Agincourt (game)

Agincourt, designed by Jim Dunnigan,[1] recreates the Battle of Agincourt.[2]

The components consist of[1]

• 45 cardboard counters representing military units (32 French and 13 English)
• other counters representing dead soldiers and survivors from battle
• a full-colour contour map of the battlefield
• a rulebook

Combat is resolved with a 20-sided die, and damage uses a step-reduction system, with each damaged unit generating dead and fugitives. Fugitives move randomly, and units encountering them lose the rest of their movement.[1]

In the July 1979 edition of Dragon (Issue #27), Tim Kask called the game "incredibly playable" but "very complex." Kask did find a major problem with the fugitives: as battles progressed, it became difficult to remember which fugitives belonged to which side, since they were both represented by identical counters: "For every line that everyone lost, there is a fugitive marker running around somewhere, or there are combined fugitive markers running around, if they all happen to form in the same hex. And these markers running around all over creation can become quite difficult to keep track of in their random movement, and which way they’re supposed to go next. And it can bog down the game and just be fugitive movement phase." However, Kask admitted the survivors were an important element of the game, and concluded "I feel that Agincourt is a major design triumph."[1]