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