A Comparison: Ronin vs En Garde

As the first of these games to be published I spent only a small amount of time on Ronin. 


Collecting some of the superb Zvezda Samurai I did a few practice games, set around the half dozen figures per side level.

Whilst I quite enjoyed the way it plays the odd thing I discovered about Ronin was that I never did find the narrative I wanted for the game.  I liked the combat pool system for solo play, and experimented with blind drawing attack and defence counters.  Still I moved on feeling that I was missing something.

When En Garde was published I felt the sense of narrative in the game immediately.  These are the same rules, tweaked a little to streamline them.  The game also had a more refined combat system.  Attacks were now specific, and the player could use ploys to parry, riposte disarm  etc...  It played well with half a dozen figures a side, and even better with twenty or so.

It occured to me that I had never sat down to compare the two systems, and that, having played a lot of En Garde revisiting Ronin may discover whatever it was I was missing!

Ronin has five phases, to En Garde's four.

1.  Priority Phase
2.  Move Phase
3.  Combat Phase
4.  Action Phase  (not in En Garde)
5.  End Phase

In En Garde the move phase takes in the action phase. It's just more logical.  Combined movement and actions are pretty easy to get used to.  In effect each figure can move or take an action.  Reload, aim etc... Or the figure can move half and perform a smaller action.  Move and fire, kick a chair at an enemy and then move, throw a brandy bottle into the fire place or kick in a door before lumbering inside...

In Ronin the figure moves, then fights and then choses an action.  It's just more clumsy.  In addition Ronin tests morale in the priority phase, not the action phase.  That is a small difference but in En Garde you end the turn discovering whether your force is steady, wavering or routing as a result of the fighting, rather than beginning a new turn.

One big difference in Ronin is that you can Shoot again in the action phase; not really feasible when the main weapon of ranged combat is an early black powder one.  In Ronin Teppo arqubusiers may reload in the action phase, not being forced to spend an entire turn to do that.  Many of my games of En Garde have been lost whilst trying to reload.

Actually I think that En Garde makes reloading too easy.  It assumes twenty seconds to reload an early musket.  That seems far too quick for some of the louts in my warbands.  I am considering going to two turns, with a charge and ram token followed by a prime and cock.  Taking a faster reload means a much increased chance of a misfire, any double rather than just a double one. (The dreaded snake eyes would become a catastrophic misfire)

As the first of thrse two games Ronin has Special attacks, disarm and subdue, as part of its combat pool.  The fighting has a precise, almost martial arts flavour.  En Garde uses ploys, lots of them, to give a feeling of fighting taking place.  Parry, riposte, disarm subdue, feint, mighty blow... using a pistol... to these I added the Doublé, which is a fencing move, but for a wargame means a double 6, as a critical Hit, returning an attack counter to the combat pool.

Similarly a double 1 is a weapon dropping fumble.  Those two small amendments have given me a great deal of fun in En Garde, and rather than martial arts, the feeling is sometimes that of a drunken brawl.

In fact I always feel that the fighting in En Garde is rough and tumble.  This is Oliver Reed's Three Musketeers, and perhaps even Dumas original.  The fighting is a desperate scrabble to win.

Games at this skirmish level are about identifying with your protagonists, or at the very least making the little lead guys interesting.  These games use attributes, such as fast, tactician or powerful.  En Garde uses far more than Ronin.   There are only nine a attributes in Ronin, but easily double that in En Garde.

In addition I use a table of character flaws whenever a figure adds an attribute.   The Fat Knight Sir Huge is Powerful, but also a hopeless drunk... Captain Cushing may be  suberb tactician, but he is also a tremendous bigot. (Rolling s d6 to discover  the depths of these character flaws I found that the knight is a level 3 drunk, but Cushing is a level 6 bigot) Such weaknesses make my characters individuals.

The focus in Ronin is on Bujutsu skills, rather than the character.  It fits the martial arts ethos better.  Ronin also has a nice fatigue system as an advanced rule which I quite like.

All in all then, two games that are only subtly different.  My preference is probably quite clear, but I will revisit Ronin, perhaps to discover how wannabe bandit chief Itchi Nakkas will fare against his deadly enemy the Ronin Saiko Dai, or how the endless war between the Toyota and Mitsubushi clans is motoring along.