Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: Sir Barnaby Hammond-Rye on December 22, 2006, 02:23:09 AM
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Has anyone tried using Slugfest Game's "En Garde!" for miniature swashbuckling? The game allows for 6 players. In the game you play from a hand of seven cards, the different cards being attacks, responses (which block attacks), press the attack cards and fancy moves. There is no damage or wounding as such. Players lose "poise" - starting with 10 they become more "put out" as the fight progresses. A player is defeated when, at zero poise, he suffers a further loss. Certain actions cost the player poise and there are cards that recover poise, such as "tucking in your shirt", "wiping the brow", etc.
I envision a few simple changes to convert this to the tabletop:
1) Add movement. Any figure can move 6" and intitiate an exchange or 12" at the cost of 1 poise. Figures can move 12" without initiating an exchange, or 24" for a cost of 1 poise. (Distances could be changed to suit.)
2) There would be up to 6 characters - using the positions available in the game. Further characters could perhaps be accomodated by combining a second deck(?)
3) Thugs would need a custom deck with crude attacks and the like - as such disreputable types have no poise to start with they take a single successful attack to deal with them. When a thug attacked or responded to an attack simply turn the next card to indicate success, etc. Perhaps ordinary playing cards would work? Aces, 2s and 3s would be attacks of that value; picture cards would be blocks/dodges; the rest would be misses. Jokers could be Dirty Tricks - draw again to find out the specifics.
How's that sound?
Howard F
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Looks interesting. What you might do if your games involve die-at-one-thrust extras besides main characters (like the 7th Sea concept of the brute squad) is reserve En Garde for encounters between characters, giving them a moment at the center of the stage.
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Some additional thoughts:
4) The Thug deck could be further developed to allow for Attack enhancments, Press Attack cards or return strikes. Basically the Thug would draw two cards in order, the first being the attack or response, the second determining whether the attack was enhanced, the attack pressed or responded to. For example, Porthos lunges at a Thug. The Thug draws a card representing his parry attempt; if successful he draws again to check if he gets a strike back. As a picture card counts as a block or parry, the strike back would be any A, 2 or 3 of the same suit (or colour?)
Similarly, if attacking the Thug would draw a card for his attack, if it is an A, 2 or 3 then draw a second card for a possible enhancement; this being indicated by a picture card of the same suit (or colour?) - the specific card type indicating the type of enhancement (based on those in the regular game.) If the attack was blocked by the player, the Thug could continue the attack by successfully drawing another A, 2 or 3.
Under this system there would be 12 attack cards, 28 misses, 12 blocks and 2 dirty tricks. Miss cards could be discarded or multiple decks combined to alter these ratios.
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Has anyone tried using Slugfest Game's "En Garde!" for miniature swashbuckling?
Howard F
I have the game and I'm familiar with the mechanics. The problem is that a fight ccan take *much* longer than a typical fight in "Gloire" and will throw off the balance of the rest of the game.