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BattleLoreMaster Posts

August 2009

August 28, 2009

Opening the box: Heroes expansion

Finally, after a long, long wait—all during which I frustratingly had pre-production figures sitting in my drawer and no rules to go with them—the Heroes expansion for BattleLore has arrived! Come with me now as we open the box together …

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).

Sorry some of those figure pics are a little fuzzy, I’ll try to replace them with better ones soon.

Official Site Info: Dragons

Dragons Expansion

The information from Fantasy Flight Games just keeps pouring in—now, a look at the abilities of the three types of dragons in the upcoming BattleLore: Dragons expansion set.

The article is mainly flavour text, but it does show us the abilities and attacks of the three types: the Wood Wyvern (Green banner), Ice Drake (Blue banner) and Fire Dragon (Red banner).

All the basic information is the same, except the melee attack damage, which is 2 dice for the Wyvern, 3 dice for the Drake and 4 dice for the Fire Dragon. All the Dragons hit on a Bonus Strike result. As for movement, they can all move up to 2 hexes and battle, or fly up to 4 hexes and then use their breath attack. Retreat is 3 hexes per flag, with the option of ignoring the first flag.

Dragon are certainly going to be dominant, fast-moving features on the battlefield, and when Lore is paid (1 for the Wyvern, 2 for the Drake, and 3 for the Fire Dragon), the hexes that are flown over are going to feel the effects of their horrific breath weapons! The Wood Wyvern can unleash a Poison Breath attack that does 2 dice damage against every hex flown over. Each Lore rolled equals a Poison Breath token, the effects of which are still unclear.

The Ice Drake has a Frost Breath attack that does 3 dice damage and each Lore rolled equals a Frost Breath token, and the Fire Dragon’s Fire Breath attack does 4 dice damage and doles out Fire Breath tokens.

No doubt we’ll soon find out the additional effects of these Breath tokens. Dragons and Heroes are certainly going to shake up the battlefields of BattleLore however!

August 24, 2009

BattleLore Rules Online

The Rules for BattleLore: heroes are now available to download from the Fantasy Flight Games BattleLore Support page. Also, the expansion comes with a pad of Hero record sheets, but you can download more directly from this page.

August 16, 2009

Heroes and Creatures on their way!

Fantasy Flight games has announced that the Dragons and Creatures expansions—yep, two separate expansions—will be available before the end of the year.

See the video of CEO Christian Petersen’s GenCon speech here at the Fantasy Flight website (click the Friday clip). The announcement is about three-quarters of the way through.

You can see the spectacular multi-headed Hydra, which comes with the old hill giant and earth elemental figures, here, and the packaging for both sets here.

According to information on the FFG forums by people at GenCon, Dragons comes with three figures: the Fire Dragon is a red banner creature, the Ice Drake is blue, and the Forest Wyvern is green. You need two hits to trigger your critical hit roll, and always roll one die less than normal. They all have the Fly ability and have a 4 dice attack.

Creatures will include the Rock Elemental and the Forest Giant (the same figures as before but renamed) as well as a Hydra with modular heads. The Hydra is a blue banner figure and comes with 6 different heads and necks—every time it takes a a banner colour hit it loses a neck, but if it rolls a Lore, it gains a new one!

The Elemental and Giant will have modified rules, plus modified rules for a new version of the Spider called a Blue Widow Spider will be included.

August 7, 2009

Official Site Info: Artifacts

An unexpected treat to be included in BattleLore: Heroes are artifacts, special items that can support or augment a hero’s abilities and skills. There are seven types previewed in FFG’s latest Heroes news article.

The first type of artifact is Armor Enhancement. These artifacts, when equipped, increase the defensive capability of a hero against a particular type of attack. Examples given are Sapphire Armor, Warding Bracers, and the Orb of Deflection.

The Orb allows a combined unit (hero and the troop he is leading) to ignore one helmet color hit from a ranged attack. If the attacking troops have just moved and don’t hit on Bonus Strikes, this makes you immune from their ranged attack.

The second type of artifact is Equipment. These are generic items that don’t fall into any specific category. Examples include Mount-War, Beaker Box, and Backpack.

The Backpack allows a hero to trade in the backpack to equip a currently unequipped (“under his character sheet”) artifact in its place. Heroes are limited in the number of artifacts they can equip at the start of the game, but the Backpack doesn’t count towards this limit.

The third type of artifact are Enchanted Items. These items are imbued with magical powers that can give a hero additional bonuses when moving, additional dice when attacking, additional defensive powers, and more. Examples are Maelstrom Cloak, the Snaring Rope, the Rabbit’s Foot, and the Lore Stone.

The Lore Stone allows a hero to ignore all Lore hits in combat; pretty handy, especially against Lore-based enemies, though Lore results still count unfortunately.

The fourth type of artifact are Potions. They are normally discarded after use so players have to be careful to use them at the right time. Examples are Philter of Fear, Goblet of Blood, Tonic of Trap Detection, and Wine of Warping.

The Wine of Warping potion is similar to the Rogue skill Pathfinder: +1 movement and no terrain restrictions. However, you can move through friendly and enemy troops!

The fourth type of artifact is Weapon Enhancement. These are mostly used to boost an attack by adding battle dice, though the type of attack the weapon can be used in is dependent on the type of enhancement. Examples are Mace of Fright, Lore Blade, Sword of Command, and Emerald Charm.

The Emerald Charm powers up a green combined unit so it attacks like a red unit, so you get the movement of green and the attacking power of red! The perfect hero plus troop combination.

There are two other artifact types that are slightly different in that they are not really artifacts as such: Services and Instants.

There seems to be only one Service: Master Physician,, which allows you to heal your hero in exchange for one Treasure and 4 Experience tokens.

The mention of Experience and ‘After Adventure Actions’ implies that there will be some form of continuity for heroes between games. A fledgling Campaign system perhaps?

Instants are like potions except they must be immediately returned to the deck. They come in two types, Experience and Treasure. Treasure allows you to take a Treasure token in exchange for the card, but what Treasure tokens do, we don’t yet fully know.

Well, lots and lots to chew on there and it really looks like BattleLore is gaining a whole new level of complexity and interest with theis long-awaited expansion. Rob Kouba, FFG BattleLore Developer and author of the latest articles, mentions he will be at GenCon 2009—the question is, will advance copies be available?