The Three Amigos!

Shaun and rich popped round last night for a veritable riot of Musketeer.

Despite a few games with Ganesha's recently released Flashing Steel, Rich ran us through a free set, "And One For All!" from Eureka. Download and examples of play HERE.

The first thing that made me sit up and realise that this was something DIFFERENT was the declaration that "you don't measure movement". It turns out that you move, and interact, between terrain and playing figures. Not SO new to me then!

I'll let the Eureka site explain the mechanics to you but basically you get the chance to make multiple actions, successively gaining a die per action attempted to test against that action with. Just don't roll a 1 at any point as that's when you loose initiative and your run of actions ends. SIMPLES!

In short, once we'd spent a couple of turns learning it all became very intuitive. The mechanics actually encourage HEROIC play and I soon found myself looking for any possible flourish which really suits and brings alive the swash in one's buckle.

Relaxing HEROICALLY after another successful sourjon in the name of her majesty the Musketeers slake their hard won first at the local hostelry unaware that Rochefort and the Cardinal's guards stand ready to enter, stage left!

Rudely interupted from his third horse-pie Porthos intercepts Rochefort's diversionary rowing boat borne amphibious assault!

Rochefort shows his true quality, as cad and bounder, by holding the serving wench, Yvette, as a human shield. Booo, hisss, booo!

Porthos sees off the less the crack Carmine Marine division by employing, empty, beer barrel artillery but puts his trick back out in the process!!

Aramis and d'Artagnan rush to Yvette's aid but so keen to impress her they fail to deal with Rochefort!
Note - to generate a decent dice pool to take on Rochefort I attempted many witty retorts and manly postures only to continually roll 1's ending the activation prematurely.

Milady De Winter gets in on the act attempting to Seduce / Distract d'Artagnan. Failing, he only had eyes for Yvette, the green headed monster reared with Milady resorting to dagger play and a whirling kick to his nethers!

The remaining Cardinels Gaurds storm into the beer garden whilst d'Artagnan takes Milady roughly in hand much to her continuing fury.

Whilst his fellows remember the scenario objective of escaping, rather than chatting up the bar maid, Aramis duels with Rochefort moustache-o, moustache-o!!

Pulling hard on the oars the d'Artagnan and the Musketeers slip from the Cardinal's clutches once again bidding sweet adieu to Yvette, who remains entirely unmoved by their attentions!

Despite Shaun's general take on board / bored games we quite happily ran through 3 games of The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Pendants from which all of the above figures were sourced.

Run on card activation its a good fun game. A trifle stacked towards the Musketeers and it probably doesn't hold up well to repeated play but it kept us well entertained for an hour or so.

Shaun and Rich have both picked up copies primarily for the figures, counters and all important activation deck which at £30 is a pretty good deal.

As is often the case, talk soon turned to how both games could be turned to other genres / theatres with particular talk of 70s Action Movies and Matrix style stuff  for  "And One For All!".

I know Kung-Fu!!