En Garde! Rules Review

These rules were a purchase to encourage myself to finish my pike and shot 28mm project.  I remember testing Ronin and being fairly impressed at a game that tried to make melee a bit more interesting; adding decisions and resource management into the process. En Garde! is very similar, pretty much v2 (but less shooting than Ronin, from my recollection). But have my tastes changed?

The Shiny

It's an Osprey Blue Book with all that entails. ~60 pages long, most of it rules. Just enough art - the minis shown are a bit chubby (we can charitably call them 'characterful')- are there any good musketeer lines? and some Osprey art. I didn't have any trouble using the book. I reckon most folk who read this blog have an Osprey book by now, anyway.  It doesn't hook you in and sell you a cool game universe like Zone Raiders or Carnevale, or Gamma Wolves - but Zona Alpha did better, with a similar layout. 

Not great, not terrible.

Overhead (What you need to know/have to play)

You throw 2D6, and will need a few counters (reload, combat pool tokens, wounds etc - about a dozen or so each), Models are classed Rank 1 (wimps ) to Rank 5 (OP hero) - each with a combat pool corresponding to the rank. There is Move, Initiative, Fight, Shoot, Armour stats and some special rules.

Overhead is pretty simple - you don't need a lot of kit, and there's not a lot of stats or special rules to memorize, but games will have tokens scattered about.

Activation & Movement

Players alternate moving models until all have moved, then alternate shooting until all have shot, then come to the combat phase which is a bit trickier. 

I quite like the activation - players can skip movement in favour of reloading, or hiding, or aiming, or giving an order (leaders can do a joint move with nearby allies). Lots of decisions. They also have a facing which is a good way to add tactics (rather than the 'everyone sees 360 noscope' of many games). You can jump and climb and fall and all that skirmish-y stuff you'd need in a swashbuckling game.

There are lots of decisions here and it is simple yet interactive. I like it a lot.

 

The minis in the book could charitably be described as 'characterful' - are there any good musketeer/swashbuckling miniature lines?

Combat

Ok,this is where I nope out. Hitpoints? I hear you ask. No. This is a game where the mechanics (resolution) of combat is simply so convoluted and slow, my 2023 self is simply not interested.

Shooting. You roll (add) 2d6. Add your Shoot. Then add or subtract up to 13(!) modifiers, some of which rely on you tracking if you have moved or aimed this turn. Then subtract 6. If the score is 1 or more, you may have wounded them. But wait - you now need to use this number for the wound table. To do this you take the number, then add your weapon strength and subtract target armour, then consult the wound table*. *I don't mind stun/light/grievous/kill wounds, but even this is not straightforward; needing differing amounts of stuns/wounds before you go 'up a level.'

Phew. A few things to do there. But that's EASY compared to melee combat.....

Now I applaud any attempt to make melee meaningful, beyond just pushing models together and rolling dice til someone loses. Ronin and En Garde! use "combat points" a resource you can allocate to attack or defence. Better troops have more combat points. I'll do my best to explain, but the examples and explanations in the book took up several pages of dense text, so not sure if I can do this in a few paragraphs. Here goes:

The players secretly draw counters equal to the combat pool (total) of the models in melee, assigning them to attack or defence (I used black or white Go counters for Ronin). They then reveal them to each other. Each model in the combat then rolls for initiative (d6+stat+modifiers). Models can opt to attack or pass (in order of best->worse initiative), rolling off in case of draws. This is the rough combat sequence.

However there's also a fair bit involved in actually making an attack (attack resolution). Pick the attacker, remove an attack counter from the pool. Defender declares Ploys. Attacker declares Ploys. Attacker rolls 2d6 + Fight +/- any modifiers (usually to do with weapon type or wounds), then Defender rolls 1d6 + Fight +/- modifiers. Subtract the Defence total from the Attack total. Just like shooting, if you get a 1+, you may have caused a wound. You then add any weapon modifiers and deduct defence, and voila! You have resolved a single attack. In only 8-9 steps!

Ploys are things like parrys, feints, ripostes or powerful blows - which allow you to modify rolls or even regain attack/defence tokens. (Cool, but other games do similar stuff, much faster)

I love the idea of the resource management (do I go all out attack? defend? balance?), the hidden counters, picking ploys - it's just the resolution is so bloody convoluted I'm not actually interested in playing. The mechanics are getting in the way of the game. The rulebook example (between three models) goes for a whole page - hundreds of words of dense text. To call it a RPG-lite is unfair to many RPGs which do combat much more efficiently.

Morale tests are triggered if 25% of the warband suffer a wound (or the just leader) in any given turn*; then you test in a way about as complex as you'd expect (*I'm curious: if a 10-man warband loses only 1-2 guys each turn; could they all die without ever needing a morale test?) Maybe I'm reading it wrong, exhausted from the preceding pages. There's plenty of modifiers, and there's different states (Wavering and Routing) which have different effects. Removing stun tokens is different again.

The combat ideas are good, but there's so many steps - so much adding, subtracting, modifiers. I could completely resolve a fight between 3 guys in ME:SBG in the time it takes to just allocate attack counters or roll for initiative in En Garde! - and there'd still be another 7-8 steps to go. It's just not worth it. Not only are the mechanics clunky, the extra tactics and options it gives are not worth the time.  I'm sure the process could be streamlined but if I pay for rules I'd like them to work 'out of the box.' The 20-model 'cap' is very optimistic. I'm a bit sad - I wanted to like these rules.

Chrome (Gear, Special Rules, Scenarios, Campaigns)

There is a sensible weapon and armour list which covers major types used (you could probably use En Garde to play Ronin's Japanese period). The ~20 special rules are also reasonable. There are extras rules for mounted combat and cannon. There are sample warbands - from landsknechts to aztecs, conquistadors, ottomans - even the musketeers: and 5 scenarios.  Enough to get by, but not lavish (probably as expected in a limited size book). There is some 'campaign rules' but they are very very limited - a paragraph or so of how to level up - nothing like the full-fledged Mordhiemesque campaigns of Burrows and Badgers or Zone Raiders. I did like how some extra rules for magic and monsters were included - you could have a witch hunter, a mage, a werewolf, a witch etc.

The best bit is there is a point system allowing you to build a model from scratch. I do like this. It means you can fill the gaps yourself, if you think the warband or unit lists are lacking. It's great.

I'd label this "competent but unspectacular." It's does the job, but doesn't really sell me on the setting and the campaign is a token gesture. Although the 'create stats for your own mini' building system is pretty sweet. More rules should do this.

Recommended: Not for me, thanks.

En Garde! does a lot of things right. The activation and move sequences are good; interactive with lots of decisions. The special rules and gear lists are sensible and clear. I love the points system allowing you to make units from scratch - true freedom! I applaud the idea of making melee a series of decisions - something more than just deciding to push models together. But after seeing these mechanics? If that's what it takes to add depth to melee, I'm cool with just pushing models together and chucking dice, and doing it 10x faster. The mechanics get in the way of me playing. It makes a sword-fight slow.

Not sure if you will like it? Read the above section on combat. If you think it sounds cool and cinematic, like the idea of secretly assigning attack and defence points - and you aren't bothered by the processes involved - then grab this game. I recall playtesting its predecessor Ronin and finding it interesting but slow: 10 years later, I am less tolerant of multiple steps, modifiers and math. Others may disagree - I'd say the general vibe on the net about Ronin and En garde! is positive.

Admittedly this game has inspired some more game design musings (melee)/(elements of a game that are dealbreakers) and it has inspired me to rework on my own homebrew Middlehiem rules and experiment with melee stances. So I am getting some use out of the rules...