Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Battles of Westeros First Impressions

I finally got a chance to play the brand new ‘BattleLore’ game from Fantasy Flight Games, Battles of Westeros, so I thought I’d write up my first impressions of the game for anyone who is wondering what this new incarnation of BattleLore is all about. ‘Battles of Westeros First Impressions’ is one of series of weekly articles for the Games Paradise online blog.

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Monday, April 19, 2010

BattleLore Rules & Reference Pack Version 3

I’ve finally finished updating my rules summaries and reference sheets for BattleLore, and this time I’ve put them all together into one download: the BattleLore Rules & Reference Pack. This comprehensive PDF document summarises in compact, easy-to-reference form all the BattleLore rules currently available. If you wish, you’ll never have to use the reference cards again.

You’ll find a host of similar rules summaries and reference sheets for many popular games at Universal Head’s blog site, Headless Hollow, on the Freebies: Boardgame Reference Sheets page.

The Pack lives on the Guild Downloads page, but you can download it direct from here: BattleLore Rules & Reference Pack v3.3: PDF (2Mb)

If you find any errors or have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know.

I must apologise in advance, but I won’t be helping to make or host translations of this file—unfortunately, it’s just too time consuming to provide the original art files, check the layout etc. This latest version will be hosted here in English only, though you can still download the translations that have been done by dedicated fans in the past.

Update: v3.1 has a corrected Terrain Reference page.
Update: v3.2 has a corrected Troll powers section.
Update: v3.3 has corrections to Hills, Cliffs, Bridge and Earth Elemental.

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Monday, April 12, 2010

Opening the box: Dragons

And now, the Dragons …

Once a large image has opened, move your cursor to the upper left and right edges to navigate between them, or press N (Next) and P (Previous).

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Opening the box: Creatures

I acquired the Creatures and Dragons expansions today … so why not look over my shoulder as I Open The Box …

Once a large image has opened, move your cursor to the upper left and right edges to navigate between them, or press N (Next) and P (Previous).

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Battles of Westeros News

More official information about Battles of Westeros has been released; an article about troop management in the game. Sounds interesting, and actually quite different from the BattleLore system.

For all the detail, visit the Fantasy Flight website.

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Monday, March 29, 2010

Rob Kouba and Battles of Westeros

Rob Kouba answers more than ten questions about Battles of Westeros at The Hopeless Gamer.

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Battles of Westeros Battle Report

The Hopeless Gamer has an excellent and detailed battle report on the upcoming Battles of Westeros ‘BattleLore’ game. More information is promised soon. Check it out.

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Friday, March 19, 2010

Official Site Info: Horrific Horde

A big surprise from Fantasy Flight Games this morning with the announcement of the BattleLore: Horrific Horde expansion set!

It’s an interesting release, for several reasons. Firstly, veteran players will probably not get too excited about the 42 figures in this set: we’ve seen the Goblin Swordsmen, Hobgoblin Cavalry and Hobgoblin Hyena Riders before (interestingly, there are no Drummers, Spear Bearers and Slingers from the Goblin Skirmishers set, so it isn’t really an entire Goblin army). The only new units are some Goblin Halberdiers, and some fantastic-looking Ogres.

However, what this new set does tell us is that FFG are listening to the fans and releasing large expansion sets of one racial type. I think I can safely predict that a big dwarf set will be the next release, consolidating some of the units from the Dwarven Battalion and Scottish Wars sets, plus some new Dwarf units. But after that, perhaps we’ll finally see new BattleLore races on the battlefield?

(As a personal aside, I would love to see the sculpt for green and blue banner goblins replaced. It never seemed to match the style and scale of the other goblin figures.)

Anyway, back to the Horrific Horde! As well as the figures, you get unit summary and specialist cards, weapon summary cards for the updated Goblin Slinger rules, 15 deployment cards to use with Call to Arms, and a rulebook with five new Adventures. I would guess that this all comes in a box the size of the Scottish Wars and Heroes expansions.

The Ogre is a great looking figure and certainly has a lot more ‘oomph’ than the Troll sculpt. It can move one hex and battle, and wields a spiked club for 4d, hitting on a bonus strike; it’s also subject to a ‘Frenzy’ rule. Also, a unit consists of three figures, which is something new, so it’s a red banner unit not a creature.

Is the start of a new series of much-awaited army packs? Elves, undead, orcs …?

The Horrific Horde is coming this (northern hermisphere) summer.

View/Add Comments (10) | Category: Official Site Info

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Battles of Westeros News

Fantasy Flight Games has released a little bit of information about the upcoming ‘BattleLore spinoff’ Battles of Westeros. There’s our first glimpse of some nice-looking terrain tiles (it would be great if these were compatible with existing BattleLore), and news that the board can be played in both the normal horizontal configuration (which you can expand with add extra boards) and a long lengthwise configuration. But most radically, there are no flanks on the board. Instead, in most circumstances you can only order units if they are controlled—that is, within two hexes of a commander.

For more detail, visit the Fantasy Flight website.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

An Introduction to BattleLore

There’s nothing in it that BattleLore veterans won’t already know, but I wrote up An Introduction to BattleLore for the blog of the Australian games retailer Games Paradise. It’s a nice little primer for those who have yet to discover the joys of playing Battlelore. Check it out!

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