Knerdle

A move which deflects an opponent's directional-based attack - most usually a driveback or shunt, or a high-velocity token slap - rather than blocking it completely, so that the new direction of the attack is advantageous to the knerdler: particularly prevalent in All-In or team games and nearly useless in one-on-one games unless you want a token stack shunted or stribbled somewhere. A way of using the opponent's strength against him, or at least against a different opponent. (Thus, most knerdles are "sideways", "diagonal" or "reverse", implying the new direction of the attack with respect to the knerdler.)

It takes great skill to knerdle properly: skill which is difficult to practice, since one seldom gets the chance to polish up one's knerdling-stick more than once in a game, on account of the strange stipulation that the stick must be passed to the first player in the line of the newly-knerdled attack, at the start of his next turn, as compensation.

The term derives, in fact, not originally from MC but from the game of cricket, where it was coined by the great commentator Brian Johnston to describe the semi-deliberate shot where the ball comes off the edge of the bat and, instead of hitting the stumps (for clean bowled) or going to a fielder (for a catch), goes past both stumps and fielders and down to the boundary for four runs (hence, using the opponent's pace against him.) Johnston was a keen MC player - like the umpire Dickie Bird, with whom he shared several games - and it was on his suggestion (in a reader's letter to "MC Player") that the term was adopted by the game of MC.

[JLE]

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