I love Battlelore! BUT, neither my friend (whom with I play this) nor myself really like the Uthuk Y'llan. So I can only get partially exited about the expansions and I am not going to just buff up the humans. So, I will not be buying either army's expansions for now.

I REALLY want to see a new faction or two come out for this game. RuneWars has the Undead and Elves, so I thought we would see these coming pretty quickly. If I had my choice though, I would like to see some orcs and/or dwarves like the Oath and Anvil expansion for Rune Age.

Until we get new armies, I guess I will just play with what came in the box or maybe with a monster or two. If FFG wants my money, they need to put out some more races. I have bought everything for DiskWars (I know, different universe) and will buy more, because of the options for different army types.

Everyone in my shop who sees us play says the same thing...

"I am waiting for BLANK army to come out before I buy the game" or "If there were more factions, I would buy it"

And this scars me.

I am worried that the game will not do well enough (in FFG's eyes) for them to put out new factions. So this could be a self fulfilling prophecy. Gotta give the people what they want to make a game sell.

I am crossing my fingers...and waiting.

Or you can give your support and faith to a company, because for sure if a game is not selling, they won't be adding stuff saying "let's try this one and hope it goes any better"

(beware, I'm not sayin' you don't have the right to wait for what you want, I'm just commenting on the prophecy)

May I ask you what's the problem with Uthuk? Basically, both Daqan and Uthuk are just representations of different game elements (JC Lawrence used to say "every game is abstract", and he was right); so new units will simply add variety, which should imply that eventually the elements you disliked originally could possibly have been replaced by something cooler. Whether these new units are a different faction or the same one, for me at least, is not so important: for anyone who craved for variety, now variety is a real option

I lucked out. The Uthuk Y'llan are my favorite race in Terrinoth. I can see how their violent tendencies may turn people off, but I find their self-destructive strategies fascinating and fun to play with. It gives them a high-risk/high-reward play style.

But given that you don't like the Uthuk Y'llan, have you thought about getting a second core and playing Daqan vs. Daqan? That might be more to your liking.

You both make valid points, but I am such a "fluff" gamer that they don't work for me.

If I was to just look at mechanics, I would play Chess (of which I just found a new respect, even after not playing it for like 15 years and now comparing it to all the current miniature and board games).

I like to relate to characters of faction that I am playing, feel their pain and fight for their cause. And although the Uthuk were kinda tricked into their current plight, they are just not nice.

Also, I have never been a fan of a "civil war" game (same faction battles).

I really do wish the best for this game: 6 Factions, twice the army size from the starter box, lots of extra monsters and mercenaries, new missions, new terrain, epic scale battles, the whole thing!

Thanks for the replies.

With 5 expansions on the way I can't complain.

I expect they will complete the set of runewars neutral units with sorcerers, hellhounds and beastmen.

If that sells well we might see other factions.

Off topic, but I find the lauding of Chess as the ultimate mechanical game to be wildly overblown - it's full of clunky unbalancing additions that were tacked on over the years that are now taken as inarguable (castling, pawn upgrading, double pawn movement from their starting positions, queen maximum movement, etc.), and that an absence of randomness somehow makes a game intrinsically more strategic - maximizing and minimizing variables to favor your side and knowing how to take advantage of unexpected success or compensate for unexpected failure, are things that require a strong command of gaming strategy that chess can't really approximate (also, if you've never played without stripping out those additional rules, you should really give it a shot - pawns are vastly more interesting when miscalculating with them wastes them instead of turning them all into queens). It's a great game with simple rules that offer a ton of strategy that has endured amazingly well, but holding it up as the pinnacle of strategy while all modern creations fail to meet its glorious perfection is so regressive. Modern games might not have it's conservative austerity or widespread accessibility, but I find them to be generally more demanding in terms of interesting strategic decisions - chess is a fascinating shifting puzzle, but it's certainly not the final word on strategy mechanics.

Fluff-wise, how can anybody not love demonic super-babarians?

First of all, Chess does have one major flaw...WHITE is totally OP!

Seriously, I used to be kind of a Chess hater with all the great strategy and miniatures games out today, and all the "Chess is the one true strategy game" people walking around raising an eyebrow at my orcs, demons, and robots.

But getting a chance to teach chess to some kids and explaining the strategies, I found a new respect for it. It is not the "be all and end all" of gaming, but it is a pretty cool game as it has some good lessons to learn for a new gamer such as thinking ahead, piece trading, and protecting pieces with others.

I highly suggest every gamer have some good abstract games in their collection.

Now back to Battlelore 2E:

Yes to mulletcheese, neutral or mercenary type units would be cool.

I don't hate it - I used to play in junior tournaments a million years ago - I just bristle at the idea that it's the ideal form of anything. After being away from it and playing other things for a few decades, I was playing with my father-in-law for a stretch last year and I couldn't get over how surprisingly inelegant so many of the rules were, so I did a bit of digging into the history of chess rules - it's pretty interesting reading, in terms of thinking about game design. I suppose I'm glad I've played it as much as I have, but I'll also be glad to never play it again, too - adapting a strategy to optimize the statistical outcomes of a chain of moves in BattleLore provides a lot more interesting decision-making to me than the plotting out of 'if I do this, then you'll do this, then I'll do this, then you'll do this' of Chess.

I'm just curious what faction you would like to see. In Runewars, there were 4 factions, two of which were evil (and one could argue that the Waiqar (Undead) faction is every bit as evil, or more, than Uthuk, because Waiqar himself willfully BETRAYED his prior master to seize control, and can be attributed to much of the war and bloodshed in the land, directly or indirectly, for quite some time.

The Latari Elves are "good", but they are kind of self-centered and don't particularly get along with the Daqan Lords more than they have to.

If you factor in the Rune Age factions of the Dwarves and Orcs, there isn't as much backstory, although in the Diskwars universe (which is essentially the same as Runebound's universe, just from the distant past), the Orcs were quite vicious and bloodthirsty as well. I'm not sure about the Dwarves, but I think if anything they were neutral more than good or evil.

Thematically, I'm not sure ANY of the races are truly paragons of virtue. Even the Daqan Lords, while "good" over all, have their share of greed and evil in them.

I think we need to wait untill Gen Con 2015 only will know FFG will launch the new factions or not

I support wanting new factions, and would gladly throw money at them. But I am currently planning on throwing money at the five planned expansions that came up quickly. I'm hoping that good sales for those will encourage FF to consider further expanding of the game.

If they make up an undead set I will start selling organs on the black market for them.

If they make up an undead set I will start selling organs on the black market for them.

Sounds like you'd become partially undead yourself. Now that's faction dedication!

Oh yeah - I'm ordering those 5 new packs the instant they are available. I'm still checking the Upcoming page twice a day, waiting for any kind of change. I noted that both the Dragon and Giant are listed before the Army Packs when sorted by 'expected by,' despite being marked as Q2. My fantasy is that the first 4 of them hit the store the same day (especially since a Q1 release of the Army Packs seems rather unlikely, considering there's only 3 weeks left in the quarter and it's not yet marked as 'on the boat' which is 4-6 weeks on its own). Still, you know, fingers firmly crossed.

If they make up an undead set I will start selling organs on the black market for them.

Sounds like you'd become partially undead yourself. Now that's faction dedication!

Never said "mine".

But yes, I have a massive Undead dedication, every game I play I chose the undead guys,

If they make up an undead set I will start selling organs on the black market for them.

Sounds like you'd become partially undead yourself. Now that's faction dedication!

Never said "mine".

Hail to the Supreme Lord of the Undead.

I also strongly support the idea of more factions.

On the other hand I am not so sure about the dwarves and orcs (although I would like to see them too); how different they are from the other armies ?? I haven’t played the expansion of Rune Age but I think between the Daqan Lords there are already some “dwarf” elements (solid and slow units plus “siege unit”) while the I don’t expect the mechanics of the orcs to be so different from the Uthuk.

Mechanically, the dwarves and orcs will need something new for BattleLore. In Rune Age, their abilities really center on card game principles. The orcs gain advantages from emptying your hand while the dwarves utilze gold cards for different abilities (while other races mostly want to get rid of gold). I suppose for the orcs, BattleLore just needs to maintain their sense of being "all in" for each attack but without hurting themselves like the Uthuk Y'llan. But for dwarves, I wouldn't want to see lore as a replacement for Rune Age's gold. In other words, I don't want them to be a lore-management race because that doesn't really fit their theme, in my opinion.

Thematically, I think the Dwarves will look quite different from the humans. The dwarf units in Rune Age use machines instead of magic. They have War Machines (that look to shoot giant harpoons) and Digging Machines (giant drills like the Technodrome modules from Ninja Turtles). Then they have Demolitionists that basically throw bombs. Now if you recall, the Daqan Lords originally had a unit called the Siege Tower or Siege Machine. However, that appears to have been replaced by the Siege Golem -- a magically animated piece of rock. I can't help but wonder if this change was to help differentiate dwarves from humans. Of course, other plausible reasons include size of the model and the overall "cool" factor.

I think dwarves will look more similar to the Daqan Lords than the Uthuk Y'llan do, but I still think the dwarves will look quite unique.

Here are my 2 cents we need to stop thinking so big at the moment and just finish the basic 4 factons for now. Then get 4 good friends togeher and start a game of RuneWars so when a fight happens settle it though BattleLore. Why because you can that's why and who cares if it would take a few extra hours or days that would be the best part.