En Garde, Royal Fencing Competition

 The ever indefatigable Russell wanted to end 1607 in our long running En Garde campaign with a bang, so we had a double session of duelling, with massive rewards available for the winner.

The details of the competition are listed above. The rewards are pretty generous, bearing in mind that my monthly pay as a Major in a decent regiment is only 30 crowns a month. It wasn't a knockout competition but one based on multiple rounds an accumulation of points per round, but divided into an average as it wasn't possible to balance the number of bouts.

I played quite a few duels when En Garde came out back in the late 70s, and did a quick refresher crash course and a briefing for the participants. tbh, it is probably the worst swordfighting game I have ever come across, although at the time it seemed quite innovative.

The horror of the five text pages and three large tables of duelling rules seemed to put people off, and we only have five participants for the contest, although there was a good display of silly hats on offer. We all had to fight three or four rounds, depending.

My En Garde character, Major Eduard du Moulin, was pretty good at sword fighting. I was strong, had a good constitution and also had plenty of practice at fighting with a Rapier in the two (three?) years of the campaign. A quick comparison of stats revealed I had nearly three times as many hit points as some of the others, oh dear...

After much joshing and jollity, we eventually got to fight our first round, me vs Tim. I can't say it went particularly well, I easily defeated Tim, but the step by step action resolution took an age to resolve and wasn't hugely enjoyable for either the participants or the viewers. The scoring table for the competition is above, but I'm afraid there isn't much else to see in a paper based combat system.

We all agreed that the combat system was lousy, and that we were very unlikely to finish even over two nights. Fortunately John rode to the rescue by suggesting an alternate system....

Tim Price's 'Battle Cards', which we used to run lightsaber duels at a number of shows some years ago. The rules in their entirety are reproduced above, and combat is resolved using a deck of seven cards per player. The actions are surprisingly similar to En Garde, being parries, various strengths of attack and a 'rest' card. You need to read the rule section on the 'rest' card very carefully as we made a mistake with it to start with, you will always have the rest card in your hand, as you pick it up again when it is played.

Basically each player picks a card and reveals it, cross referencing the relevant action. This worked much better, it was visually entertaining as we could reveal the cards on screen and it was also fiendishly challenging making the card selections from an ever depleting deck. A very clever game.

Things rattled along very quickly after that, although it still took two evenings to fight the whole tournament. We even had time to do some gambling on the results of each round, which was also very entertaining as the odds fluctuated depending on the standings of the participants at that point in time.

I had a flutter on my most dangerous rival, Lt Colonel Tartiflette, as I figured if I was going to lose I may as well make some money on the way.

The final result, and despite losing appallingly badly in my last bout, I did eventually come out on top (just). The rewards are amazing, appointed Kings Champion for a year, a bonus of 3 social points per month for one year, 1000 crowns cash prize, a monthly pension of 25 crowns, free membership of a club of your choice, a free night out and a one level bump in social level. That puts my Major on Social Level 10, the equivalent of minor nobility, which will come in very handy with my career progression plans.

Sadly it means that dear Judith (SL9) is somewhat beneath my current station and a new paramour will need to be sought out. Having reached the end of 1607 however, we are taking a break from En Garde for a year or two, instead have Twilight 2000 or Cosmos 68 lined up for future retro RPG games. 

I'll have to file away all the En Garde stuff for future use, as there is an awful lot to keep track of. That has been loads of fun for the last couple of years though, even if it hasn't been very photogenic for the blog.