I my last post I made reference to another one of those 'lost' GW games that never quite made it out of the Studio and into gamer's lofts. That game was, of course, Chivalry. A good read of the first page of the article will inform any enthusiast that Chivalry was a game involving battling knights set not in the Warhammer World, but the Fourteenth century and was being developed by Alan & Mike Perry, Dave Andrews and Nigel Stillman.
Now that is quite a design team, is it not?
Sadly, all we got to see of this game is what I present to you here in this post. A card based system for fighting one on one engagements between two knights. Though with a little conjecture, we could easily suppose that the 'Full Tilt' game published in White Dwarf 215 some seven years later may well have its origins in the Chivalry project.
So what do we have here? In truth, its a fairly simple card game that should resolve a combat quite quickly and if played between to players who are familiar with the system, fairly frantic. Thanks to the enduring images of the knights on the cards themselves, many of which display the zany humour of GW at that time, I could imagine it easy to imagine your models leaping, and slashing and blocking away with gusto. The distract cards are particularly amusing, to me anyway, and remain something I have fond memories of, as are the cleave cards, complete with bloodthirsty depictions of limbs being removed.
By favourite card has always been the boot card. Classy!
If you don't want to read the article presented in scans I shall give you the quick gist of how the card game works. Players roll a die with the highest scorer being deemed the attacker and the lower, the defender. Each player then selects six cards (attack or defence) from the decks. The attacking player can select one of his cards to represent his first strike, or risk picking the top card on the remaining deck. Once this card has been played its laid down on the table and the defending player checks his cards to find out if he can defend such a strike. If not, the number indicated on the attack card informs the player how many cards he must lose.
Play continues until one player lacks any cards at all.
This being GW, there are several other 'special rules' to consider that further vary the game and add a little more depth. These rules are linked to the rarer cards in the deck.
This being White Dwarf, there are suggestions about how the system could be adapted for use in Warhammer. They suggest that the cards are used to help resolve personal challenges on the battlefield and go as far giving you a few pointers how to tweak the system to accommodate it.
Personally, it looks like a bit of fun and a desire to use it may well encourage players to issue personal challenges just to try out the system. I cannot actually ever remember playing it though, which is a shame, as I played practically everything else GW produced during this era but it is certainly something I hope to try out in the future.
So then? Anyone else remember this card game from way back in 1990? Did any of you readers actually play it? As always, please share your opinions in the comments section below!
Orlygg
I once had a go at working these cards up to the right size to go in those card protector sleeve thingies that CCG players use, as a project to teach myself how to use Illustrator... but I never finished it :/
ReplyDeleteI did play through several solo duels with the cards to see if I liked the game, which I did - I recommend having a go. I can see it working well in the sort of small, narrative-driven game that epitomises oldhammer. RoC games and the like.
When I got rid of my copies of WD somewhere during the nineties (I only have issues 1-84 left in nive binders - I wish I kept everything up to 140 or so), I browsed through all of them to keep the articles that I was really interested in. Chivalry was one of the ones I ripped out (together with the diorama photographs shown before). The loose sheets still sit in one my archive boxes as one of the projects that "should be played one day".
ReplyDeleteNever played with these at the time BUT We used these in one of our recent 'oldhammer' games ... the Robin Hood Game ... we played last year. Every time any two characters got into a fight we used these cards to resolve it. It played pretty well although sometimes it could drag on a bit waiting for someone to get the upper hand. But a perfect bit of fun to add to a narrative game.
ReplyDeleteWhat weapon combos did you use? Was it always sword and shield? If you did use other stuff was it balanced? Imagine RH with staffs etc.
DeleteAlways liked the idea of using this but never came across anyone who had made real use of it.
We didn't worry about the weapons they were actually using. Whilst the card show a sword and shield combo the action of High Parry or Dodge etc are not weapon specific enough to matter.
DeleteI always thought it looked good .... took me all these years to making any use of it. But was really glad I gave it go. It made the character fights between Robin and Guy much more 'cinematic' as the advantage passed backwards and forwards and there was lots of opportunity for Errol Flynn style banter ... Not so fast Guy .... Take that you Saxon scum.....etc. That otherwise would have been lost in the simple roll of a dice. I would certainly use it again.
Cool, ,yes I realise that the targets, moves etc, can still work, just wondered if you had made any changes.
DeleteI the rules as written the value on the attack card reduces the opponents had by that number. Did you stick to that or did you consider whether the target had armour and work saving, damage etc.
The discussion of these has revived my interest in making use of them, but I want to make some modifications.
Keep asking questions as you are about the only person I have come across who has actually played with them in a game. ;)
"In truth, its a fairly simple card game that should resolve a combat quite quickly "
ReplyDeleteAhahahahaha! The one time I played this, it took nearly an hour to come to a conclusion. A fun wee game on its own, but useless as a plug-in for Warhammer as it was advertised.
Might I suggest that if you only played it once and others say it is quick.... that you may have not done something right?! ;)
DeletePlayed the crap out of this game.
ReplyDeleteHow'd you find it?Did you mak any mods to the standard version?
DeleteThis is wonderfully interesting! I'm going to have a go at it - I think all this reading about "The Lost Game" has given me a really good idea. Well, potentially anyway!
ReplyDeleteKeep us posted how that goes! :)
DeleteI have been wracking by brains over the last couple of weeks trying to remember this game! I have some vague recollections of a combat card game where the cards showed the region under attack/being defended but could not initially identify it by googling. I was on the cusp of giving up, assuming I had imagined it, and designing my out game when I had a sudden recollection of a little slip of paper with a 'leap back' defence, and also managed to recollect when I played it (hence possibly linking it to white dwarf). Armed with that extra info, google brought me to your site. My thanks, my sanity is now slightly less at risk...
ReplyDeleteI think I played the game quite a bit back around the publishing date, and also attempted to integrate it with warhammer, but my memories are (as you might guess) sketchy at best.
Let us know if you play it again... I always thought there was some in the game... but as it was set I never really got a game that flowed as I wanted it to. Be interested if it worked for you or if you made any tweaks
ReplyDeleteWhy not, I am planning a small scenario at the moment, and adding knights to it wouldn't be too much of a problem. I shall try and use the cards to resolve the combat and see how it goes! Look out for a blog post soon!
DeleteGreat look forward to it... 😊
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ReplyDeleteWhat WD issue had those rules in, please?
ReplyDelete