Saturday, December 9, 2006
Opening the box
My (first) copy of BattleLore arrived the other day, so let’s have a good long look at the packed contents of a BattleLore box (and the two promotional miniatures):
First impressions? The quality is stunning. I haven’t seen any photographs that have done justice to the detail in the miniatures—they really have to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. As expected, a few of the miniatures in the second layer were a bit bent, but ten minutes with the hot and cold water technique fixed that problem easily. While the plastic trays are great, it’s virtually impossible to remember where all the banner bearers belong in the trays, so instead I’ve moved the bulk of the minis into a plastic compartmentalised box and kept the second tray for banner bearers. As I’ll be getting a second set I plan to use one box for minis and one for everything else.
The game truly is ready to play: no punching out counters and tiles, no fiddly work applying stickers. The rulebook is 80 pages of full colour, packed with examples and beautiful artwork, perfect-bound with a matt celloglazed cover.
The artwork throughout is top-notch. I especially like the fine detail of the grass cover on the Battle Board (much nicer than the somewhat painterly look of the Memoir ‘44 boards, in my opinion). When flipped over, of course, the board becomes one half of an Epic sized board, and the possibilities for huge battles are certainly very exciting.
Now, I’m faced with the daunting task of painting this huge selection of finely-detailed miniatures. Quite a job, but I think the game will be justify the effort and painted miniatures really do enhance the experience.
Time for the battles to begin ..!
Comments
My copy of the game came on Tuesday and it is indeed a complete package ready to play. The books are very good and took me until today (Sunday) to read all the way through. I think this will be a very balanced system and will be my fantasy game of choice. I love the design goals - fanatasy adventures, where battles are very important, with an investment of time and effort that matches the 4-8 hours per week I can put into it.
I do have some personal thoughts, but please don’t read these as overly critical (I’ve just been at this hobby for 30 years.)
1. The figures are big 15mm figures (18mm) and are nice, but I probably won’t paint them up. I have too many other figures already painted that I prefer. Good news is that 4 25mm figures fit in the hexes. I am still tempted by 6mm Baccus War of the Roses.
2. Other figure comments: There are a lot of left handed swordsmen. The dwarves are as big as the men. The horses are tiny.
3. The giant, spider and earth elemental are all superior figures. I may paint these up.
4. The Lore part of the game seems very playable. It should provide for a TON of variety every time the game is played. I really look forward to more of the system expansion.
5. C&C: Ancients has some very cool leadership rules, and I think would carry over well to medieval warfare. They are missing from BattleLore, but then the Lore part of BL may make up for them. Being stuck on Tolkein and CS Lewis and wanting limited magic I may try mixing some of the leadership with more limited Lore use.
Bill Hupp
Posted by: Blll Hupp at December 10, 2006 1:44 PM
Hi Bill, thanks for the response. Good points all. I am going to try to paint them all up, only because it will look so spectacular, but it’s a big job - especially since they are much more detailed than I expected and I’m a bit of a perfectionist!
People are already starting to convert their own figures- eg see http://www.battleloremaster.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79&start=15 on the forums.
The scale differences concerned me a bit when I saw photos but in person it doesn’t seem so noticeable - reasons of scale and the detail you can get into a plastic figure I imagine…
I haave no idea why there are so many left-handed figures! ;)
Hopefully DoW will expand on the potential for heroes and leadership later on. It’s going to be exciting to see how things are added to these base rules.
Posted by: Universal Head at December 10, 2006 9:40 PM
I have lots of painted and unpainted LOTR and GW figures, so I am set with figures.
The more I think about the magic/lore parts of the game, the more I like the very balanced way it is all set up. The good-evil aspects can be put in as one likes or just ignored.
Bill
Posted by: Blll Hupp at December 11, 2006 4:34 AM