Kniggits - A Simple Medieval Combat Game

(Rock, Paper, Scissors meets Sword and Shield)

by Steve Baker

Equipment

THE FIELD OF BATTLE: A large, flat tabletop - at least 3 feet square.
THE KNIGGITS: (Pronounced 'Cuh-nig-its' - like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) Some number of cheap toy plastic Knights - at least a dozen of them. The kind you can pick up a bag of in your local "Everything's A Dollar" store will do fine. If you want to play without them, use drawings of Knights on paper squares, little Lego figures - anything. If you have figures that are less than about an inch tall, then you might want to halve all of the distances mentioned below and play on a smaller table - if you have really big model knights then you might want to double all of the distances and play on the floor or something.
SKILL TOKENS: For two players, you need at least 40 counters in each of three different colours in about equal amounts. The more, the better. I like to use the smallest Lego bricks because you can stack them up next to the figure who has those skills - but you can use pennies, dimes and nickels, or plastic counters or poker chips - or even just write down what skills each kniggit has on a piece of paper. The "Everything's A Dollar" store is a good place to rummage for this stuff.
- Use one colour of token for 'Movement Tokens'
- Use a second colour for 'Attack Tokens'
- Use the third colour for 'Defense Tokens'
OBSTACLES: Some suitable obstacles - things that can stand in for walls, trees, battlements, etc. Build some obstacles from Lego! Pile up paperback books or CD cases. Half a dozen large obstacles or a couple of dozen small ones is fine.
A RULER: Marked in inches. All movement (and everything else in the game) is measured to the center of the figure's head - so it doesn't matter what pose the figure is in or what size base it's mounted on.

Dispute Resolution

Whenever you need to decide who goes first - or resolve an argument, a traditional best-of-three Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) game decides. The official rules of RPS can be found at the World RPS Society web site.

Setup

First, the players should agree on a points total for each army in the game. 50 points is a good number to start with.

If you have more than two players, you can each play as a separate army or you can team up - it doesn't matter how many players there are on each army so long as each army has the same number of points.

POSITION THE OBSTACLES: Place the obstacles on the table somewhere. Obstacles should either be touching each other - or at least two inches apart.
BUY YOUR ARMIES: Each person takes skill tokens in any mix of colours (cost 1 point each) and kniggits (cost 5 points each) up to the points total for their army. In a 50 point game, you could have one Kniggit with 45 skill points all to himself - or six kniggits with most of them having just three skill points.
SHARE THE SKILLS: Now, each team shares out the skill tokens amongst their kniggits. Every kniggit MUST end up with at least one token of each colour in order to start the game. If a team doesn't have enough tokens to do that then whichever kniggits don't have at least one of each are considered to have run away in terror before the battle even starts.
POSITION THE KNIGGITS: The players place their Kniggits (along with each kniggit's skill tokens) onto the battlefield anywhere within six inches of their side of the table.
ASK WHO IS LEFT-HANDED: Each player should be asked whether he or she is left handed - and must answer truthfully.

Playing

Players take it in turns to play - each turn consists of three phases:

PHASE ONE - MOVING:

When it is your turn, you can move each Kniggit two inches for every Movement skill token he has left - up to a maximum of 12 inches. The Kniggit can turn in any direction at any time in the move - so you can (for example) turn around, make part of your move, then turn again, then take the rest of the distance.

If your kniggit comes within two inches of an enemy kniggit then you are "IN COMBAT" and you must stop and end that kniggits turn right there. If you started the turn IN COMBAT with an enemy then you may turn around and move directly away from him. If there is more than one enemy in combat with your guy then you can only move in a direction that takes you further from both of them. Sometimes you may be surrounded several enemies or pinned against a wall and find yourself unable to move without coming closer to one of the enemies you are in combat with.

However, no matter what, you can always turn around.

Once you have finished moving all of your guys, any that are within two inches of an enemy are "IN COMBAT". If there is more than one enemy within two inches then you must make it clear which one you are turning towards.

PHASE TWO - TURNING:

Once you've finished moving ALL of your kniggits, your opponent may turn any of his kniggits that are in combat so that each faces one of their attackers. It must be clear which enemy each is facing.

PHASE THREE - FIGHTING:

The person who'se turn it is now gets to fight with each of their figures who is in combat and facing a particular enemy. Kniggits can only attack in the direction they are facing - but they can defend against attacks from any direction.

Hence, there are two situations. Either both kniggits are attacking (because they are both facing one-another) - or one is attacking and the other can only defend because he's facing the wrong way.

Attacking and defending is done similarly to rock-paper-scissors - except you use BOTH hands.

Your left hand is your shield - your right is your sword (mace, spear or whatever). Players who are left-handed have their sword in their left hand and their shield in their right.

If you are attacking, you use BOTH sword and shield. If you are only defending then you do nothing with your sword hand and play only with your shield hand.

So, just like Rock-Paper-Scissors, you go "ONE, TWO" - then on "THREE", you put out BOTH hands with your fingers put a certain way:

Sword moves:

With your thumb stuck straight up, you are 'attacking high' and trying to knock down his attack skills.
With your pointing finger pointing at the other player, you are 'attacking middle' and trying to knock down his defense skills.
With your pinky pointing at the other player, you are 'attacking low' and trying to knock down his movement skills.

Shield moves:

The same three hand gestures made with the shield hand signify 'defending high', 'defending middle' or 'defending low'.

The Results.

If you attack at the same height as the other player defends - then he/she successfully defended against your attack and nothing happens.

If you attack somewhere that's not defended then the enemy kniggit loses a skill token of the appropriate kind (attack, defense or move).

Kniggits with no attack tokens left cannot attack.
Kniggits with no defense tokens left cannot defend.
Kniggits with no movement tokens left can only crawl at two inches per turn.
Kniggits that have only got tokens of one colour left get scared and run (or crawl) away towards their side of the board as fast as they can. From this point on, they can only move or (perhaps) defend. They may not attack - even if they have attack tokens left.

Fumbles.

If you mess up your hand gesture - or change it after the count of 3 or mess up in any way like that, then the hand (or hands) that messed up have no effect - either no attack happens or you completely fail to defend.

Winning.

Unless both players agreed on some specific objective at the start of the game, you win when all of your opponent's kniggits are leaving the game.

That's it for the basic rules. Start playing!