En Garde! Tuomas Pirinen & John Blanche’s Dueling Fantasy Vision
July 7, 2025 by avernos
With the Trench Crusade rulebook now officially in production, a fascinating new project has begun to emerge from the shadows. Tuomas Pirinen is reuniting with renowned artist John Blanche, famed for his distinctive and surreal fantasy art, after more than two decades apart to bring En Garde to life.
Conceived by John Blanche, En Garde is a bold and stylised tabletop skirmish game rooted in his unmistakable gothic aesthetic. Set in a fantastical, water-logged city teeming with mystery and danger, En Garde imagines a world where sanctioned duels decide fate, honour, and survival. Each clash is a tense one-on-one battle between unique characters—from vampiric nobles to deadly swordmasters from distant lands—all rendered in 54mm scale for maximum visual impact.
The concept is clear: a fast, furious fantasy duelling game where players command a single exquisitely detailed model in battles of wits, reflexes, and bright steel. The design challenge—making one-on-one combat both deeply tactical and endlessly replayable—has long been a holy grail of game development. Tuomas teases that he’s cracked the formula and promises more details soon.
To whet the community’s appetite, an early preview of the game includes tantalising glimpses of the first miniatures sculpted by industry legends Paul Hicks and Patrick Masson, alongside a handful of Blanche’s original character sketches. As expected, the designs are dripping with baroque elegance, brutal character, and gothic flair.
More information on En Garde is expected later this year. For now, the stage is set, the duellists are sharpening their blades—and an exciting new chapter in fantasy wargaming is about to begin.
Will this game be Brutal, or Brutal Deluxe?
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I remember Miniac had been talking about designing this exact game, more or less, for a while now. I wonder if he’s involved in some way, or whether they just beat him to it. It would suck if he was still invested in that idea and somebody got there first.
As much as I like both Blanche and Pirinen from old GW days, this one just feels like a kid lost his colouring markers and made a half baked game somehow. Does not resonate. At all.