The King's Army

It was time to determine the game for the second round. This was going to be a partner game, so it was going to be Erika and me versus Captain Chainbeard and First Mate Hugo.

Like I mentioned earlier, Chainbeard never lost a game of luck. The only possible way I could beat him was in a game of logic and strategy.

He pulled out the gold coin again and pointed to Erika,

"Why don't we let the poppet flip this time."

He handed the coin to Erika.

Erika looked at me, "why is he handing me money?"

"We're doing a coin toss. Pick heads or tails and flip the coin." I snapped a bit.

"Oh alright, I'll pick tails."

She placed the coin in the center of her hand and threw it up in a somewhat awkward manner. It hit the edge of the table and fell on the ground and rolled a bit until it eventually settled. We all gathered around and inspected the coin on the ground. It landed on tails! Erika won the toss, so we get to choose the game.

"Hmm, interesting." Chainbeard expressed, as he curiously looked at the coin.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. Wha' game are ye choosin'?"

I had to pick something that I would have an advantage at, preferably strategy based. It would also have to be something I could use Erika’s naive and irrational thought process to my advantage…

"Let’s play the King's Army." I replied.

The King's Army was a game that was invented here in the West Kingdom. It’s a strategy game like chess, but quite a bit different in a number of aspects. It was initially created to simulate battlefield scenarios, but grew in popularity with the general masses. It's a bit of a complex game. I wouldn't expect Erika to know the rules, so I'd have to take some time to explain them to her.

"Wha' terms are ye settin' fer the game?"

"I'll go over that later. First of all though, would it be alright if I explain the rules to the girl first?" I asked.

"Aye, do as ye please we 'ave all the time in the world. Right First Mate Hugo?"

"Aye aye captain." Hugo replied.

Erika and I walked to the other room.

"What kind of game is this Mr. Arno?"

"There is a lot to this game, so I need to make sure you know at least the basic rules."

If she could get the basics down, that would be good enough. I just needed her to be able to move pieces around the board. Her purpose in this game was to essentially be a sacrificial pawn.

"Alright so first I'll explain the basic premise of the game. Are you familiar with chess?"

"Nope, never heard of it." She responded.

I wasn’t sure how someone's never heard of chess. To be honest though, knowing this girl for the short period that I have, I'm not that surprised.

"Okay... Well the King's Army is a game where each player has a general. The player's goal is to defend their general, while trying to defeat your opponent's general or opponents' generals. Prior to the game you put together an army with a variety of units represented by their respective game pieces. Each unit varies in the number of squares it can move and distance it can attack. Each turn a player has three action points. These are used to determine the number of units you can move and the distance. Players alternate turns until one side's generals have been defeated."

"Any questions so far?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yes I have many," she said with a confused look on her face.

"Okay, go on then."

"Um... First of all, we are playing as a team, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay that sounds good. Next, I was wondering what the game board looks like?"

"The board can vary from game to game. Prior to the game, players can arrange individual 10x10 grids into various sizes and shapes to create whatever scenario they please. For this match though, I'm just going to choose a simple 30x30 square."

"Gotcha. Lastly, what do all the different pieces do?"

"I was just about to get to that."

I happened to grab a box of game pieces earlier, so I could explain them to her. I held out the first piece,

"This is the General. It costs 1 action point to move and moves 2 squares per action point in any direction. Attacking costs half an action point, it can only attack 1 square away. If this piece is taken you lose the game."

"’Kay," she responded, looking a bit bored.

I could tell she was reaching the limit of her attention span. I needed to speed this up a bit.

I pulled out three more pieces,

"This is the infantry, archer, and mage. Infantry can move 1 square for every half action point. It costs half an action point to attack and can attack 1 square away. The Archer can move 1 square for every 1 action point. It also costs 1 action point to attack and can attack up to 3 squares. Next is the mage. The mage costs 1 action point to move 1 square and an action point to attack. It can attack up to two squares away and its attack can cover a width of 3 squares. Did you get all that?"

"..." She looked half asleep.

"Girl! Did you get that?" I shouted.

"Uh... yeah... the pieces cost points to move and stuff" she replied hesitantly.

I doubt all that sunk in, but hopefully she got the bare minimum.

I grabbed the last two game pieces,

"This is the cavalry and the catapult. The cavalry costs 1.5 points to move up to 3 squares and 1 point to attack. It can only attack 1 square all around it. The catapult costs 1.5 points to move 1 square and 1 point to attack. It can attack up to 5 squares forward and a width of 3 squares."

She had a blank look on her face and simply replied with,

"yes."

"One last aspect of the game is putting together your army. You can have up to 20 units, but you can only have one catapult and it is equal to three units. Cavalry is equal to two units and everything else is one unit. That should be pretty much everything you need to know in order to play."

"Oh... Great, are we playing now?" She asked, looking bored to death.

We came back into the game room.

"We should be all set to begin."

We all gathered around the table. I set up the 30x30 grid that we would be playing on.

"Do ye wants first move?" Chainbeard asked.

"That's fine with me." I said.

We then put up dividers that were about a foot tall. This was the phase where we set up our army. The dividers were so each player was unable to see the others' armies until after the game started.

I had a pretty good strategy in mind so I put together an army that consisted of the following:

• 1 catapult

• 2 cavalry

• 3 mages

• 5 archers

• 5 infantry

My starting point (from my perspective) was the first two rows of the bottom left corner of the board. Up front I had my infantry and my cavalry and behind I had my general with mages on each side, as well as my archers and catapult.

"Is everyone ready?" I asked.

"No wait! I need a few more minutes." Erika exclaimed looking like she was quite confused.

"Alright, then let us know when you're ready."

We waited probably about twenty minutes for Erika to put her army together. She looked as if she was inspecting each and every piece.

"Okay, I think I'm re-... Oh wait."

She fiddled around with the pieces for a few more moments. I was having second thoughts about picking this game.

"Okay, now I think I'm ready to play."

We took down the dividers so everyone's armies were now visible. Chainbeard and Hugo's armies were as follows:

Captain Chainbeard

• 1 catapult

• 3 cavalry

• 5 infantry

• 5 archers

• 1 mage

First Mate Hugo

• 1 catapult

• 2 cavalry

• 8 infantry

• 5 archers

And then there was Erika's army, which consisted of... 20 infantry.

"Why are all your units the same?" I asked.

"This was the only unit I remembered when you were explaining earlier."

Chainbeard and Hugo started laughing a bit at Erika's army.

"Aye, I say we start this match." Chainbeard said with his chains rattling from laughter.

I moved three of my infantry up two squares each and ended my turn. Next was Chainbeard. He moved two cavalry three spaces. After that Erika went. She moved six of her infantry one square forward. Lastly was Hugo, who moved up two infantry three spaces.

The first few rounds were fairly uneventful. All of us were mostly just getting our troops moved out a bit, except for Erika who was just moving her troops around with absolutely no reasoning whatsoever. I could see in her face that she had no interest in this game.

I attempted to spread my troops out as much as possible with my mages hanging back to protect my general. My two archers were in position to take an infantry from Chainbeard and an Archer from Hugo. In turn, Chainbeard was able to take my archer with his.

After some back and forth all of us lost some troops. Erika was eventually down to her last few infantry. The most she managed to do was act as a distraction, which worked surprisingly well. Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice Erika's remaining units in order to use my catapult to take out a number of Hugo's key pieces. This left an opening for my cavalry to take out his general, but Chainbeard was able to take out Erika's General with one of his last few archers.

"Thank goodness that's finally over!" Erika said with glee.

I didn't think I'd ever seen anyone so happy to lose.

After a few more rounds we were down to our final pieces. Chainbeard only had his general and his mage. I had my general, a mage, and an Archer, which gave me a slight edge. Eventually, I was able to take out his mage. Then I was able to corner his general, which gave me the win.

Chainbeard clapped, "I still see that ye're sharp as ever Arno. Good job!"

I managed to pull it off. Now all that's left was for Erika to win one last game on her own. I really hoped I could count on her.