Chivalry, Part 6: Crossed Lances Foot Melée and Archery.

The second (and currently last) book in the Crossed Lances series deals with dismounted fighting, and archery, thus letting squires, gamekeepers, or other retainers grab a bow and participate actively in the tourney.

The Foot Melée.

This a different cup of tea than the previous tome; the language used is pretty clear and straight forward, and only the 'foul' result on the combat result table, for some reasom marked as minus results, seem a little weird (you won't actually bestow hit points back on your victim when making a foul hit, will you?) It seems the fouls beign 'minus' has carried over from the jousting table, where you count points scored instead of damage done, to both the Grand and Foot Melée - which again brings me back to the really poor editing done on these rules.

• The game uses a set of movement tiles similar to those used in the Grand Melée. I like that!
• It would seem that the authors have given up on the '1 Turn = 3 moves', and simply allow the combattants to play 1, 2, or 3 movement tiles per turn. I like that!
• The game introduces rolling an extra 'critical hit' die. I like that!
• As mentioned under the Grand Melée, In the Foot Melée one dice is attack, and one is defence (in effect, your sword and your shield). The rules state, that in order for your combat result to count on the table, you have to beat your opponent's defense with your attack. I like that!
  However, the example, fully in the style one has come to expect from these authors, shows Attack 5/Defense 5 vs Attack 4/Defense 3, and BOTH generating a result on the combat result table, although Attack 4 clearly does nor beat Defense 5!!
• The game uses the cards in the same way as the other two contests. I don't like that! I think the damage done should be a result of the combat dice roll +/- any modifiers.
• The game introduces hit points for shield and helmet, and the possibility of either to be destroyed (and replaced) or get lost (and picked up or replaced). I like this very much, and clearly, it belongs in the Grand Melée, too. However, the rules state that the lost item 'scatters' 1d6, and in a direction decided by a d12, and there is no clue as to HOW the d12 shows the direction. Now, I can make a template, or use my good old watch, but, again, remember that I paid £20 (plus postage) for these rules.

There sure is some good ideas in the Foot Melée rules, but as the authors cling to the same system as in the previous two contests, they are, sadly enough, poorly used.

This is NOT a complete game, though. The rules use the Lord/Personality cards, so far only found in the first volume, which makes selling the rules separately for £20 a complete rip-off in my book. The games component section contains some additional Lord/Personality (Champion) cards for use with the campaign rules, and you might use those instead, but they are all marked with a rather high bonus, and the differences won't be the same as when using the intended cards.

As with the previously reviewed rules, I'll have to change this into the game I want to playm, but I'll use much more elements from this section than from the other two.

Archery

In these rules, for the first time, the authors let the use of cards influence the dice roll, which, directly affects the result. It's a no-brainer, really, but this is the first time the cards make any real sense.

I won't write a lot about this section, as I think I'll have to try it out before forming an opinion; they actually look playable right out of the book:

You roll a d12 to determine which section of the target is hit, 2d6, then refer to the archery table to see which part of which 'ring' is hit, an extra 'critical' d6 to take the arrow further in or out on the target, and add or deduct the bonus/penalty of your archer card and skill card.

I do think, though, that I would like to give the player a bit more control over the skill cards, maybe allowing a 'hand' of cards to be used, and maybe the option to affect the performance of other participants (the idea came to me when thinking about the foot melée rules), but I'll have to tinker and try...

CONCLUSION:

Crossed Lances should never have been published in its current form (save, perhaps, the archery rules). The 2 tomes are not worth the paper they are printed on, and £20 for either is a rip-off not even GW would dare. They need a re-write, and some heavy editing and updating of the tables, and the second volume should contain the Lord/Personality cards to make it self-contained and not requiring an additional purchase to use properly.

Just about a month ago, the authors stated that the price of the rules was right, priced accordingly to other products, and that they would never consider lowering the price, nor offer a discount for a combined purchased - in their delusions of grandeur seemingly confident that they had a premium(!) product to offer. Just recently they made the 2 books available for £30, thus discounting 25%, so the huge public interest they claim when promoting this polished turd may not be as massive after all.

Here's a link to another review of the first tome:
http://colgar6.blogspot.dk/2014/04/crossed-lances-review.html

And I think that it speaks for itself that a vendor selling the game + scenery for it doesn't want to lend his name to an appraisal of the rules (he does give another explanation for it, but...):
http://wargamesbuildings.co.uk/Hobby-Pages/Crossed-Lances-Medieval-Jousting-Hobby-Page/Crossed-Lances-Rules-Review-Jousting

Chivalry, Part 5: Crossed Lances Grand Melée.

Well. I don't really know what to make of the second part of the first Crossed Lances rulebook.

As with the first part, this review is based solely on the assumption that I have understood the meaning of most sentences in this second part of the rules. I know for certain, that some I haven't understood. I'm pretty sure, some don't make any sense at all, but, please, prove me wrong!

I like the movement part, at least the use of the special movement hexes. However, I find it very strange, that a knight opting to make a charge in the first of 3 moves in a turn will have to be a sitting duck for the 2 reminding moves, having no more movement to spend, while the slower moving opponents can outmanouver him. Silly. Just silly.

Again, the (randomly chosen) shield/skill cards are not used to influence the results of the combat roll, but are, in conjunction with the lord/personality card, merely used to inflict some hit point damage. I have NO idea how this works, however, as the authors manage to give 3 (three) different explanations in as many pages.

1. In 'the sequence of play' it is stated that 'the difference in 2 points are awarded to the winner and scored against the opponent'. I have no idea what this sentence means. Can somebody please help me out??
2. In the 'Attain Strike' section, it is stated that: 'the winners scores 1 hit point for each +1 difference against his opponent'. Sounds as the logical solution?
3. In the 'scoring points in the 'attain melée' section, it says: 'the winner scores 2 hit points for the skills over the opponents, and any that are equal are shared 1 hit each.'

Either this is VERY bad form (and some of it bad English, too), or I must have sunken into dementia...

I could just chose one of these (one that makes sense), but, again, remember, I paid £20 for these rules. A bit of clarity isn't too much to ask for, methinks...?

The actual detailed beating in skulls happen with the usual 2d6. It works a bit different than in the jousting rules, in that one dice is attack, and the other defense. Interesting mechanic! Ah, no, wait, that's the foot melée rules in the second book (I'll get back to that in another post). But why the authors have decided to NOT use this - perhaps the nicest feature in the two books in their entirety - for the mounted melée as well as the unmounted, totally eludes me.

Again, the chord snaps, as two different explanations are given:

1. In the 'scoring points in the 'attain melée' section, it says that the highest roll scores 1 point, and then both results are checked on the attain melée table.
2. In the following example, though, the winner scores 2 hit ponts - and only the higher roll is checked on the table.

GO FIGURE!

Again, in my opinion, I shall have to make radical changes to the rules if they are to become playable.

• For instance, I need players to be able to play 1, 2, or 3 movement cards every time they move. I'll probably add a rule, that a horse that has charged is 'blown', and may not charge again this turn.
• Again, I also need more control over the skill cards, and have them influence the outcome of the dice roll.
• I'll probably use the attack/defense dice system of the foot melée rules.
• I'm not sure if I'll use the combat result tables at all, other than for the jousts. Maybe I'll create something based on the critical damage system of Strange Aeons.

It may well be that this game, being quite spectacular to look at when set up with spectator stands, tilts, archery range, et al, attracts a lot of players at conventions. It also very well may be that the players are having a good time when the authors are running tings, so they won't have to check any rules in the books.

I dare say though, that if the participants buy the rules and try to recreate the game at home, they'll have a really hard time doing so, as the rules are a real mess, badly writtten, hopelessly structured, and seem simply not edited at all.

I really regret having spent £40 (+ postage) on these two books, as it would probably have been much easier for me (and 40+ quid cheaper) to create my own rules from scratch, than to work these into something useable. But now I have them, and I'll see what I can do about it...

Chivalry, Part 3: Crossed Lances Jousting Rules.

I finally received the Crossed Lances rulebooks.

Jousting and Grand Melée Rules
A4. Full colour, glossy paper. 46 pages, 21 pages actual rules, £20.00

I'm not impressed.

The first read-through left me completely baffled and bewildered; these are probably the worst written rules I've ever come across.

Not because of the mechanics, but because of the way they are presented.

Reading these books are NOT for the more faint-hearted lovers of the Queen's English. The authors seem to have completely failed to get someone without dyslexia to proof-read the text, and the reader is sometimes left wondering if they used one of those computer applications that translate the spoken word into text, instead of typing it in themselves. On several occations, almost homophonic words have been left in place for the proper term, even in large headlines ('Forward' for 'Foreword', 'or' for 'are'), and repeatedly very long sentences contain seemingly meaningless or misplaced words, making an attempt to grasp the mechanics of the game a rather painful experience.

As if the mere form of the text was not enough to confuse anyone daring enough to read it, the jousting rules over and over refer to components that are simply not contained within the book. Well, they are in the game component section, but a completely different term is used for them here (Shield Cards = Skill Cards, Personality Cards = Lord Cards). Until one realizes this, much time is spent browsing the component section, and going 'WTF do they MEAN?!'.

Yesterday, I spent about 2 hours transforming the jousting rules into a systematic form, going through each and every sentence in the chapter, writing everything in table form, so I can easily look up the conditions during a jousting run, and see what rules come into the equation. I shouldn't have to do that after paying £20 + postage...

This boiled down to 2½ pages (if including the one-page Attain Hit Table).

Well, so much for the FORM of the rules. Now for the actual mechanics.

DISCLAIMER:
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW IS MADE ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE MEANING OF THE RULES; THIS IS BY NO MEANS GUARANTEED, ALTHOUGH I HAVE MADE A THOROUGH ANALYSIS OF EACH SENTENCE WITH ANY CONTENT SEEMINGLY OF RELEVANCE TO THE GAME. Should you, in any way, feel that some of my points are wrong, please quote the rule in question and point out to me, what I have missed.

The authors very thoroughly have included a lot of factors and possible outcomes of a jousting run. Lot's of rules for scoring points for all kinds of little details, such as, whose horse runs fastest during the attain (actual clash), the actual hit, who is showing most skill, etc.

What really kind of ruins this whole setup for me is:

1. Almost every single point scored during a run depends on a single roll of 2d6. It decides how fast your horse goes (and thus whether you reach or overshoot the Attain Area), and how/where you hit your opponent (and whether or not you unseat him and/or split your lance, or make a foul).
2. Your Lord/Personality Card and your Skill/Shield Cards are only used to score 'skill points' (comparing their combined score to that of your opponent's; higher score wins and difference is scored). Your (skill!) cards have NO influence on how well you hit your opponent, that is decided solely by the 2d6 roll you make.

So, we have here a game with a set number of fields along the jousting tilt, a set number of fields at the middle of the tilt where you can make an attain, and one dice roll deciding both how far you go, and where you hit your opponent + 1 or 2 cards (played totally independently of the dice roll).

You can actually calculate which combined results will result in an attain, lesser attain, and/or no attain, and it would be possible to completely skip the miniatures and the tilt, making up a master table showing every possible outcome of the 2 players' dice rolls, because the only thing that affects the outcome of a jousting run is how the results of the 2 2d6 dice rolls relate; the (skill!) cards do not influence the result, but are merely used to define a few more points scored. You could just as well in turn draw 3 or 4 cards each from a normal card deck, counting the wins, letting the winner score the difference. Well, the only difference is, that your Lord/Personality Card (with a bonus or penaly) stays with you all through the tournament, so perhaps you should draw a card beforehand that you could decide to use instead of drawing from the deck, once per 3 runs...

So, per run, one dice roll, 1 or 2 cards played - and LOTS of calculations/book-keeping.

So, is this 'a game of skill and daring' as stated by one of the authors in the 'Opening Foreward' (geez!!)?

• Well, there's not much skill in rolling 2 dice (unless you're REALLY clumsy)
• The only things you control in the game is in which sequence you play your 3 randomly drawn Skill/Shiels Cards (and, as you have no idea what cards your opponent drew, it matters a horse's ass), and in which of the 3 runs you want to apply the bonus/penalty of your Lord/Personality Card (I suggest you always play your cards to even out the bonuses/penalties - you'll win some and lose some, but won't lose big, unless your opponent has drawn all maximum bonus cards, in which case you wouldn't win any points, anyway).

Need I write more...?

Do we get 'realistic outcomes, that are directly influenced by how you play your shield cards, and how the personality that you are controlling interacts in the game; by clever use of the personality cards'?

• If the author is talking about the final outcome of the tourney, well, yes, I guess you can say that it is realistic in that we find a winner. And as the shield and personality cards are scoring points, how you played them mattered. But clever use? After the first run of the tourney, all players will know the personality card of all other players, and there might be some guessing, what skill card a player augments with his personality card, and some bluffing may occur.
• If the author is talking of the outcomes of the jousting runs, the cards play absolutely NO deciding role, they only give a few extra points to the one or the other. You have NOTHING to say about the aim of your lance, NO INFLUENCE on your horse's speed, and NO WAY to decide to make fair or foul hits (fouls are just a result on the Attain Hit Table). 

CONCLUSION:

Crossed Lances (Jousting) is purely a game of chance - a game of Ludo requires more skill, and even some knowledge of probabilities; in Crossed Lances you don't even get to play the odds in any way - the dice roll decides everything regarding the joust, and the so-called 'skill' cards just adds points on the side without influencing anything regarding the lance (I keep pointing that out because I think it shouts 'stupid and utterly obsolete mechanic').

Had this game been published in 1980, it would have felt innovative. Today, with the trend towards ever simpler, faster flowing games, it feels a bit 'last century'.

I may have to re-invent the game; I don't think I'll be able to persuade many gamers to play this regularly.

I hope the rules for the Grand Melée, the Foot Melée, and Archery are a tiny bit more interesting - I'll be going over those, soonish, and I'll post my thoughts hereabouts...