Medieval Tournament (1)

Next week the plan is to run a medieval tournament game for my gaming group.

I always had a fascination for medieval tournaments (see some previous photos of my heraldic knights here), but they're not always easy to turn into a good game. The typical joust (only one part of a tournament) always struck me as being too much rock-paper-scissors. Although a number of games have been published that recreate the medieval joust, it's unclear to me whether there are enough interesting decision points for the players to make.

So, it will not be a joust, but rather a "melee for all". A quick look into my magazine collection turned up some useful inspirational articles. A very useful one was published in Miniature Wargames (with Battlegames), issue 363.

The idea is that we start with 16 knights, and every knight is backed (in secret) by a player. We will fight several melee events (with elimination), and whoever survives in the end wins the tournament. I will of course hand out some additional victory points throughout the tournament, but I still have to come up with a good set of skirmish melee rules. I have some ideas already ...

But for now, I have time for some more historical research. Yesterday evening, I spend quite some time reading my TASCHEN copy of the Freydal Tournament book. Inspirational stuff!