Atteint! Fast-play Jousting Rules

Recently Kapatin Kobold a.k.a Alan Saunders posted a free set of fast-play jousting rules entitled Atteint! on his blog. Alan encouraged others gamers to give them a go and provide some feedback so that exactly what we did last night!

Four of us got together and matched off once each against all the other players. A match consists of three passes with the aim to hit or if possible unhorse your opponent. Here are our four protagonists, plucked from our Warhammer Fantasy armies:

Sir Bacon of Sandwich matched against Sir Croc of Dundee and...

... Sir Redback of Dunnyseat matched against Sir Groovy of Ghoulies.

Alan's rules have a nice elegance about them and seem very well balanced, giving a good Hollywood feel without sacrificing playability. They certainly play fast once you know what you are doing and we finished in under two hours.

As you progress towards your opponent you attempt to increase your three stats of Balance, Aim and Force, focusing on your preferred stat but trying to put enough increase into the other two to ensure that you a) strike your opponent and b) break your lance or even unhorse them when you do hit.

Sir Bacon of Sandwich (my guy) won the field on the day, unhorsing his opponent in all three matches, although we has himself unceremoniously dumped on his ass in the third match too!

Yep, that's a bacon-flavoured triple snake-eyes. Woot!

In summary Atteint! are a great little set, perfect for beer and pretzels gaming on a wet Friday night. Overall there is very little wrong with the rules that we could see. They could possibly do with a little re-work to make them a little clearer in intent in places I guess e.g. can you increase a stat multiple times in a turn?

Here's a few other suggestions for you Alan...

• With no customisation of your knight each protagonist feels a bit samey-samey. Perhaps adding a half-dozen low-impact "characteristics" that each player can choose one of to give each knight a little variety?
• Consider limiting the number of Favours as at one point we had 3 or 4 backed up. We did assume unused ones carried over from pass to pass (but not match to match).
• One thing we thought would be a cool tweak is to add +1 to Force if your knight moves 2 spaces on the turn they meet.

Thanks for these Alan, we had a blast and will definitely play them again!

Cheers,
Millsy

Updated FREE Fast Play Wargames Rules

I've been doing some work of late on our Ne Plus Ultra + set of fast play rules for early horse and musket gaming. These are mainly intended for large battles in the 1700-1750 period but you could easily adapt them for earlier or later use.

The original rules were written by Nate from NDC Wargames and he very kindly gave me permission to take them and adapt them as I saw fit.

My own version 1.0 was good start but I was never entirely happy with them, feeling some of my language was a bit inconsistent and ambiguous. There were also a few loopholes and unaccounted for situations which I wanted to correct. With version 2.0 I've had a good stab at those issues and I'm now much happier with them.

The rules are really tightly written (thanks largely to Nate!) and cover just five pages in total, with an extra page of optional / advanced rules. Even so, they cover all of what I consider the core features of an "evolved" set or rules. That's just my opinion of course. :-)

Please feel free to download the rules from our Free Stuff for Gamers page. Don't forget to leave a comment telling us what you think and how we might improve them even more.

Cheers,
Millsy

Anne's Double Triple Secret Giveaway

Some exciting news from Anne over at O'Leary Miniatures Blog!

Anne's running a giveaway of all sorts of goodies over at her site, sponsored in part by author Patrick Hatt.

You can find Mr. Hatt's Amazon Writers Page at http://www.amazon.com/Pat-Hatt/e/B00AGFMYVC.

Something for everyone over at O'Leary Miniatures, but hurry, the giveaway closes soon... I certainly don't want to miss out!

Cheers,

Ev

Pulp Alley League Roster Tool (MS Excel 2010)

We played our first game of Pulp Alley on Friday night. Since then I've been tinkering with the League Roster Tool I put together in MS Excel 2010. I'm pretty happy with it how it works overall. It doesn't do everything I'd like but that's mainly because a couple of the higher end requirements are too much for poor old spreadsheets to handle. ;-)

Here's a sample output. This is my first league, the White Russians.

Dave from Pulp Alley has kindly given his stamp of approval to the tool so I can now make it available to the wider community. You can download a copy here. There is a also permanent link on our Free Stuff page. If people have feedback, find errors or can suggest improvements please feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers,
Millsy

Free Fast-play Rules for Age of Reason / Baroque Period

Here's another addition to our free stuff for gamers page. Nate from NDC Wargames kindly allowed us to take his very neat and tidy Ne Plus Ultra rules and give them a re-work. We wanted something to handle larger games where Maurice doesn't work so well. Our version is called "Ne Plus Ultra +" so you can see the heritage in the name.

Download them here: Ne Plus Ultra + fast-play wargames rules (202Kb pdf).

These have not been play-tested as yet and we encourage you to give them a go and provide feedback please! We'll happily take that on board and provide a revised version where appropriate.

Cheers,
Millsy

Free Stuff for Gamers

Hi All,

I've been having a clean out of the old Canister & Grape website as I've run out of space on my hosting provider. The upside of this is I've collected together much of the various bits and pieces we've put together over time and organised it. Well sort of. Mostly.

Anyway, there is all sorts of stuff - generic campaign rules, flags, quick reference sheets, event cards, unit counters, scenarios and more. Feel free to take what you want and leave a comment or question if you like. Hopefully you'll find something of use!

I've added a permanent link on the RH menu and here's the link: http://canisterandgrape.blogspot.com.au/p/free-stuff-for-gamers.html

Cheers,
Millsy

Free Mahdist Wars Event Cards

Hi All,

I put these together for use with TSATF but they could easily be adapted for other colonial theatres or even other periods. Some of the ideas are from various other colonial sites about the net, massaged until I was happy with them. Please feel free to adapt, copy or otherwise use as you see fit.

The set contains a total of 32 cards in colour, plus a reverse side featuring Charles Gordon's final moments from "that" painting. There are two A4 sheets each for the British and the Mahdists with appropriately colourful events and explanatory text. Each faction's cards contain 8 "good" and 8 "bad" events identified by a thumbs up or down.

If there is sufficient interest I might add another 16 cards for the Egyptians and Sudanese and possibly some generic cards that effect both sides at once. Let me know if you're interested via the comments and feel free to suggest events if you want.

Enough waffle, here's the cards. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Millsy