Building your boile team

I’m sure you are aching to create your own team of glorieaux gladiateurs.  The process is rather simple.

You begin by creating your masques.  You must first name your four gladiateurs and assign their color.  Then, you should describe their uniforms.  Since Boile de Muertre is inspired by the Aztec game of Ulama, it is common for the glorieaux gladiateurs to wear the Aztec loincloth and matching animal heads, often birds of prey.

This goes well with the boile paddles which are fashioned after the Aztec macahuitl (the chopping weapons seen in pictures of Aztec warriors).

The paddles are most often two-handed affairs, but there are some who wield them with one hand and keep a hand free for balance or to attack their opponents in the neutral zone.

Of course, the paddles are now fashioned from very light and powerful metals and many are adorned with light displays and in more gauche cities, advertisements.

A starting team is represented by team deck, which consists of a certain number of cards from your base Uno deck.  No, you will not have access to all one-hundred and eight cards with a fresh team.  You must earn this through play.

A beginning team of gladiateurs in a regulation chronicle begins at Rank Five.  A Rank Five team will consist of all four color cards numbered 0 through 5.  Yes, for the purpose of building your team, the 0 is a zero.  You may then pull one Action card of each color and as many of the Wild cards as you wish into your team deck.  However, Wild Draw Four cards and Wilds cannot be chosen when building a team, they can only be gained as prizes from your royal for performing deeds for them between matches.

In regulation play, a Boile team gains Rank after winning tournaments.  Tournaments are held by Royals and consist of matches between two to four equally Ranked teams.  The winner of the tourney will win the fleur-de-lis trophy for that tournament and gain Rank and notoreity for themselves and their royal.

For example, let us say that the royal Fabienne is holding a tourney in her city of Vieux Toulouse.  Your team, L’oiseau Marin, attends and plays matches against Les Diviseurs, Les Faucons and Les Chiens D’enfer.  Your team wins all three matches and is awarded the Fleur-de-Lis trophy for Vieux Toulouse for this year.  Your team is advanced one Rank.

This continues until your Boile Team achieves Rank Nine.  You are then moved into The League.

Again, I am tired and need more wine.  I shall continue anon and we will discuss dealing with Royals and how this is played.

The Muertre in boile de muertre

“I am playing to murder.”  This is the phrase uttered when one lays a card down and intends on harming a player on an opposing team.  But what does this mean, you ask?

It means that the Numbered card you reveal when it is your turn will be applied against the colored gladiateur of the card you have played.  If you play a Red 7, then you are harming the red gladiateur on the opposing team for a marque of 7.

Once you have harmed the red gladiateur, your Red 7 will be laid down sideways on the zone of your opposition.  The opposition will be unable to harm or score with any Red card equal to or less than your Red 7.  To have any effect, the players would need to play a Red 8, 9 or 0 (declaring it to be a ten, of course).  Furthermore, if you are playing a Rank 5 or 6 team and you have played a Red 7, then your opposition could not have a Numbered card higher than 7 (the zero card does not count in this instance).  This means the red gladiateur is completely at your mercy.  You may declare him to be dead by any means you wish to describe.  However, if you wish to be seen as a merciful team, you can declare the red gladiateur to be incapacitated instead, taking him out of the rest of the game.  But, of course, the crowd demands blood and your Royal may be embarrassed by your pity.

Once that red gladiateur is out of the game, the opposing player cannot play any red cards… unless he plays them with a Wild and declares them to be another color.  If a player loses half of his team through murder, his team is crippled and must forfeit the game.

Attempts to murder can be blocked by a Nulle or Skip card.  They can be turned back by a Reverse as well.  An attempt to do harm cannot be topped by a higher Numbered card of the same color, it only means both sides are being harmed.

A gladiateur who is harmed by an attack but not murdered can still play any Action card and any Numbered card higher than his harm including the 0 card if declared to be a ten.

You cannot “heal” damage during a match of boile de muertre.  If your team wins and your gladiateur survives the match, the player declares the scar for his gladiateur.  If your team loses and your gladiateur survives, the winning player may decide upon your scars if he chooses.

Only one deck? No deck?

Ah yes, in case the players only have one deck of Uno cards.. or one nice deck and a themed deck of an annoying pop star, for example, you can easily play a modified game of Boile de Muertre.

In the case of one Uno deck, team one will consists of two colors (Yellow and Blue, for example) with choice of two Wilds and two Wild Draw Fours to build their team.  Team two would have the remaining cards to build their deck.  Another modification is that each boile team will have two gladiateurs, not four.  Lastly, when a player declares he is going to harm an opponent’s player, he must declare the color he is attacking (since he wouldn’t have that color in his deck).

In the odd case where a group doesn’t have an Uno deck at all, there is a bit more to modify there.  There would be no Wilds, Kings would be Draw Twos, Queens would be Nulles or Skips and Jacks would be Reverses.  The ten card would be the 0 card.  As for suits to colors, break it up however you wish, just make sure you note it.  Then you proceed play with the one deck modification above.

Now we shall continue with the explanation of the rules with two decks.

The game within the game

This Bordeaux is passable, you have my thanks.  Now we continue.

There are two halves to playing Boile de Muertre.  You have the matches between different boile teams.  This is played with a deck of cards for each player and is a simplistic representation of the actual match.  Think of this simplification as how chess compares to an actual war.  Secondly, you tell the story of what happens between those matches, when gladiatuers serve their royals.

We shall begin with the matches.

Boile de Muerte is a variant of Ulama, a game played by the Aztecs for thousands of years.  Think of it as a cruel version of badminton.  In Boile de Muertre, a team of three to four players remain on one half of a playing field and use paddles to knock a ball (we refer to it as the etoile, “the star”) back and forth in an attempt to score points.  Boile de Muertre is played during three sections or periods (we have always called them “thirds”, yes, I know, terribly original).  Whichever team has the highest score at the end of the third third is declared the winner.  A team may also win if their opponents forfeit, which happens from time to time when players are injured… or killed during play.

A team scores a point when a player of the opposing team hits the ball out of turn (each side has three passes before they must fire the ball across into the other team’s court); or if one misses the ball and it touches the ground; accidentally touches a team-mate; or crosses the neutral zone.

I have researched many of your world’s card games in an attempt to allow you to easily play this game.  I have no desire to trifle myself with your various game manufacturers and search for the perfect art commissions for individual cards.  I have not found an exact duplicate of our Boile de Muertre deck, but you do have a game that is more similar than dissimilar.  It will do.  Once your world becomes enamored with the game, I am sure you will produce your own decks.  I look forward to your attempts.  But for now, you may use a deck of the card game you call Uno.

Now go and fetch me two decks of Uno and I will show you how to use them to play a match of Boile de Muertre.  Hurry along…

Further Introduction for Boule de Meurtre

Your masque

As a player of Boule de Meurtre, you will create a gladiateur who will be your masque, or avatar.  You may create a completely new masque if you wish, but it is perfectly acceptable to base a masque on a popular or historical gladiateur.  I myself have played the Violet Stalker, Jean the Lion and Sophie the Poseur.  There is no shame in copying a hero as your masque.

In the game, your masque must be able to live and breathe.  You should be able to sculpt or paint him, at least with the palette in your mind.  Your masque should feel real to you, but he is not real.  There is no need to know what he ate for breakfast three months ago… unless that affects him now in a palpable way.  He is as real to you as the figures in a beloved novel.

This is accomplished by giving him a name, a story about his time before he became a gladiateur, a reason he holds to want to become a star of the league, and a royal he has aligned himself with.  This royal will be the benefactor of your gladiateur.  You see, only the commoners would dare risk their life and limb in the Boule de Meurtre.  The most notable of the gladiateurs (and who would want to play anything other than the most notable) have always ended up threaded into the courtly intrigue of the aristocracy.

I am sure your head is spinning with what royal to choose.  There are so many of the petty bloodlines claiming the wisdom and strength of Bonaparte, you could choose any number of them.  But since it is best not to offend any of them by naming them directly, it is prudent to make one up completely.  As long as you create a royal who schemes against his or her fellow royals (who you also dream to be), has some dark secrets and the need for a strong gladiateur who would do their business in the shadows in exchange for favors and a lifestyle above their station, then you have what you will need from your royal.

All of this information should be recorded onto your masque’s feuille.  I will jot down a popular version of the feuille for you shortly.

Once you have your masque and royal in your mind, you could easily portray him in a play or write a story about his adventures.  But as I said before, this is a game.  A game has rules and ways to determine who it is that wins and what happens when more than one of the players want something different to happen in your shared story.  Otherwise, it is uncivilized squabbling…

We will discuss this in time.  I am tired and need some wine.  Fetch me a bottle of your best Bordeaux.

Some Beginning Text for Boule de Meurtre

In your world, the great Napoleon Bonaparte was unable to hold the French Empire together.  I’m told the Grande Armee took heavy losses invading Russia and was later defeated by a coalition of nations until he was beaten at Waterloo.  How terribly depressing to know that you have been deprived of the great French Empire of my world.  Your France does not even have the right flag, the fleur-de-lis has been removed because of a revolution.  A pity.

In my world, the House of Bonaparte has ruled for over three centuries now, bringing culture and beauty and enriching the world while also making the streets safe at night and encouraging the beneficial use of technology to improve the lives of its people.  I pity you in this world of squabbling, small-minded puritanical obsessions.

There is a game we play in Le Grande Empire.  It is based on truth, more or less.  This game is played throughout the empire by children and adults, servants and royals alike.  It tells the story of the Glorieux Gladiateurs, participants in the sport of the royals, Boule de Meurtre as they seek the coveted trophy – Le Fleur-De-Lis.

I will show it to you now. You will thank me for this gift.

In Boule de Meurtre (the game based on the sport of the same name), players take on the guise of members of the fan favorite L’oiseau Marin team that plays for the resplendent city of Nouveau Bonaparte.