, so it was a double treat for me.

The jousting was a lot of fun. It was an exhibition group (who I'm sure we've seen before), so there were lots of horsemanship displays and fun characters to cheer or boo. The actual jousting was pretty good, although not as exciting as the full-on competitive jousting we saw at St Ives a few years ago.

I got a few photos worth sharing; the rest featured even more of the woman who was in front of me. But, fair play, we'd come to see jousting, not for me to take lots of pretty pictures. I did my best.

I got a photo of a shattered lance, but it's not as good as the one the woman in front of me got :)

Blenheim Palace itself is glorious. We did go inside but I didn't get any photos and the lovely battle tapestries were partially obscured by a fashion exhibition.

Anyway, knowing that we were going to see jousting I took my own game, Atteint!, with me. I played a few test games over in the UK, but the other day Catherine and I gave it a go, this time trying out a couple of the skills I wrote up a couple of years ago.

We played two jousts. In the first Catherine's knight had the Unflinching trait, which meant that I couldn't throw off her aim. My knight was Chivalrous, so started with a Marshal point.

I started off well; Catherine missed me but I planted my lance firmly on her shield with maximum force and unhorsed her, putting me 3-0 up. I don't have notes on the second pass, but we went into the third pass with Catherine needing to score at least a shattered lance to tie, and even then also pick up a pile of Marshal points. She missed and I scored a convincing win.

In the second joust Catherine had a knight with Horsemanship, which meant that she could control her approach down the list. My knight was a Master of the Lance, meaning I could choose Aim as an initial focused trait. The first two passes were relatively even, but I got lucky in one, scoring a hit on only a one in six chance. I had a slight lead going into the third pass, and finished the joust by unhorsing Catherine again, to win overall.

To be fair Catherine's rolls in both games were horrible; she often only got to increase one ability and couldn't roll doubles - which give you bonus actions - to save her life. Meanwhile I got a good run of rolls and could pretty much do what I wanted.

I'm not sure I really gave the skills a full outing, but they did prove interesting and did change a couple of decisions, adding some variation to the game.