Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Official Word: Heroes Expansion Rogue

The lead-up to the long-awaited release of the BattleLore Heroes Expansion continues with a look at the Rogue hero.

New artwork for the Rogue sees a male version dressed in purple-lined cloak, mask and rather fetching thigh-high leather boots. All the rage in Uchronia this season, I’m sure!

The focus of the Rogue is targeting and disrupting your opponent’s hero—but of course, in a sneaky way. He’s not going to last if you go up against your opponent’s Warrior in combat.

Unlike the Cleric, who has a skill selection limited by rerequisites, the Rogue has a full complement of skills to choose from.

The Riding skill returns, a skill that all heroes have in common, though it appears its effects can vary for each hero. In the Rogue’s case, it increases his movement to 4 hexes, but is also required for the use of other skills (just how it does isn’t clear at this stage).

The Pathfinder skill allows the Rogue to treat all terrain—even impassable terrain— as though it was clear countryside. He still can’t end his move on impassable terrain however. Very handy indeed. Like Riding, it also sets up the use of other skills.

Right, onto the all-important combat skills!

Assassin gives your Rogue an extra battle die in melee combat against another hero (hero versus hero combat—excellent!).

Blademaster gives you the extra battle die in general melee combat. In addition, if you roll at least one hit, you roll an additional die when making the Casualty Check.

The article’s suggestion for these skills to wait until you can see how your opponent will utilise his hero—whether they come to the fore to offer combat, or stay hidden in the ranks instead.

The last two skills are Leech and Thievery.

Leech allows the Rogue to still the Lore that an opponent rolls when attacking a Rogue. Yeah, not that exciting, but we have yet to see how Lore works in relation to heroes. And you have to be attacked to use the sill, so as the article suggests, you should postpone selection of this skill until a bit later in the hero development process.

Thievery allows the Rogue to steal one artifact when in melee with an enemy hero, after spending a minimum of 2 rolled Lore. This is the first mention of artifacts, which sound exciting. Each hero begins the game with one, but it appears that more can be taken as a hero develops.

Next up for discussion is the Field Commander.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Official Site Info

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Official Word: Heroes Expansion Announced!

A lot of BattleLore fans have been waiting for this one for a long time. I’ve got a set of Hero figures I’ve had for ages that I’d love to show you, but can’t (it will be interesting to see if they match this release). People were beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. But at last, Fantasy Flight have announced the BattleLore Heroes Expansion.

Coming this Fall, Fantasy Flight Games is proud to release the long-awaited expansion for BattleLore, BattleLore: Heroes. In this expansion, leaders and champions will be called to the fields of battle to aid their sides with new skills and artifacts. The road to adventure and glory is never easy and fledgling adventurers will begin their campaigns with only the barest of abilities and must survive the harsh realities of war to become a legendary hero.

The first review looks at the Cleric, and it’s notable that Fantasy Flight has moved away from the ‘classic’ goblin Cleric to give us a human version. It certainly is strange to finally see new artwork for BattleLore, but happily, the look is very similar to past illustrations, so there’s been no jarring change in the game’s graphic style.

It would appear that Heroes start with an initial skill selection, which are either bought or played with the expenditure of Lore tokens.

The Riding skill tells us that each hero will come in mounted and unmounted versions (something I already knew from my figures).

It’s also clear that Heroes develop over the course of a game, and that certain skills require other skills as prerequisites.

The Chant skill allows the Cleric to force attackers to roll one less battle die when attacking the hex he is in.

If players learn this skill, they have access to a stronger version called Battle Hymn, which extends the effect to adjacent hexes.

The skill called Herbal Remedy, similarly, is the prerequisite for two other skills. The skill allows the troop a Cleric is leading to ignore a hit. Prayer for the Dying and Healing Hands expand on this skill; one for when the Cleric is alone and one for protection of an adjacent troop.

We are told that the Cleric has the potential to shine in the early game, especially against an offensive hero that is still undeveloped, “since the Cleric can potentially be able to stay off the field of battle longer and accumulate more experience.”

Obviously getting your heroes in amongst it at an early stage of the game can slow their rate of development, which implies some interesting strategic choices.

BattleLore: Heroes is coming Fall 2009. Listed price is US$39.95.

Here’s the information from the FFG product page:

BattleLore: Heroes introduces player-created Leaders and Champions to augment your camp’s forces in battles.

As with all journeys, the beginning is never easy. As a fledgling adventurer, you begin with a bare minimum of skills and artifacts to help you combat the enemy. Adventures have the potential to reward your intrepid Hero greatly if he performs well. But beware, battlefields are not without peril, and taking too many wounds may force your Hero into an unwanted early retirement.

Prepare yourself for the journey of a lifetime!

BattleLore: Heroes includes 10 unique Hero figures, a Rules booklet, 110 Skill, Artifact, and Landmark cards, and much more!

Next time, we’ll be getting a look at the Rogue hero. Great to see BattleLore back in action again.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Official Site Info

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Two Downloadable Unit Upgrades for BattleLore

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from Fantasy Flight concerning BattleLore, so hopefully these two tidbits are the precursor to some new announcements.

Advanced Training: Field your armies with boosted Dwarven Cattle Riders and the improved Goblin Sling ammunition designed by BattleLore creator, Richard Borg! Commanders can print out the following altered cards that take the place of the existing cards of the same name.

You can download the new unit cards here.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Official Site Info

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Raven

The hole stank worse than a troll’s armpit. Dead meat, rotting straw, human waste. Perhaps it was a blessing that there was barely enough room to sit, let alone lie down. If I had given myself up to lying full length in that filth, perhaps I would have given up the will to live as well. Thankfully, I stood; my wasted, skinny body leaning against the dripping stones. I looked up at the small circle of light above, and I planned. Planned escape, of course, and revenge. Bloody revenge.

Think you that the Raven has sent his last dispatch? Think you that my days of spying, plotting, scheming and politicking are behind me? Think again. For though I languish now—stuck like a rat in a pipe at the behest of a fat, greasy dwarf whose beard was not worthy enough to wipe clean this pit—I would again fly free like my namesake. And like my namesake, my flight would mean ill omen to my enemies and oppressors. Where I had watched, now I would strike. Before, I had sold my services to the highest bidder, now I would play the mighty like pawns on a chess board. Where before they had heard the name Raven and been afeared, now they would forever cower in their beds, never more knowing the comfort of their stone bastions.

“Curse all dwarfs and their damned beards!” I shouted at the mocking light. After a pause it was blocked out by a knobbly silhouette. It was my troll jailor again; checking to see that I was still there, no doubt.

“Shut your ‘ole, noisy man-thing!” it shouted back. The head retracted.

Damn. One comment, one aspersion cast on the thickness of Mac Dhonnchaidh’s beard, and months of hard work—and hard drinking—blown away like the leaves of autumn at the onset of winter. Victory at the Stirling had done little to ease his temper, or his quickness to take offense. And then, my damnable pride … there had been time to grovel to the stumpy king, but the drinking, the heat of the hall, the weeks of dwelling among the belligerent Dwarven folk … a further observation on the baldness of his body, and I was lucky to escape with my head—though cast it was into his stinking dungeon.

Well, the Raven may not yet have the power of flight, but he could climb as well as any man in the known world. I stretched my battered arms and legs out to full length, found whatever slimy cracks in the stones I could, and began the long, slow, painful crawl upward. An hour later, I peeked over the lip of the well. The troll, clutching a huge rusty meat cleaver, was standing directly in front of me looking surprised and confused.

“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me a hand, good troll?” I quickly asked. Thankfully, trolls are as stupid as they are large. A strong pull while he was leaning out, unbalanced, and he was over my head and plummeting downwards—strangely, without a sound. Until he hit the bottom.

No doubt the world has forgotten the Raven, I thought as I finally crawled out of the oubliette. Time to remind them.

This was a revenge I could not fully execute on my own; I needed allies, however temporary. Two nights later, clad in the livery of one of his sentries, I entered the camp of Edward, self-proclaimed hero of the land and scourge of Dwarven-kind.

Hero perhaps, but still a bastard, I thought. It was well known that Edward was borne by a lord’s scullery maid swiftly dispatched to an abbey. Of course, Edward’s father begat no male heir, and his bastard was swiftly returned to the castle upon his death. Twenty-five years of growing up among men of God had not made Edward a pious man. On the contrary, it was said he spent his youth searching through ancient tomes in the abbey’s library, and had managed to give himself an education that God would most likely have frowned upon. Instead of taking the path of a warrior, like most bastards eager to usurp their fathers, he had become skilled in the ways of wizardry.

Or so the peasants gossiped over their ploughs; it mattered not. Whether masters were warriors, wizards, clerics or rogues, it was all of a muchness to those who rummaged in the mud for a living.

As his father coughed his last, our bastard hero Edward established himself as lord and rightful heir and began raising an army of conquest. Some said the army was invincible, and that Edward had used his powers to enlist demon beasts to fight on his side. All the better, I thought.

It was a simple matter to walk through the main part of the army camp. The men were drunk with victory and cheap wine, and I passed many boisterous games of chance, fist-fights and shaking tents. I stepped over soldiers passed out in pools of vomit, and once a group of men threw their arms around my shoulders and forced me to join them in a few verses of ‘Where Have All the Young Girls Gone?’. Eventually however I reached the other end of the camp, where the ground became higher and was crowned by scores of rocky spires, and where large, ornate tents denoted the presence of the king and his retinue.

Now for the tricky part, I thought.

Even in torchlight, Edward looked far older than his twenty-seven years. His lanky hair and beard were already flecked with grey, and crows’ feet crowded around the edges of his deep set, red-rimmed eyes. He sat hunched in a high-backed oak chair behind a table covered in leather bound books and loosely-rolled scrolls, and looked up at me with the angry air of a man interrupted from a far more important task.

“I would have you killed on the spot for entering the inner compound unannounced, but you say you know something of the Dwarven defences,” he said. He squinted at my features as though studying his books. But I was not so easily read.

“The damn dwarves have it comin’ to ‘em” I said, putting on a peasant’s drawl, “an’ as a loyal member of yer lordship’s army, I ‘ad to come and tell ye meself about the best and quickest way to see ‘em all on spits by tomorrow’s end.”

“I’m listening”, the Lord replied, leaning back.

“It so happens m’Lord, that I worked in the castle brewery before the stumpies took over the place and cast out us hard workin’ human folk, and I knows its ways well—in particular a certain way into the dungeons that’ll get you in faster than a tuppeny pint goes down a soldier’s throat”, I said.

“Really?” said Edward, “and tell me—Raven—whose army lines your pockets this time? The Dwarves? My father’s old men? Some other petty lord eager for glory?” His voice rose. “Think you that I have not ways of seeing through any disguise? Think you that I need the help of pitiful mercenary spies—I, who command dragons?” Beckoning to the guards, he strode for the tent opening. “Bring the arrogant fool. Let me show you, black bird of ill omen, how a wizard goes about making war.”

Dragons? Dragons?! Spend but one month in a castle dungeon and how the world changes, I thought, as the soldiers began dragging me after him. Behind the tent we crossed through a natural wall of boulders and into a natural amphitheatre that truncated the top of the hill. A great spike of iron, twice the height of a man, had been driven into the centre of the rocky bowl, and from it stretched chains thick as my arm. The chains were attached to iron collars, which in turn were fixed around the throats of three enormous beasts. And what beasts! If I had not already been on my knees I would have fallen to them. I have traveled far and wide and across the sea, and never have I seen the like. Monstrous serpents they were, great scaly creatures whose tread shook the earth as they circled the spike, heads pulling and lunging at the air, wings beating in anger, glowing eyes brim-full of malice and power.

“Well Raven, what think you? Do I require your help to defeat the Dwarves?” said Edward without turning to face me.

I did not bother to reply. Ah well, a Raven can also wait until the battle is over before taking his meal. A dead dwarf is dead, and revenge is taken, whether by means obvious or subtle. Perhaps, in this case, the time for subtlety had passed.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

A bit of info from Richard Borg

Richard Borg has made this post on Fantasy Flight’s BattleLore message board about possible upcoming releases for BattleLore. It does look like the long-awaited Heroes expansion is next, and there are two other expansions in the works that he can’t yet talk about.

He also reveals that his team have playtested material for a whole range of new armies from various fantasy ‘cultures’: Dwarf Culture (Shadow Army, Dwarven Lords); Elf Culture (Forest Elves, Shadow Elves, War Elves); Goblinoid Culture (Ork—or ‘Torks’, a combination of Troll and Ork discovered in Greenland by Barbarian Raiders); Human Culture (Barbarians, Tribesmen, Ice Army, Man’chines, Wolven Migration); Rat Nation, Reptilian Army, The Swarm (Bugs); and a Necromancer Skull Army.

Plenty to keep BattleLore going for a long, long time yet…

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Prerelease Game News

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

New Troll Scenario

A new Troll scenario is now available at the Fantasy Flight website. Click here for the news item (with a small Q&A with Richard Borg) and here for the BattleLore support section.

You must register to download.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: FAQ/Errata/Downloads

Monday, December 22, 2008

Happy Xmas BattleLore fans

A very happy Xmas to all of you who visit BattleLoreMaster.com. 2009 could be a big year for BattleLore now that Fantasy Flight Games has taken over, and I think we can all finally rest assured that it won’t be too long before we get our hands on that long-awaited Heroes expansion!

Stick with us here during the quiet times because we’ll still be going strong when things pick up again…

Good health and happiness—and good gaming—to you all!

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Miscellaneous

Friday, December 5, 2008

Fantasy Flight Updates

A little late with this news (I’ve been on holiday) , but Fantasy Flight Games have at last revamped and modernised their website. Lovely stuff! The BattleLore section is here and the new forums are here.

There’s also a new Troll scenario available for download, to go with the For Troll and Country expansion pack.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Official Site Info

French BattleLore Campaign

For you French BattleLore players, way back here we mentioned a very nicely designed French site detailing a BattleLore campaign world. The first part of this campaign is now available on the creator’s forum here.

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Miscellaneous

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

WorldofBattlelore.de

World of Battlelore is an exciting new German-language BattleLore site that has recently been launched.

Now’s a good time for German speakers to visit, because they’ve just launched a a new competition: The Battlelore Scenario Contest. Anyone can create a scenario, and Marcus, Sebastian and Alex from worldofbattlelore.de will test the scenarios extensively and award a prize to the best scenario.

What’s the prize I hear you ask? A weekend in June 2009 at the Con of the Heidelberger publishing company (German distributor of FFG and of Battlelore), at the castle Stahleck on the river Rhine. Only invited guests will be there! Room and board will be payed by the Heidelberger publishing company. And the winner will also get a games voucher. A fantastic prize!

Check out World of Battlelore for all the information, terms and conditions. Entry deadline for the scenarios is the 30th November 2008. The winner will be announced on the 1st April 2009.

(PS: battleloremaster.com is not affiliated in any way with worldofbattlelore.de)

View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Reviews & Reports

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