In general, there’s not a lot of humor in miniatures gaming. Even games like Star Schlock or 7TV, whose settings and characters tend to be fairly tongue-in-cheek, take their subjects fairly seriously and don’t provide many opportunities for humor during the game. Well, all that is about to change with Osprey Games’ Hairfoot Jousting, a game about amateur halfling jousters who can’t control their mounts.
To quote the back cover of the rule book, “Small teams take to the field on the backs of various unruly mounts – pigs, turkeys, sheep, and more – to tilt against their rivals, striving to knock them to the ground with their blunt lances.” It’s a very simple game with the emphasis on silly fun. But it’s by Joseph A. McCullough, creator of Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadowdeep, so there might just be a game here too.
Let the Jousting Commence!
In a normal two-player game, each player controls three models representing enthusiastic halflings on unlikely mounts, using improvised garden implements for weapons and armor. Each character has one offensive and one defensive special strike, abilities that trigger when doubles are rolled. Each mount has a special trait that gives them an advantage during movement, which can help mitigate how chaotic movement is.
Each round, players take turns moving their models one at a time. Movement is done using templates (similar to the ones in X-Wing or Gaslands), but there’s a catch. At the start of movement, the player chooses a direction for the model to be facing, but then rolls a die to determine which movement template is used. This means that you can steer your mount more or less in the direction you want it to go, but it might not go as far, or it might veer to one side or the other, sometimes quite dramatically.
Once the movement template is chosen and placed, if it overlaps any opposing models you get to try to hit them with your wooden spoon, or whatever you’re using as a makeshift lance. One exception: each template has a “safe zone” at its start, equal to roughly the model’s base size (60mm in a normal game), which essentially makes nearby models (friend and foe) safe from attacks – you have to get up some speed before you start thwacking people…
To resolve a strike, the moving player rolls four dice and the defender rolls three, and here is where it becomes a bit of a dice game. Each player takes their highest single die, and adds +1 if any of their dice are doubles (or +2 for triples). Whoever has the highest result is the winner – if it’s the attacker, the defender takes damage equal to the lowest die the attacker rolled, and if it’s the defender, the attack is avoided.
If whoever came out on top rolled any doubles, their special strike (either offensive or defensive) comes into play. These are fairly simple game effects like adding extra damage, causing the defender to move, or gaining extra Applause (more on that in a moment). If there is more than one opposing figure in the template’s path, further strikes are made, but with the attacker rolling one less die for each subsequent attack. If any friendlies are in the way, they (or the moving model) take a single damage, and the movement continues until the end of the template is reached, or the move is blocked by a fence or other piece of terrain.
The Crowd Goes Wild!
The game uses Applause as a currency that can be spent for re-rolls. Applause is mainly awarded for failures rather than successes – you get one Applause each time one of your jousters takes damage, and four if you start a round with fewer jousters in play than your opponent. Some terrain effects and special strikes will also give Applause. Once you get up to ten Applause, you cash it in for one re-roll, to be used any time on an attack, defense, or movement roll. It makes for a great catch-up mechanism for the player who perhaps isn’t doing so well, and helps to ensure that the game stays fun for both players right up until the end.
Is There a Game Here?
Having movement and attacks happen at more or less the same time keeps the game play simple and fast moving, which is good because the randomness could get annoying if you overthink it. This is not a game of deep strategy; it’s not a game that should be taken seriously at all. The table will often devolve into a clump of models who are too close together to strike each other, and you will often have to spend moves just getting out of the way. However…
By mid-way through my second game, I started noticing that there are little strategic decisions to be made in this mostly chaotic game. I would try to end my moves so that I was near opposing models, hoping to be in their save zone when they moved or at least get in their way a bit. I would go after opposing models who had already taken a lot of damage in hopes of taking them out, but that would often backfire.
There is some strategy to be had, but Hairfoot Jousting is mostly silly fun. I’ve had several laugh-out-loud moments during my games, such as one in a recent game when my stoat-riding jouster, who had taken a lot of damage and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, made a run at my opponent’s pig-rider, took said pig-rider out during the strike roll…and then ran smack into a wall, losing his last endurance point and dropping out himself.
There is a campaign system that gives jousters with experience points over multiple games that they can spend to gain additional Special Strike abilities, as well as awarding specialized equipment to the winning team each game. Similar to the Applause rules, experience is earned as much by failing as by succeeding, with the advantage going to the most active jousters in a game. It encourages players to get in there and bump into stuff rather than playing it safe on the sidelines.
Getting Started
Hairfoot Jousting is designed to be miniatures agnostic, and the introduction encourages players to seek out interesting models or kit-bash their own. However, North Star Military Figures has created an official set of models based on the artwork in the rule book. The set includes six jousters (all you’ll ever need for the game), one on each of the game’s six different mounts, plus a practice dummy that features in one of the game’s pre-designed jousting pitches. You can find the models on the North Star webstore in the UK, and at BrigadeGames.com in the USA.
And of course, any other company that makes fantasy miniatures is likely to have at least a few halflings, hopefully some on colorful mounts.
Other than miniatures, you’ll need the rule book (available from Osprey Publishing as well as the two retailers mentioned above), a 30×30” (or so, distances aren’t all that important in this game) playing surface, and some bits of terrain – mainly fences, puddles and barrels that can be as simple or elaborate as you want them to be (I built my jousting pitch entirely out of papercraft fences and a few painted kebab sticks). Printable roster sheets and movement templates are in the book and also downloadable from the Osprey Games website.
The Other Side of the Coin
A final little bonus that was kept secret until the game’s release is Wartnose Jousting, a goblin-themed reskin that can be found by flipping the rule book over and reading from the back. It is essentially the same game, with the hairfoots’ charming mounts replaced by centipedes, frogs, and the dreaded naked mole rat. Special Strikes become Dirty Tricks, Applause becomes Jeers, and the pitches are populated with torches and carnivorous plants instead of puddles and barrels. There’s even a matching set of miniatures, again based on the artwork from the book.
Final Thoughts
If you take it in the spirit that’s intended, Hairfoot Jousting is a bit of silly fun that will have you moving models around, chucking dice, and hopefully laughing out loud from time to time. It’s definitely not a serious game, but with its low model count, minimal terrain needs, and short play time (60-90 minutes), it doesn’t need to be.
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