As a huge fan of both Slugfest Games and Kung Fu Fighting, I was eager to check out their latest offering, En Garde, a game with similar mechanics but centered around fencing as opposed to martial arts.

I'm happy to report that En Garde is every bit as good as Kung Fu Fighting, and that Slugfest has stepped up the quality of both the cardstock and artwork with this game (not that Kung Fu Fighting was poor in either respect, but the difference is noticable).

In En Garde, players take the roles of duelists and are each given a large card with a section to track their poise - how cool and in control they are during the melee, and a spot to hold a single item such as a weapon, shield or cape. Players are dealt out seven cards and the fracas begins.

On a turn, a player may first discard any number of cards from his hand, and then draw back to seven. He can put an item into play or use cards that regain lost poise (tucking in his shirt or wiping his brow, for example), and he can battle against a single opponent.

Battles begin with an attack card, possibly with the aid of an attack enhancement card to increase the amount of poise it will cost the target. The victim of the attack can play a response card to block the attack, and possibly play a counterattack card of his own. The attacker then gets the opportunity to play a card that negates the response or blocks the new attack coming his way. This goes on until no more cards can be played, and then damage to one or both of their poise is assessed and tracked. More powerful attacks cost poise to use, so it's often the case that both attacker and attacked suffer some lost poise.

If a player's poise falls below one, no matter what the leftover amount of lost poise would be, his marker is dropped to 'no poise.' At this point, he is vulnerable to being knocked out of the game - any additional damage he takes will eliminate him. However, a player at the no poise level may still play any cards that normally cost poise to use, without suffering the effect.

En Garde plays fast, and the back and forth of combat is quite different than Kung Fu Fighting, which generally saw a heavily enhanced attack either connect or be blocked and that was the end of it. Nearly every attack in En Garde sees some kind of response and many of them have a lot of parries, blocks and ripostes to make them interesting. The only thing I would like to see added to the combat (perhaps in an expansion) would be attacks that involve the other players. Maybe a response card that forces an attack to re-target someone else, or an attack that moves to the next player in the event that it gets blocked (like the Roundhouse Kick in Lunch Money).

Slugfest is becoming on of my favorite small game companies. Their booth was always quite busy at GenCon this year and I am very happy to see them doing well. They're improving the quality of their components (the En Garde box has a very nice molded plasted tray that holds everything perfectly) and their games are easy to teach and fun to play. I can't really think of a higher endorsement for a game company than that.

Great review, thanks! It sounds similiar to Bang!. I might have to check it out.

Totally agree after a few small games. I really like the flow, although it can be a bit frustrating when you can't find a parry card to save your life (heh).

Having done more than a few fencing melees, I'm already working on team melee rules. What I'm thinking, rather than randomly redirecting attacks at another person (which, in practice, is really silly), is that adjacent players could parry an attack at their neighbor, but (having tried this in real life) someone else would have to riposte.