All for one...and a Turnip for Steve!!

I do so look forward to club nights, the meeting of like-minded people, the air of camaraderie, the chance to get your character figure to violently sexually assault your mates character figure with a choice of root vegetables....war is indeed hell. My good friend Clint made a visit to the club offering to run a game for us....it was all down hill from then on. Take a look at Clints blog for another view of the game.

Building by Ziterdes, other terrain by Frontline and others, figures by Redoubt...hanging chandelier by Mark

The game in question was the highly interactive Three Musketeers game called '...And one for All!', a skirmish level game available as a free download from Eureka Miniatures. The USP of the game is the very open ended game turn for each player, you can get your figure to almost anything in a bound as long as you do not roll a 1 on a D6. After each successful manoeuvre, such as 'I will jump on this table...', you have the option of trying to carry out another manoeuvre. Each new manoeuvre adds a dice to your stack and if any of them come up as a 1 your turn ends. The idea is that by successfully carrying out as many manoeuvres as you can prior to an actual attack with a weapon you can add dice ready for that killer bit of sword play. This means that players will invariably come up with the most outrageous plans to get themselves in a good position to attack and build up power. This could, and often did, involve a players turn going something like this....

1. I will move up to the table and pick up that small keg (roll one D6 and anything other than a 1 your character does the action).

2. I will throw said small keg at Andy's head (roll two D6 and avoid getting a 1...also note that the actions were most definitely directed at the player rather than the character! Such aggressive actions could actually wound and possibly kill!)

3. I will run up to Andy and pull his hat down over his eyes (roll three d6 etc....all very cinematic)

4. I will now fight with Andy in a duel (this is the attack that the previous moves were building up to and gaining dice for) Andy will defend with a number of dice equal to his remaining life/wound tokens, three or less, and I fight with three dice gained from my three successful actions plus the number of dice equal to my remaining life/wound tokens. The numbers of dice are not that important, it all hangs on your highest dice against theirs and the difference.

So that is the basics. Now add some wargamers with the wit and sophistication of a concussed eight year old, desperate to build up to a decent attack whilst trying to out-do each other in the silly stakes, and you have one hell of a boisterous game on your hands! Oh, it all starts of nicely enough, each player appearing to be working out some very logical move with a sensible narrative, but all too soon it begins to get personal and you just know there is going to be tears before bedtime....and it gets oh so personal too.
" I push Steve off the balcony....I jump onto Steve's now prone body....I jump up and down on Steve's head..."...and all this before a sword is even drawn!

Some highlights....

The mass small beer keg throwing episode as each player tried to knock the others out at range (we had a lot of movable terrain pieces such as tables, benches, kegs, boxes, bags etc. to encourage the imaginations)...all very early St Trinnians...

My attempt to build up some attack dice by first ...'poncing about the place a bit'...only to roll a 1 and leave my character poncing about the place a bit on a street corner outside the Inn for an entire turn.

My character 'poncing about the place a bit' outside the Inn....sigh.

All the 'leaping from the balcony onto the chandelier so I can swing around in a large circle and thump into Andy/Mark/Alan/Steve's back'...this went on for some time, there was almost a queue for the stairs to the balcony at one point!

The aforementioned episode of Mark jumping up and down on Steve.

Andy throwing an insult (in French) so heinous at Mark that his character dropped his sword and actually took a wound!

Andy kicking my prone and wounded character in the nuts and killing him.

My character urinating over Steve's.

My character attempting to insert a turnip from the market stalls outside the Inn into Steve.

Everybody picking up a large bench at one time or another and attempting to twat someone but failing every time.

The new rule we added near the end of the game whereby if anyone rolled more than two 1's in an action move that move went disastrously wrong. The defending player could then decide just what had gone wrong and leave the attack in a very compromising position. My character jumped from the balcony for my third action, rolled two 1's and it was decided that his cloak caught on a nail and he was left hanging in mid air!

I managed to kill two characters and only died once!!!!

There was an awful lot of laughter generated by this game and all those involved a very good evening indeed. There was a great deal of talk of how the game mechanics could be used for a variety of other periods and genres.... Despicable Me Minions Vs Clangers for example (this should give you a very good indication about the mental balance of the MHWC membership....)