A Blizzard of Blows -- Battlelore Session report

Deciding not to let a good blizzard go to waste, Young general and the Old Warrior hauled out BattleLore for a go.

We reviewed the rules, as it had been quite a while since we played, but it turned out Young general didn't need the help. Ahem.

We played the next game in the Creatures expansion, the Magic Vortex, which introduces the Rock Elemental. As usual the creature didn't help much, as will be recounted below.

I had the creature-equipped Standard Army, which in this case broke with tradition and had the Goblins on its side and the Dwarves with the Pennant Army. This suited Young general fine, as he's no fan of the Goblinoids, regarding them as just this side of useless.

Young General's War Council comprised a Level 3 Wizard, and Level 1 Commander, Cleric and Rogue. Old Warrior also went with a Level 3 Wizard, the mandatory Level 1 creature and rounded out his council with a Level 1 Commander and a Level 1 Warrior.

Old Warrior's plan was to pick away at the Pennant Army until he gathered enough Lore to be bale to deploy the Rock Elemental against a weak part of the Pennant line.

And the plan might have worked, too. Several Pennant units were reduced and one was killed off in melee. The Old Warrior drew a Fireball in the initial hand and gave into the temptation to use it, incinerating a Red Banner Heavy Cavalry unit. This was quite satisfying, but in retrospect may have been a mistake, as it took a few more turns to build up enough lore again to deploy the Rock Elemental and by then it was too late.

With a 2-1 lead and a fair number of battered unit in Young General's Pennant army things weren't looking too bad for the Standard troops -- and then Young General dropped the boom. He had been hoarding Lore and finally had enough to play an Assault Card. (It cost him 16 lore because he didn't have a Warrior loremaster.) Well, he had quite a few units within range and was able to slam into the Old Warrior's host up and down the line! By the time the carnage ceased the Standard army had lost four units and the score was 5-2 in Young General's favor. Desperately the Old Warrior's wizard conjured up the Rock Elemental, who did his duty and wiped out a unit for a third flag, but it wasn't too hard for Young General to find that sixth flag and the win as he jumped all over the Goblinoid Lizard riders.

And so that was that. A 6-3 win for the creature-less Pennant army.

Old Warrior was left ruefully considering the possibility that the Rock Elemental, unlike so many of the other creatures, seemed to have serious potential, but he gave up most of it by indulging in a dramatic, but ultimately indecisive fireball.

Next up is Spider river, where Old Warrior will get two chances to see if a creature can make the difference. So far they seem to be more hindrance than help.

Agincourt anniversary - sort of

Today is the anniversary of Agincourt -- sort of. It was fought on Oct. 25, 1415, St. Crispin's Day, famously, but that was under the Old Style calendar that was becoming inconveniently out of sync with the seasons. Under the current (New Style) calendar it was Nov. 3. So from the point of view of the participants the day was Oct. 25, but counting back from our day it's a few days short of 595 years ago.

In any case, I'm not a big fan of Medieval era wargames and therefore don't have much in the way of games covering it except for Battlelore, which sort of does accidentally. Here's the BattleLore set up.

One of the interesting things about the BattleLore scenario is that it doesn't reflect the traditional 6-1 advantage in French numbers accepted by most historians. Interestingly, it turns out that some historicans have been re-assessing those numbers and one has even claimed that the true ratio was only4-3 in the French favor, not all that off from the 10-9 shown in the BattleLore setup above. While that extreme number hasn't been accepted, a consensus seems to be forming that the French actually engaged probably only outnumbered the English by something like 2-1 or so. (The French army had all sorts of non-combatant and semi-combatant hangers on that could give a chronicler an excuse for inflated numbers if he wanted.)

Could it be that the wargame suggests an implausibility for the traditional numbers? And interesting notion.

China-US trade war and its impact on gaming

Of course any China-U.S. trade war would have immense impacts outside the small world of gaming, but this is a gaming blog so that's our focus here.

Over at the Desert News Jeff Thredgold makes this point: "However, there is an important and positive by-product of that undervalued yuan. Goods produced in China are more affordable to Americans, whether shopping at Walmart or Target or Forever 21 or other retailers.
The Chinese currency manipulation allows greater U.S. household purchasing power for Chinese-made goods … good news for U.S. households that are already under tremendous pressure from a very damaging recession and a weak U.S. economic recovery."

Bloomberg News reports:
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said China is headed for a “trade conflict” with the U.S. and other western countries as tensions rise about how to rebalance the global economy.

“What China is doing is functionally equivalent to having large export subsidies and large import tariffs,” Krugman, 57, said in a speech in the Free University in Berlin. “If it were doing that in the normal way, it would automatically be subject to large countervailing duties. And I think that’s going to happen at the rate we’re going.”


For quite some time I've thought that gamers were going to have to adjust their expectations on how much bling was in their games. The decade of the aughts brought us all sorts of terrific games packed to the gills with stuff such as Battlelore, War of the Ring, Tide of Iron and many more. It was also a decade that brought us highly detailed and already painted collectible miniatures in vast numbers used in everything from Dungeons & Dragons and Heroclix to Axis & Allies Miniatures and Heroscape.

As much as a 40% increase in the value of the Chinese currency to the US dollar might help the US in macro terms, let there be no mistaking its effect on game bits - there won't be many, any more. Indeed, some product line may simply become unaffordable to produce and others will ave to scale back considerably. I think collectible painted miniatures, in particular, may become obsolete.

We're already seeing some hints of the coming reality. Fantasy Flight Games is still struggling with finding a way to bring the Battlelore Core Set back to market at an economically doable price. It's latest stopgap is to "repurpose" excess inventory of French-language copies for the English-language market. A welcome development but obviously a stopgap.

We're also seeing plastic being replaced by cardboard in more games. In the latest versions of Axis & Allies, for example, the industrial sites and anti-aircraft guns have been changed to counters.

The bottom line is that players who like a box chock full of plastic are going to find the future very disappointing as China "rebalances" the value of its currency with the rest of the world.

Hydrachondria

Young general was looking forward to smashing up my army with a real cool kind of creature like the Hydra, but the beast ended up being a disappointment, as the beasts so often are.

As a matter of fact, the Hydra gave the Old Warrior his first flag. The fearsome creature charges a unit of heavy cavalry, inflicting no hits at all -- and then the battle back from that unit lopped off all three heads on the creature, killing it.

An advanced unit of dwarves bit the dust next, and then Old Warrior had a chance to use Young general's favorite tactic -- back-to-back Mounted Charges, which left another three units dead. Young General had managed to kill 2 units in the meantime so it was a 5-2 game at that point. He battled back over the next few turns to bring it to a 5-5 tie, with his 1-figure medium horse unit leading a very charmed life. its luck ran out in the face of a Sneak Attack card and that was it.

Young general continued his standard practice of having a war council of equals -- Level 1 all around. Old Warrior opted for a Level 3 commander and a Level 3 Wizard. He considered going with a level 1 Warrior and a Level 2 commander, but that seemed to merely dilute the chances of getting Wizard cards while giving Young General access to more warrior cards. So long as the Young General continues his policy of Level 1 war councils then Old Warrior's best move seems to be a L3 comamnder and a L3 lore master. This provides a substantial advantage in card hand size (10 to 6). The Commander's Stronghold was usefully placed next to the Center sectors archer, providing that unit with a protected perch for raining arrows on units near and far. On the far left flank a light infantry unit moved onto the Magic Pemntacle on Turn 3, providing a 1 lore bonus each turn which was also very useful. The Wizard was very active, emptying the cup on the last turn to spend 12 lore to activate the Sneak Attack that won the game.

Next up is the Magic Vortex.

Giants? Who need giants?

The Young General definitely didn't need his giant in the Denizen of the Wood scenario.

While the Young General has been anxious to start playing with more creatures, he didn't let the dramatic appearance of a Wood Giant in his order of battle distract him from the real key to victory, which was effective card play.

As usual, Young General's War Council was pure balance -- a council of equals, as it were -- with a Level 1 commander assisted by Level 1 masters of Wizard, Cleric, Rogue and Warrior lore. Filling out the Council was the aforementioned Level 1 Wood Giant.

The Old Warrior ,as is his wont, went with his usual maximize-the-hand strategy, with a Level 3 Commander assisted by a Level 3 Cleric.

And that cleric got early action with a second Turn Forest Frenzy that did some damage, although an ill-considered foray to try to assassinate the Wood Giant before he got into his Forest Lair came to a bad end for the Green Banner light infantry unit tasked with the mission, The battle savvy giant battled back with some dice that loved the bonus and three of the four green troops fell to the giant's hammer. Ouch. Needless to say, on his next turn the giant finished off the survivor.

Some jostling around the center weakened a few Pennant units and the Old Warrior was preparing for a strong advance in the sector when the Young General unleashed his favorite card. Yes, the Mounted Charge. It was nice to have a giant in the line, but Young General has the spirit of Murat or Stuart in his blood. His main pre-battle complaint was that his army didn't have any Red Banner horse!

Well, as it turned out, he didn't need any Red Banner horse because his three Blue Banner horse troops portrayed a reasonable facsimile of heavy cavalry. They literally smashed the opposition, eliminating a full strength Blue banner infantry (on the Standard army's right) and the entire left wing of the Standard army (three full-strength horse, one red and two blue) for absolutely no loss!. Suddenly the score was 5-0 and the Standard army was in desperate straights.

Of course there was really little to be done at this point. The Healing Pool brought back a dangerously low Green Banner unit and two of the offending Horse were eliminated in the coming turns to bring the score up to merely 5-2, but the surviving Blue Banner Pennant horse had no trouble picking out a vulnerable 2-figure Standard unit to hit. A Stone Skin clerical lore did little good as the Blue troop rolled three bonus strikes and that was it.

A resounding 6-2 victory for the Young General, who barely activated the giant,although said giant did get the ball rolling by killing the first enemy unit. Still, the heavy lifting was done by more conventional means, as his three Blue horse units eliminated 5 units for the loss of two.

Goblin Chevauchee Battlelore session report

After a long layoff the Young General and the Old Warrior returned recently to their familiar battlegrounds at Battlelore.

This time we finished off the scenarios of the Goblin Marauder pack by playing the Goblin Chevauchee scenario.

This is an unusual Battlelore scenario because it features an army made up solely of Goblinoids on one side. As matter of fact, humans are only a little more than a quarter of the combatants present, as almost half of the Standard army is Dwarves.

The Goblinoids so far have not earned a good reputation with either of us, and they were fated to continue their losing ways again this day, although both games ended up being hard-fought affairs.

Young General started off commanding the Dwarven-Human standard army. As is his practice he took Level 1 lore masters in each of the four classes of Wizard, Cleric, Rogue and Warrior and a Level 2 Commander. This has worked well for him in the past. While he gives up a lot -- smaller hand size of lore cards, no level bonuses, no strongholds -- he believes that's made up for by never having to pay extra for whatever lore cards he uses. He has a small had n size, but every card he draws is useful, in his opinion. He doesn't believe the strongholds are worth the trouble and only a few cards have level bonuses. Old Warrior likes to have choices and likes to trick around with the Strongholds, so he selected a Level 1 Commander, a Level 1 Warrior and a Level 3 Rogue. The Spider rounded out the War Council. The Rogue's Den was placed in the center section between the two Goblin medium infantry and the woods.

The game started with some long-range Goblin archery that picked off a dwarf. Young General believes in offensive play so he came off the hills with his dwarves and started a push on the left flank, followed by offensives all along the front as the cards allowed. As usually seems to be the case, the Goblins came off second best in their encounters with the Iron Dwarves, who were unfazed by Rogue infiltration behind their lines or the unusual stoutness of the band-inspired Goblin infantry. While the Pennant army of Goblins jumped out to an early 3-1 lead, the Dwarves roared back to end up with a 6-4 victory. A key event was a 3-Bonus strike die roll that wiped out the Hobgoblin heavy infantry in the center. As usual the Spider didn't pull its weight, failing to do much damage before falling to a critical hit.

The side switch brought dire predictions of doom from Young general, who was sure that the Goblins would let him down as usual. As it turned out, though, it was a very hard fight. Unlike Old Warrior, Young General knew how to draw some good cards and he was especially aided by an early Mounted Charge and also a Forest Frenzy lore card that each managed to do serious damage to several units and kill outright one unit each time.

As usual Young General spread out his War Council, although the Spider meant he had to settle for e Level 1 Commander. Old Warrior continued in his quest to prove that the proper strategy was to have a Level 3 lore master -- in this case a Level 3 Warrior and a Level 3 Commander. This provided the largest possible hand of 6 Command cards and 4 Lore cards. The Training Camp and the Commander's Stronghold were both placed in the center section in front of the small woods, with the camp nestled between the hill and the trees.

The Goblins do play to Young General's aggressive style of play, and the stout dwarves and less stout men had waves of Goblins dashing against their lines -- and doing quite a bit of damage, too, especially in the center and Dwarven left flank. The humans on the right were able to clear their sector, however and for three full turns both sides were locked in a 5-5 tie hunting for that last Flag. Time and again a single-figure unit on each side escaped what seemed like certain destruction until, finally, a surrounded Hobgoblin Ostrich Rider was caught without out a retreat path when a pair of flags were rolled on him.

After playing one game of the Goblin Riders and a match of the Goblin Chevauchee, Old Warrior's preliminary opinion is that the new Goblin units are all useful additions to that mercenary army.


The Goblin band died early in its exposed position in the Goblin Riders scenario, but it was very usefully well behind the lines in the Chevauchee and definitely stiffened the Goblin center sector.

The Hobgoblin Ostrich Riders are a fairly useful unit, being fast and flexible, although as a green unit they don't have much hitting power. They didn't play a memorable role in the first scenario but they were in the thick of the action in both Chevauchee games.

The Goblin Hyena Riders were the star units of the new set, however. They played an important shock role in all three battles. Their flaw, of course, is the Goblin Run, but if used carefully they can do a lot of damage. Young General's Hyena Riders made very good use of the Mounted Charge and their 2-hex pursuit to chew up several Dwarve units on the flank.

While not a new unit, the Chevauchee scenario in the Goblin Marauder pack put the Hobgoblin heavy sword unit front and center in the action. In both games the hobgoblins went down, but not before doing serious damage in return.

The Chevauchee scenario, in particular, provided a good, hard-fought battle both times and is a scenario I can see returning to.

Kicking Some Goblin Ass

Young General made an atypical choice in this latest episode of BattleLore, choosing to take the Goblin side in the Goblin Riders scenario from the Goblin Marauders expansion.

There was no mystery in this selection, because as much as Young General doesn't care for Goblins, he absolutely loves playing Mounted Charge cards and there was a lot more potential for that sort of thing with the cavalry heavy Goblin army than the mount-starved Dwarven-Human force.

As is his practice, Young General selected a balanced war council with Level 1 lore masters all around and a Level 2 Commander. Old Warrior followed his standard strategy of picking a Level 3 lore master, in this case the Warrior and a Level 3 Commander. The Stronghold and the Training Camp were set up om the right edge of the center and the right flank respectively. Old Warrior planned to use the Training camp to upgrade his blue banner dwarf unit on the right to a red banner and use the Stronghold as a sniper post for some archers.

Young General's been successful enough that Old Warrior felt comfortable inflicting some strategy on the youngster. Old Warrior noted that capturing the bridge was worth 2 victory banners but suspected that if he didn't seize the bridge right away he might be able to spring a sudden victory on the Goblins.

Old Warrior opened the action with some attacks that cleared a path to the bridge but held back from actually capturing it. Meanwhile Young General not only started the game with a Mounted Charge in hand but soon draw a second one, as well as some other useful cards and pressed hard against the center of the Standard Army, even managing to capture the Stronghold!

As usual, however, the Dwarves were deadly in the close combat and kept the game close, with the Victory Banners being 4 for the Goblin-Human Pennant Army of Young General and 3 for the Old Warrior's Human-Dwarf Standard. At this moment Old Warrior unleashed his trap, with an Assault Lore card that allowed a general advance and the seizure of the bridge., bringing the Standard Army within one banner of victory The odds were that the Standard army's attacks would succeed somewhere, and so it proved with the promoted Red banner Dwarf unit finishing off a Goblinoid rider for the win.

A hard-fought victory, and a glance at Young general's face revealed that he wouldn't be caught by a trick like that again!

Some initial impressions of the Dwarven Battalion

After a couple of plays I've drawn some tentative impressions of the new units contained in the Dwarven Battalion expansion pack for Battlelore.

The most unusual unit is definitely the Iron Dwarves Bagpipers. I'll confess that they didn't p;ay a big role in either of the fights I've seen them in so far, but that's largely because I deliberately targeted them for early destruction because I feared their power. While only able to inflict retreats, they roll more dice than any other ranged unit (up to four dice for the Red bagpipers) and are particularly dangerous for Goblins who have the fear the effects of a Goblin Run. I would definitely consider adding them to an army as a specialist.

The Iron Dwarves Spear Bearers are another fearsome unit. Spear units shine when the battle back and as dwarves these guys will always get to battle back. Their battle back strength deters engagement, especially by green or blue units, so they tend to divert an enemy attack into other sectors. Another very useful unit.

The Iron Dwarves Axe Swingers, on the other hand, are fairly ordinary. It's true that they are slightly better than the blue Dwarven swordsmen, but their special ability bonus won't come up often enough to make a big difference in most games. I suspect they'll only be selected as specialists when there aren't other choices as they don't really bring anything unusual to the table.

Iron Dwarf Ambush! Battlelore session

Old Warrior's Human/Goblin Pennant army on top, Young General's Dwarven/Human Standard army below

Young General and Old Warrior continued their long-running series of battles, marching through the Dwarven Battalion expansion at the moment.

Young General has developed a distinct distaste for the Goblinoids and prefers not to play that side of the matches these days, so Old Warrior seems destined to find a way to win with the green-skinned goons.

This battle wasn't going to be the start of that, however.

The Young General's Standard army was well organized and poised to strike at scenario start. As as been his recent policy, he spread his Lore masters evenly around the War Council with Level 1s occupying the Cleric, Rogue, Warrior and Wizard chairs and a Level 2 overall commander.

I want to believe that this vanilla strategy is flawed but in reality it has seemed to work well enough for him. The drawback to this approach are plain enough. He has a small hand of just 2 Lore cards, gives up having any Landmarks and forgoes taking advantage of any level bonuses that cards might provide. On the other hand, he can play ANY card without paying extra lore for it and having so many Lore masters dilutes the impact of a high level master on the other side. The total Lore deck will comprise at least 38 cards of which only 14 will belong to the Level 3 guy on the other side, whereas going with a Level 3 guy himself could result in a Lore Deck that has just 26 Lore Cards with perhaps only 8 that belong to the opponent's guy if the two sides pick different lore masters.

Old Warrior went with his usual Level 2, Commander, Level 1 Warrior and Level 3 other lore master, in this case the Rogue. This still seems like a reasonable selection in my view, providing a large hand of both Command and Lore cards, taking advantage of the many useful Warrior Lore cards and providing a Landmark. On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that this posture came up short yet again.

In this case the Pennant army started off with some decent cards and made some potentially good moves, but seemed to come out on the wrong side of the dice too often. As usual, the Dwarven units were quite dangerous due to their frequent battlebacks. Young General's tactical savvy continues to grow as he took advantage of some fortunate flag results to voluntarily retreat some Bold units that were under attack by multiple units into positions where the second attack was no longer possible.

It ended up being a hard-fought brawl, with the Dwarves coming out on top with a 6-4 flag ratio.

This seems like a more interesting scenario than the Axe and Spear scenario on the flip side of the scenario chart that came with the expansion.

Battlelore session report -- Axe and Spear

Young General and Old Warrior turned their attentions to the Dwarven Battalion expansion, where Young Warrior started off with the Dwarven-dominated army and Old Warrior took a mostly human horde flavored with a few Goblinoids.

Young General continued his War Council policy of spreading the Loremasters around with four Level 1s, although this time he did beef up his Commander to a Level 2 and therefore had a 5-card hand. I'm beginning to have my doubts about this approach. While it does allow the use of any lore cards without additional cost. it also means forgoing the chance to have a Stronghold, take advantage of any Level bonuses or have a large hand of Lore cards. This last point is perhaps the most important. With the top lore master being a Level 1 then the player will never have more than 2 cards to choose from, making it hard to get the cards you want or put together a plan.

Old Warrior once again selected a war council that included a Level 2 Commander, a Level 1 Warrior and a Level 3 lore master of another type -- in this case a Wizard. I like this particular mix for the following reasons: The Level 2 Commander means there will be a 5-card hand of Command Cards, which generally provides enough choices to avoid a dead hand. I like the Level 1 Warrior because many of the Warrior Lore cards are useful and only one of them has a Level Bonus, so 95% of the benefit of picking a Warrior lore master is satisfied by the first level.

As far as a Level 3 lore master goes, I think each of the remaining ones, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue, has enough good points to consider selecting. I decided to go with the Wizard this time mostly as a change of pace. As it turns out I didn't get that much use out of the Wizard's spells, with my best one -- Portal -- dispelled. The best lore card I played was the Assault, which is a Warrior card.

The battle itself, as is our style, mostly involved small maneuvers, rather than grand sweeps. Young General concentrated most of his troops in the center sector, traying to take advantage if the dwarves' toughness. Old Warrior sent the Goblin Lizard riders on around the right but they were bloodily repulsed, barely escaping with one rider left each.

Overall the Goblins did well, being amply supported they were generally bold and the few times there was Goblin Run they didn't lose anyone. The Dwarven bagpipers got little play, and were among the units that fell during a 6-4 victory for the Old Warrior's Human-Goblin force.

Neither of us was impressed with the scenario, which really seemed like a pretty boring set-piece fight, so we may not bother switching sides, especially because Young General is no fan of the Goblins.

As far as the new units introduced in this expansion, the Dwarven spear bearers are pretty decent. Being dwarves they will usually get to battle back, making the spear special ability useful. The Axe unit was, in contrast, fairly ordinary. The jury is still out on the bagpipers. Young General made little attempt to use them and they were among the first units taken out so they only got to use their special ability once or twice and it had no effect.

An ill-informed opinion on some Battlelore specialists

Each Battlelore specialist pack and expansion includes two or more scenarios featuring the new units included in that pack.

A mere handful of plays isn't really enough to have a well-informed opinion of all the ins and outs of new units in the system, but it may very well be all the player has to go on when he is deciding on specialist units for his Call to Arms armies or how to use them in any scenario where they may show up.

After four plays of the two scenarios from the Goblin Skirmishers pack, I do have some initial impressions of the new units introduced, with the caveat they may well be ill-informed and are subject to change.

The Goblin Skirmishers pack introduces Red banner foot troops to the Goblin order of battle with a pair of Hobgoblin Spear Bearer units. In addition, one scenario includes a unit of Hobgoblin swords that was in the base set but not included in any scenarios.

Red banner foot units are slow, but roll a lot of dice while fighting. Goblins mitigate the slowness a bit because they have the ability to "rush" into melee and move two hexes if they attack an enemy unit in close combat. Red banner units benefit the most from being supported because their boldness increases the chance they will get to "battle back" and in most cases they will roll more dice than their attackers. This is even more true for the spear units, which get an extra die when battling back. While potent offensively, supported red banner units are also an intimidating way to anchor a portion of your line and this is probably their biggest boost to a Goblin army, which otherwise seems to have trouble holding its ground. The biggest weakness of these units is that they are still vulnerable to a "Goblin Run" which can prove costly in both lost ground and lost figures. Given that I'm not sure how often they'd be worth selecting as specialists. I suspect that Goblin Rush doesn't offset Goblin Run in most cases.

The new missile unit in the Goblin Skirmisher pack is the Goblin Slinger. This unit's attributes have been extensively revised in the errata, and this discussion is based on the updated stats. Basically, a sling-armed unit gets to roll one more die than a similarly situated missile unit of other varieties. A green banner Goblin archer, for example, rolls 2 dice when it attacks without moving and just one die if it moves. A slinger rolls 3 dice if it doesn't move and 2 if it does. This is useful, as far as it goes, but the sling's drawback is that it has a very short range of just 2 hexes. This forces the Goblin slingers to be closer to the front than is healthy for a light green banner unit and they had a hard time surviving to the end of the scenario in our plays. One suspects that they may be more of a benefit to the opposition as "walking victory banners" than damaging to the enemy. Selecting them voluntarily would depend a lot on the potential battlefield. A battlefield with a lot of line-of-sight blocking terrain would be suitable because other missile units may have trouble lining up long-range shots and will have to move a lot to get into firing position, reducing their dice.

By far the most useful new unit is the Goblin Band. We haven't tried incorporating the Goblin drummers into regular Goblin units yet, but when fielded as an entire unit, the Goblin Band is definitely useful. Indeed, it changes the entire character of a Goblin army because now there's a good chance that the Goblin units will get to be bold, providing more chances for battling back and, even more importantly, reducing the frequency of devastating Goblin runs. We had at least one scenario where there were no Goblin runs at all. The Goblin Band helps all friendly units, not just Goblins. Tactically this means that units in a band-supported sector can deploy at the end of a line and still be supported to boldness. Normally units need to deploy into 3-adjacent-hex formations I call "tercios" in order to provide a mutually supported group of Bold units. With a band present, those three units can form into a 3-hex line while remaining Bold. And even a 2-unit formation can be Bold if it has a band in its section. This is an enormous benefit, especially if not using the battle savvy rules, and would make a Goblin Band a very useful unit to select if given the chance.

So in order of usefulness, I would rank the new units from best to worst as Band, Spear and finally Slinger. In my ill-informed opinion, of course.

Return to Rising Down the Spear Bearers --a Battlelore session

After a bit of a hiatus, Young General and Old Warrior returned tot he Battlelore lists with a replay of the scenario Rising Down the Spear b
Bearers from the Goblin Skirmishers expansion pack. This time the old guy took the dwarves. I think it's fair to say that both of us expected the Goblins to lose, because they generally seem to suck.


As has been his recent practice, Young General spread his lore masters around, taking Level 1 for each, with his sixth War Council point spent on the required Spider. His argument for this strategy is that, even though he doesn't have many cards to choose from, just about every card he gets is useful. Given his heroic and opportunistic style of play, this is more useful than it might seem.


Old Warrior experimented with another variation on his war council policy. This involves selecting a Level 2 Commander, on the theory that having a large hand of Command Cards is the most important factor in designing a war council. While not a maximal position, this allowed a very credible 5-card hand for Command Cards, compared to 4 for Young General's army. A Level 1 Warrior seemed to promise getting the most bang for the war council buck. There is only one Warrior Lore card that provides a level bonus, so taking extra levels for that Lore master didn't seem worth it. The Training Camp Landmark, while sounding good, turned out to be underwhelming in practice so it didn't seem worthwhile going for a Level 3 Warrior.


Instead a Level 3 Rogue was selected. Having a Level 3 Lore master of some kind is very useful because it gives the largest hand of lore cards, a maximum of 4 in this case, compared to just 2 for the Young General's army. The Wizard, Cleric and Rogue all have good qualities but in this case the Rogue was selected because the Rogue's Den secret passage seemed likely to be useful.


The battle, itself, was the usual close-run affair. Young General is getting very comfortable with understanding his options with units and the implications of his moves, He still has some difficulty forming an overall strategy but this is far less of a drawback in Battlelore than it would be in many other wargames. As it turns out, he came within a hair's breadth of winning due to the improbably heroic actions of a single unit. (I'm expecting he'll enjoy playing with the Heroes expansion when we get to it.). If you look at the set up below, you'll see a single Red Banner heavy cavalry unit in the upper right corner (Goblin left flank).



While Young General moved and fought using most of his army, including the Giant Spider (which survived the battle this time for a change), all the kills he got were due to that heavy cavalry unit which rampaged through Old Warrior's right flank and his center for most of the game, killing all five units that were lost while not taking a single hit in return!


As usual, though, the dwarves were killers in their own right, especially against Goblinoids and Old Warrior was able to scratch out a win, although it took the play of a few good Lore Cards (including an Assault and Terrify) and the employment of the Rogue's Secret Passage to infiltrate a unit into the Goblin rear area.


The final score was 6-5 for the Old Warrior's Dwarves and Men.


The Goblinoid Spear units not only weren't ridden down, they were studiously ignored by Old Warrior's units, who avoided attacking them as much as possible. The scattered deployment of the Goblinoid army made it hard for them to mass sufficient force in the early part of the game, but this had little impact due to the heroism of the aforementioned heavy cavalry troop.

Overall, another close fight. When informed that the next expansion featured the Dwarven Battalion, Young General lay claim to trying them first.

More Battlelore coming

FFG's announcement of a new Goblinoid Battlelore expansion should put to rest rumors that they were about to abandon the game system in favor of the Battles of Westeros "Battlelore" game.

Looks like the company's commitment to the game system is strong.

Old Warrior gets pwned by the Young General at Battlelore

Well, Old Warrior got his head handed to him tonight by the Young General and frankly, he's not even sure how it happened.

The scenario was Riding Down the Spear Bearers, with Old Warrior handling the Goblin-based Pennant army while Young Warrior took the dwarf/human Standard army. Old Warrior picked Level 2 commander and a Level 3 Wizard while Young general announced he was going to spread his Lore master choices around taking Level 1 commander, wizard, cleric and warrior and a Level 2 Rogue. The sixth level was the Spider. I was dubious, thinking that he might have been spreading himself too thin and was passing up having very many cards (Just 4 Command and 3 Lore max), but he argued that this way he'd be able to play any card at face value in Lore cost. I thought that having a larger hand size (5 Command and up to 4 Lore) would be superior. Events did not tend to support my position.

The battle itself got off to a slow start, and it wasn't until around Turn 9 that any flags were captured. I wanted to gather my Goblins in the center to set up a good Goblin Rush, but I drew too few Center cards to pull that off. Meanwhile the Young general made his main efforts on the flanks.

As usual it turned into a battle of minor tactics, as Young General has little interest in grand sweeping maneuvers and Old Warrior once again couldn't draw the cards he needed to support his grand designs.

This might not have been a problem except that Old Warrior's units couldn't seem to come out on top in their duels with Young General's units. As usual the Dwarves were very tough and the Goblinoids generally disappointing, but it would be too easy to blame the Goblins because only two of the six units lost were Goblinoid. Three were Human and the sixth was, yet again, the Spider, which died, yet again, in it's first fight. Argh!

The final score was 6-2, as Old Warrior managed to kill off one Dwarf and one Heavy Horse that ventured too far forward. Overall it was a convincing win for the Young General.

FFG interview has serious implications for the future of Battlelore

This interview on FFG's site clarifies a lot about the company's plans for Battlelore and what the Battle of Westeros game means to the franchise.

A couple of takeaways:

"We acquired BattleLore to be our core brand for medieval tactical warfare games (in the scale represented in the classic BattleLore game). The BattleLore name is not necessarily tied to Richard’s “Command and Colors” system."

So basically BattleLore is being treated similar to the way Hasbro is treating Axis & Allies -- as a brand that is not necessarily associated with a particular game system. I'm glad we've cleared that up.


This, set against the overall backdrop of an already steeply escalating cost in game manufacturing, has made the core game a serious issue. Reprinting the core game “as is,” would essentially result in a near $150 retail price point, which is obviously unacceptable.

and

We were concerned that the classic BattleLore base game, as had been created by Days of Wonder (“DOW”), was going to be troublesome on a production level. We did not, to be honest, expect it to essentially be non-manufacturable, as is the case.

This is much more serious as it basically means any future "base sets" for Battlelore will be much less attractive to new players. There was an awful lot in that box. Hasbro has similarly had to retreat a bit on the initial high-value Master Set for Heroscape, but being a bigger company they probably had more room to work with on costs.

Despite FFG's promises to support Battlelore, I'd say that the game's long-term prospects have dimmed. I think this also has implications for any other game products that have relied on the availability of cheap plastic figures from China.

The Sounds of Water -- A Battlelore double session report

Young General and Old Warrior have now started moving on to the Battlelore expansions, with the Goblin Skirmisher pack up first. This expansion introduces some Goblinoid slingers (the sort of agile skirmishers you'd expect), Hobgoblin spears (a red banner heavy fighting unit) and the odd Goblin band! The band is the sort of curious, fun unit that you can include in a fantasy game that doesn't really have a counterpart in more reality grounded games such as Commands & Colors: Ancients or Memoir'44. The band provides morale support to any unit within its section, which is a handy ability indeed, given the touchy morale of the Goblinoids.

We now have a few games under our belts using the Lore rules and now some meta-strategic considerations are beginning to be made.

First, here's the map, showing the initial setup.



It's not mentioned in any errata so far as I know, but there appears to be an error in the set up for the Standard army, as there's a crossbow unit shown but it's not indicated as being Dwarven. As no human crossbows are in the game as of this expansion I decided that must be an error and so I fielded the unit as Iron Dwarves. I was also suspicious of the third unit on the central hills, between the two Dwarven units, but I decided that, seeing as it could have been a human unit, I'd leave it as such.

I drew the Standard army first. One War Council slot was already taken up by the Spider. So far it's an open question in my mind whether the Spider is worth a level on the War Council, but I had no choice. I'm pretty sure having the largest possible hand of Command Cards is important, so I decided to go with a Level 3 Commander, which would give me a 6-card hand and a Stronghold to boot. I expected Young General to go heavy on the Lore Masters, so I decided to use my last two levels primarily to dilute the impact of his choice. I selected a Level 1 Cleric and a Level 1 Rogue as I thought those were the one he was least likely to choose.

As expected, Young General did go for a big Lore Master, picking a Level 3 Wizard and having just a Level 1 Commander. His last two levels went to a Level 1 Warrior and a Level 1 Cleric, so my strategy succeeded. His 8 cards of Wizard Lore were buried in a Lore deck that had 30 cards of other Lore masters. As it turned out, I don't think he ever drew a useful Wizard Lore card. Nearly all the Lore he did play was Clerical. His Pentagram meant he had plenty of Lore to spend, he just had trouble drawing the cards.

The actual battle was our usual poking at each other affair. Young General's 4-card hand prevented him from organizing a plan and my substandard draws through much of the game meant the same for me despite my 6-card hands. We traded units until near the end when I was able to send a unit of Berserk Dwarves crashing into the Goblin Band to get my sixth flag. The Spider was useless, dying from a critical hit from a battle-back in its first fight. The final score was 6-5.

The band and the dense Goblinoid setup meant they were much sturdier fighters than we had experienced before and as a matter of fact there was not a single Goblin Run in either of the battles in the match!

For the switch battle I decided to go with a Level 3 Commander again, with a Level 3 Warrior assistant. My plan was to use the Training camp to train up the right flank blue banner horse to red banner status and rampage against the Young General's flank.

Young General, meanwhile, decided to forego having any landmarks and spread his levels around, with Level 1 Commander, Wizard and Cleric, a Level 2 Warrior and, of course, the Spider. Neither of us had a Rogue.

And my plan worked out -- at first. I was able to train up the horse unit, but this attracted the Young General's attention and he just swarmed it with three cavalry units of his own. As a matter of fact, he jumped out to a 3-1 lead, as my army was only able to kill one unit -- the Spider, naturally.

Still, one has to be flexible when playing a Borg game and I had built up a pretty powerful hand of both useful Command cards and Warrior Lore. In particular, I had started with two Mounted Charge cards and later drew a third. So on three consecutive turns I launched mounted charges, some enhanced by Warrior Lore, that smashed up four of Young Generals' units while only losing one of my own. So the score was 5-4. At that point I spent my hoarded Lore and cast the Hills Rumble Lore. It was expensive at 14 Lore because I didn't have the proper Cleric Lore master but it reduced a front-line enemy unit to 1 figure. And that figure was picked off by a Goblin Skirmisher for a 6-4 win.

Young General remarked that he was going to have to start working on having more of a strategy next time, so there's something stirring.

BattleLore -- FFG improves on DOW packaging

The ol' mailman dropped a package on the doorstep yesterday -- the new Heroes expansion for Battlelore. Naturally it's too early to say much about the game play, but I thought the upgrading in packaging was worth noting off the bat.

When Battlelore was published by Days of Wonder it used a distinctive packaging system for most of its expansions (and for Memoir '44 as well) that used a clear plastic "box" with a light cardboard sleeve around it.

I always had mixed feelings about this packaging as it compares to more traditional cardboard boxes. I don't know how it compares from a cost standpoint for the company, but from a player and consumer point of view the main feature of the plastic box was its ability to provide storage that conformed to the shape of the components, especially figures. This provided protection for the figures as well as a way to keep them organized.

On the other hand, I thought the packaging had some drawbacks. For one thing, it's very bulky. An expansion with a dozen or so figures takes up a fairly substantial amount of space for the size of the miniatures it contains. My biggest concern, though, is about durability. The light plastic used by Days of Wonder was already splitting in some cases, despite the fact that my game hasn't had anything like hard usage. Likewise the cardboard sleeves in some cases are already fraying along edges or threatening to split. In a few cases the tolerances between different parts seem a little too snug, making it hard to separate.

This new expansion, Heroes, is the first completely produced by Fantasy Flight Games since they bought Battlelore (they had previously issued expansions prepared by DoW). I was curious if they'd keep the DoW style packaging or switch to something more like what they had done before with other games.

The answer seems to be to remain consistent with the Battlelore look, but make some small, but important, improvements. The Heroes expansion uses a slightly thicker and more robust plastic with tolerances that allow the parts to slide over each other easily while still providing no danger of pieces falling out. The sleeve likewise uses a slightly thicker, textured, cardboard that appears likely to be more durable, although perhaps still too light for hard use.

The art is, of course, completely compatible with Battlelore's established look, with only the FFG logo to distinguish it from the earlier Days of Wonder product.

I'm still ambivalent about the entire packaging strategy, but FFG's execution is clearly better. Many players probably have hit on their own storage solutions anyway and don't bother with the original packaging, but I prefer to retain original packaging when practicable. There is some virtue in keeping the same look, once it's been established, so I can't criticize FFG's call.

BattleLore session report:: Assaulting the Tourelles

Young General and the Old Warrior reached the end of their march through the basic BattleLore scenario book during the Friday After Thanksgiving Day Off From School.

Interestingly, this scenario is a fantastical re-imagining of the battle outside Orleans on October 12, 1428 between the French led by Jean de Dunois (The Bastard of Orleans) and Joan of Arc and the British under the Earl of Salisbury. While the general setup and situation resembles the historical fight, there were no actual goblins, dwarves or giant spiders on the field historically.

In this case, however, the scenario introduces the final bit of the basic game system, the Landmarks that can be associated with different Loremasters. The French side automatically gets a Stronghold (a keep, essentially), while other Landmarks are available if the players' war council include Level 3 Loremasters.



Young General took the English side. He was required to spend 1 level of war council on the Giant Spider, and added 1 level to his Commander to entitle himself to a 5-card hand of Command cards. He spent 3 levels to buy himself a Level 3 Cleric. His Cleric's Healing pool was placed in a hex next to the 2-hex woods in his Center section. Overall I though this was a good selection on his part.

I opted to stick with the 1 Level Commander required under the scenario rules (a choice I regretted) and bought a 2-level Cleric and a Level 3 Rogue. I placed the Rogue's Den between the wood and the hill on the border between my Left and Center sections. While I didn't regret the Rogue, I think i would have been better off making the Commander a Level 2 and the Cleric a Level 1.

The Battle itself was our usual mutual slugfest. Both of us are getting more comfortable with the Lore rules and, while Young General seems to have a knack for collecting Lore, he's losing his aversion to spending it and both of us played quite a few Lore cards. Most were useful, but none had a dramatic effect on the course of things. Command card play was likewise undramatic, as most of the action was fought in the center -- indecisively.

Young General was initially reluctant to make a bid for the Stronghold, but by mid-game he had strong effort going that was being countered with difficulty. The Ramparts failed one French archer unit miserably as it died in one-turn under a card-enhanced attack by a English heavy infantry unit, but the English were not able to follow it up.

Meanwhile the dwarves, as usual, were pretty tough in the center, although they also lost heavily. As usual the weak link in the line was the Goblinoids, and a late game offensive on the left flank was able to eliminate all three Goblin units, resulting in a 6-4 victory for the French. Curiously the Young General never saw fit to use the Giant Spider. He also never got around to using the Healing Pool. I did use the Rogie's Den to send a light infantry unit deep behind his lines, but it had little effect as it turns out. The French Stronghold was never attacked.

So far, after having played all 10 scenarios Young General and Old Warrior are beginning to appreciate the potential for Lore cards. nearly every Lore card played seemed to be worthwhile. Among the non-human races the dwarves seem always useful to have, while the goblins are almost always a weak point in the line. The only creature we've used so far is the Giant Spider, which seems to be a useful piece, but one that must be used carefully.

We're still in the early stages of using War Councils and Loremasters. I'm still going to experiment a little with different configurations, but my inclination is to favor beefing up the Commander in order to have a good hand of Command Cards and concentrating on one Good high-level Loremaster instead of having multiple low-ranking ones.

As usual it was a good and entertaining fight. Next up will be the Goblin Skirmisher expansion.

BattleLore session report: Free Companies on a War Footing

After a long hiatus playing other things, Young general and Old Warrior returned to BattleLore. The nice thing about being young is that you don't have has much to remember, so what you do remember to tend to remember rather well. Young General retained his grasp of the rules without any trouble at all, even reminding the Old Warrior of a few he had forgotten during the hiatus.




The point of this scenario is to introduce the concept of a full war council. Each player had the option of choosing the composition of their war council with only a few limitations. Each player's commander has to be at Level 1 at least, there are no "strongholds" (introduced in the next scenario) and the Banner Player has the Giant Spider, which counts as one level for his war council.

Young general prefers to play with the monsters on his side, so we agreed he'd take the Banner Army. He chose to go with a Level 2 commander, giving him a hand of five command cards and a Level 2 Warrior Loremaster and a Level 1 Rogue Loremaster. The Spider rounded out the six-level council.

My choice was to go heavily militarized this time, so I took a Level 3 Commander, giving me six command cards and a Level 3 Warrior.

This made a Lore Deck comprised of 14 Warrior, 8 Rogue, 5 Wizards and 5 Cleric lore cards.

Troopwise, the Banner Army was pretty strong, with human troops comprising the center and right sectors with three Red, 4 Blue and a Green unit, plus the Spider. The left flank was Dwarves -- one red and three blue sword units. The Banner army was short on numbers of horse (just 2) and just a single missile unit (the green human unit on the right flank.)

My Standard army was much weaker in melee power, with just a single red human unit, five blue and three green. The humans made up the Standard center and left flank, facing the Banner human units. Facing the Dwarves were a mass of seven Goblinoid units, all green or blue. Our experience so far has been the Goblinoid quantity rarely makes up for Dwarvish quality and I determined from the beginning I'd do my best to keep the Goblins away from the Dwarves. My army did have an edge in cavalry units (three blue human horse and two green Goblin lizard-riders) and missile units (three).

The battlefield is rather unuusal in Battlelore, being devoid of any large exapns of clear ground. Instead it's all scattered hills and woods throughout, with the only extensive clear spots along the board edge. A small clearing existed where the Goblins set up, but otherwise every other clear hex in the central 7 rows of the map was next to a woods or a hill.

The two sides are nominally Burgundian and d'Armagnac, but this has no bearing on play.

My initial draw gave me three attack cards in the center, although my Lore hand was nothing special. I started off with some minor maneuvers to adjust my troops positions a little and improve my hand, expecting that my redoubtable, but young, opponent would follow his usual scattered toss-everything-and-see-what-sticks approach. While fatal in many wargames this kind of approach can work surprisingly well in BattleLore. It's hard to plan against because you literally don't know what's coming next and it tends to make efficient use of whatever cards one draws, although not the most efficient deployment of the troops.

Young General's dwarves made an effort against the Goblins, but apparently he failed to draw the cards needed for a sustained effort on that flank. The opposite flank was much better served by the card draws and the Spider and its escort pressed back that wing rather effectively.

Meanwhile I made my big center push, actually reinforcing the center with some troops detached from the two wings.

A long struggle ensued along the whole line, with my two flanks doing their best to hold on until the center was able to break through. Unfortunately the Banner center was pretty hard to crack, especially the two red sword units. Eventually the crisis of the battle was reached, with my army having just three victory medals while the Banner army had five -- leaving it one away from victory. Lore cards played a bigger role in this battle than earlier ones, although Young General still seems to be reluctant to part with them. On the other hand, I persisted in my spendthrift ways, and sometimes found myself needing to save up Lore over a couple of turns in order to play the cards I wanted. Generally the Lore cards were useful, although I did end up spending 8 Lore to activate a Lost Orders Rogue card (cost double Lore because I had no Rogue Loremaster) that ended up helping the Banner army because the random command card I forced him to play was really better than the card he had originally wanted to play.

Fortunately for my cause, I was able to execute a plan that had been in the making for several turns as I gathered even more forces in the center, including both Goblin mounted units and one full-strength human cavalry. I played a Mounted Charge along with the Cry Havoc Lore card. The Banner's Young General countered with a Mass Shield Lore card, a very good play that did mitigate the damage a little, but not enough to stop the Goblins and Humans from riding down the enemy with 5-dice and 6-dice attacks to bring me to the magic number of 6 victory medals.

The final score was 6-5, therefore, and there's little doubt that had the Mounted Charge fallen short the Banner army wouldn't have had any trouble grabbing that last casualty.

Lessons I derived from this encounter were to be a little more cautious about expending Lore cards and tokens for minor advantage because it may mean not being able to play the decisive card in time. I was vulnerable for a couple of turns as I massed not just my mounted forces but the lore tokens I needed to play the Cry Havoc card. The Banner army came within one figure of making that effort too late.

The lesson was reinforced that Goblin foot units are best kept out of the fighting when possible, especially when facing Dwarves. The Banner army had a shortage of command cards for the Dwarvish flank and a good thing, too. The Goblinoid mounted units' speed makes them very useful and being able to play a Mounted Charge/Cry Havoc combo made them into the equivalent of enhanced heavy cavalry for the decisive moment.

As usual. the game was entertaining to play and the actual gameplay only took a little over an hour, although setup time is starting to become substantial now that the full Lore rules are in effect.

Welcome new direction for BattleLore

While it was under the control of Days of Wonder BattleLore seemed to be more of an army-level battle game with a very mild fantasy element. It almost seemed like it wanted to be a straight medieval wargame. The dwarves were basically Scots, the Goblins basically Moors and magical creatures were rare.

All well-and good, but not really what the market wanted. Historical gamers were likely to prefer the approach taken by Borg's GMT game Commands & Colors: Ancients instead.

Now that it's under the guidance of Fantasy Flight Games BattleLore seems to be taking a much more firmly fantastic edge. The next expansion features individual heroes, for example. And now there is word that the two expansions after that will feature more monsters. The first will be "Creatures" with new versions of the giant and elemental monsters and a new "Hydra" monster. Good stuff. Even better stuff, the following expansion will be "Dragons" with three different versions of that iconic beast. If there's one thing a proper fantasy game requires, it's a dragon.