Welcome to the First Arena of Honour to be held at the Round Table of Bretonnia. This tournament will celebrate the re-launch of this site and is based on the popular "Arena of Death" format found on many Warhammer forums, but with some particularly Bretonnian twists.

Entries for the First Arena of Honour have now closed. The Arena of honour takes place in the Discussion Board here.

You (or your champion) are a Bretonnian Lord. You will do combat with other Bretonnian Lords in a knock-out format to decide the winner of the tournament. You have basically all the options at your disposal that you would have when selecting a Lord for your army - all the vows, virtues, equipment etc. can be found on the entry form. However, that is not to say that everything will be equally useful - the Virtue of Duty, for instance, has little use in a single combat where combat resolution plays no part! Choosing good combinations of equipment is up to you and this, combined with the luck that every good general needs, is what will win you the contest.

For those who have not played an Arena of Death, the GM rolls the combat and then writes up a dramatisation of what happened. This occurs in a thread on the board, where you will be able to role-play your character between bouts (or, if you're not playing, you can simply role-play a spectator). This role-playing is at least half of the fun, so please get involved!

Rules of the Contest

Selecting your Character

You may select a Lord worth up to 240 points. Obligatory selections are the Lord himself (110 points, with heavy armour and a hand weapon) and his barded warhorse (21 points). This leaves you 109 points to spend on vows, virtues, magic items and mundane equipment. A Knight of the Realm equipped with a Lance and Shield will therefore have the full 100 points left to spend on his magic items, while a Grail Knight similarly outfitted will have only 81 points remaining.

A maximum of 100 points may be spent on virtues and magic items combined. This is the standard interpretation of the rules in the Army Book and is what we will be using here. You may, of course, only have one virtue and one of each type of magical item (weapon, armour, talisman, enchanted item), although you may take both armour and the Enchanted Shield as normal. You may only choose options that are available to a knight with your vow - no questing knights with lances or knights of the realm with the Grail Shield!

If you choose the Armour of Agilulf, then this includes a shield, in order not to spend any more points on a shield please choose 'none' in the shield field on the entry form. If you choose the Tress of Isolde then please use the "Other Information" field to say when you wish to use it. If you wish to benefit from the Lady's Blessing then you may take the Grail Vow or the Virtue of Purity or you may Pray at the start of the combat - but this may lead to you loosing the initiative in the first round (see below.)

Be warned: the entry form does not check your entry for legallity; you can quite happily choose a character with magic armour and shield worth well over the 240 point limit and with over 100 points of magic items. This will just waste your time and the time of the tournament organisers, so please don't! Note also that you will have to be registered and logged in to submit your form, if you are not then you will not be able to submit it.

Fighting the Battles

The combats will take place on horseback and knights will get their normal 2+ save. However, the horses will not fight themselves - this is a contest between the knights, not their steeds. The combats will count as challenges between the two knights. Normally, both characters will charge in the first round and will strike simultaneously, however if one character has chosen to Pray for the Lady's Blessing and the other has chosen not to Pray then only the character who does not Pray will count as charging in the first round and will strike first in that round. Knights equipped with a lance and a magic weapon will, as per the normal rules, use the lance when charging and the magic weapon in subsequent rounds - to specify that you want a lance as well as a magic weapon, please say you are taking a lance in 'Other information'.

In subsequent rounds, knights will fight simultaneously with the exception that knights with Great Weapons who will strike after those with single-handed weapons and knights with different initiative values (e.g. from the Virtue of the Ideal) will strike in initiative order (assuming they are both armed either with single-handed weapons or Great Weapons). Combat will continue until one knight is reduced to zero wounds, at which point the winner continues to the next round.

The Entrants

Entries received:

1. Sir Hillier
2. Briston the Noble
3. Sir Ljung
4. Sir Christoph Tetreaux
5. The Marquis d'Ascoyne
6. Joreth of Heldaine
7. Dark Stranger
8. Lord Lambard
9. The Red Knight of the Quest
10. Charles de Puissant
11. Master Chrystyan of Erandor
12. Duc de Buc
13. Sir Lanselot
14. Sir Francois de Dampierre
15. Mikel Moronce
16. Jacques De Rochefort
17. Lord Maeven the Black
18. Guardian of Ingram Abbey