Full Tilt and the Battle of the Kings Tree

The offending pamphlet

Many moons ago (and many moons after I'd abandoned mini's for other teenage pursuits) a free game was published in the GeeDub's house publication. Based on the medieval knightly tournaments it pits noble bretonians against each other in the most noble of sports. Jousting!

So a couple of decades later, in Erny's kitchen the OGRE's decided to give it ago as part of a days knightly pursuits.

Sir Erny of Roamershire (in red) prepared to defend the honour of all of Bretonnia against the dastardly Count Johan von Poomfickel, an upstart imperial knight who had little idea of the meaning of chivalry.

The combatants prepare for the first pass

And thunder towards each other

Before the game starts we chose a virtue that each of our knights would posses, ironically we both picked the one that would give out knights a strength bonus on the first pass.

The next step is to pick a jousting ploy from your deck of cards. These are such things as, Aim for shield, Aim for Helm, Aim for crest, Dodge and Swipe. Depending on what you choose you may get to hit first, gain a strength bonus or handicap your opponent.

The cards are placed face down and turned over when the knights reach each other on the tilt.

The cards in question

Once the ploys have been revealed then the combat takes the form of a normal Warhammer combat but obviously with lances. The pluses or minuses making all the difference.

We played first to three wins (although I think the rules state best of three). Count Johan one by using ungentlemanly moves such as dodging and finally swiping Sir Erny from his horse to win! Huzzah!

The Joust took some time to resolve and the rest of the imperial contingent may have spent a little too long in the beer tent but next was the combat of arms!

This was an idea the Lenihan and I had come up with based on the story of the Combat of the Thirty that took place during part of the Hundred Years war. It was quite common for knights to display their prowess in a formalised combat during a tournament or even during sieges (something that is reflected in the Battle of Nations tournament held every year). So we thought we'd have teams of knights battering lumps out of each other to show who was the most chivalrous!

The imperial contingent were late to the tournament so had failed to show their skills in the Battle of the Dwarfs Tomb and some individual bouts earlier on as well as test of Knightly skills versus Snail.
These tails will be told on Erny's, Rab's or Lenihans blogs as they were the other competitors along with Golgfag (who I don't think does the blogging, tell me if I'm wrong).

But the Von PoomFickel retinue did get the take part in the combat of the King's tree (which obviously the days highlight!) An ancient tree grows on a hill out side the castle walls and it is said in a (newly discovered) velum parchment that

'Whomsoever choppest downeth 

the tree of Kings shall becometh 

the true King of the Landeth'

So without further ado three retinues vied for the right (or the elbow room) to chop down the tree! 

The imperial retinue moved as quickly as they could towards the tree while trying to intimidate Erny's retinue 

We used Warhammer 3rd Edition without being particularly precious about making sure every rule was spot on we simply went with what we remembered to be right.

The Retinue of Sir Lenihan split in two, the smaller part (note the Dwarf) heading for Erny the rest heading for the tree.

We worked out the retinues base on the points in Warhammer armies and giving each retinue about 150 points giving you the option of taking level 5 or 10 heroes.

My smaller group reached the top of the hill

And turned to receive a charge for Lenihans Larger unit

Who promptly killed one of their number and chased them from the hill top, giving the dwarf the opportunity to start chopping at the tree!

Meanwhile, Sir Erny's retinue had finished off Sir Lenihan's hero and advanced, en masse, towards the tree.

Seeing trouble coming, Sir Shortington (I am not a dwarf!) doubled his efforts to fell the tree!

While my second unit charged his minders

Allowing my rallied unit to return and charge Sir Shortington

Only for him to swiftly 'off' one of them and force the others to 'strategically withdraw'

My other unit was being whittled down and could see Sir Erny's lot advancing in the distance

But prevailed in the end, vanquishing the varmints!

And then immediately being charged by the fresh unit of Erny's, which killed The Moon Duke...

Forcing the last knight to run away as well

At this moment, Sir Shortington succeeded in chopping down the tree (which failed to squish anybody despite a re-roll, boo!) and declared himself to be 'King Shortington'! And promptly charged Erny's knights in the flank who lost the combat and ran off with the frothing dwarf in pursuit.

This gave my rallied troops the opportunity to regain the hill while Lenihans final duo rallied in the background

While the dwarf continued to hack freely at the fleeing bretonnians. Seeing his tree being occupied by the imperials he managed to halt the pursuit and returned to the scared mound

Only to have hos glory denied when the imperials charged down the hill and finally put him out of his misery

But the day wasn't over, the imperials charged up the hill towards the last of Sir Lenihans followers who were attempting to wrestle victory form the jaws of a beastly defeat

But their valour wasn't enough and they fled the field leaving another Bretonnian border land to be subsumed into the empire

We had a great laugh with the is game and it was nice to see 3rd ed working so well on a small scale. We solved the three way by rolling for turn order each turn which worked quite well as it added that little level of unpredictability. I do love playing with the OGRE guys and I hope to have lots more games in the coming year. Cheers guys!