From Joust 2011 to Road to Ekra 2019

During the last week I have had the opportunity of play testing the new version to play Joust with Two Hour Wargames. It is called "Road to Ekra - Jousting Tournaments" and in a hasty manner than Chris Rea with his song, in this supplement we will go along with our star William "Billy" Pink in his journey from the Edges of Ekra to the heart of Ekra, it is not going to be a bed of roses...

 This wandering will bring us trough nine scenarios plenty of action and adventures, where we will be able to carouse, fight against not only bandits but also wrathful knights to protect the honour of a lady, or discover a betrayal...

 Although, this book not only brings a campaign, but also improves (and in what way!) the rules for playing joust tournaments.

 This week I have had the opportunity of play both rulebooks with just one day of difference, what has permitted me to explore the differences and the improvements... Let's take a look.

 In Joust from 2011, the stats for the knights were very complete, you had one stat for Prowess, another called Martial Skill and the last one Horsemanship, and you was going using one of them in each part of the joust. The main problem was that the tables were plenty of modifiers that were modified by the use of Bonus Dices, thus... at the end you must check for each part with a bunch of dices and some doubts if you were rolling correctly...

 With this method, the tournaments were interesting since you could customize your knight developing its skill each time that you won a tournament, the downside was that each tournament was an ordeal... enjoyable the first battle, but losing interest during the next assaults.

  In Road to Ekra, the stats are simplified, you just have the race and the Reputation of your knight, with the blessed Bonus Dices. And in each turn you roll 2D6 against your Rep, adding o removing dices by your race or Bonus. At the end, you just have to roll around 4 or 5 dices, something very affordable.

  Also, the Charge phase has changed since, now you just roll to know what is the sally of your horse, and you don't have to roll to control if your horse change its speed during the stretch till you arrive to your enemy.

 But here not only have the good news, since in road to Ekra we can find the rules to fight the second part of a Joust, the Melee!. In this second part, the knights fight on foot, using their weapon, against the other knight. These rules were not in Joust, so you needed to buy "Black Sun, Red Sand" with a complete bunch of stats, similar to Joust stats to represent the fighting skills called Savvy, Strength and Speed. Now you just use your Reputation, your race and your Bonus Dice.

 Here we can see the difference when you play Joust or when you play Road to Ekra Tournament:

 Here we can watch some photos of the Torunament:

An interesting tournament afternoon