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The Duel

I was searching my book shelf for a reference book and came across an old set of rules I used to play a lot in the early 1990's.

 To my knowledge the game is long out of production, and the company that produced it was taken over and dropped the game from its inventory... or so the interweb leads me to believe.

The game is 'The Duel' by Alternative Armies, and it is a set of rules that allows players to fight out duels of honour in the Alternative Armies fantasy world of Valon.



 As I have always been a huge fan of The Three Musketeers and the writings of Dumas, who is my all time favourite author, I re-read the rules and wondered if I can convert them to a historical game instead of a fantasy one.

 Simply put, Yes.

 With this in mind I started looking for historical duellist type figures to use for the game and set my heart on the Brigade Games range of swashbucklers.

 Maybe I am fated to play this game again, for whilst looking through my lead pile that is contained in boxes in a cupboard, I found I actually owned some of the Brigade Games swashbucklers already!

I am missing the two on the right: I need to check my lead pile


I must have bought them years ago and forgotten I had them.  I only found three of the five figures that came in the pack, but it is enough to kick the game off the ground whilst I search out the others.

Playing a game might be a bit harder though.  I am not sure if my mate would play a duelling game, which he might do, as we have played with the Eureka 40mm Musketeers before and enjoyed it.

I also have two Wargames Foundry 'Duelling Hussars' somewhere that I could use for games set in the mid 1700's... at least I think the figures were part of their Seven Years War range.

 Failing that, I will need to come up with a solo system for the game - probably through the use of a flow chart to determine the opponent's actions.

 The final option is to try a play by email/blog game on the minuscule chance that I actually come across someone in the world that is actually interested in playing a game, and is familiar with the rules.

Whilst waiting for option #3, I might have a crack at option #2 to see how it could work.

I also had a thought of using Roll20 to play the games online in real time... but I think I am pushing smelly squishy brown stuff uphill with a stick on that idea.

More on this as I figure things out.


5 comments:

Clint said...

The figures do look very nice sculpts.

As for the brown smelly stuff have you ever asked "Does it need to be relocated to a higher altitude with a primitive wooden implement" Usually it does not need such a treatment.

Zabadak said...

I had a similar fantasy after discovering my own bag of swashbuckling figures a while ago , but the 60+ figures looked to be too daunting and I dismissed the dea (eventually). I used the old Swashbuckler game from Yaquinto as the basis for games.

Shelldrake said...

Zabadak: What company made the majority of your swashbucklers? I would love to see some photos of your swag of swashbucklers.

Thanks for the heads up on the rules. I was able to find a copy of the rules here: http://hkl.hpssims.com/Game_Sets/Yaquinto/yaquinto_games.htm

With a referee, it would be easy to run a Play By Blog for this game.

Zabadak said...

All my figures are from the 3 musketeer range mad by Redoubt Enterprises - they were great value then and still are !
I suppose I could also supplement them with the vast number of Pirates that I have, made by Foundry and others, but Redoubt are a little larger.

Paul Williams said...

A duelling game played by email, blog, or even Roll20 sounds great actually. I used to play The Duel solo years ago, heavily modified by house rules I have long sine lost. I recently found my old copy and am interested in developing duelling again. If you fancy playing any time, send me a message (I think you can reach me through G+ or my email williamspd at gmail dot com). Cheers, Paul.