As grateful as I am an announcement has come out for Heroes, I am impatiently waiting for deployment decks for the Dwarves and Goblins. Are there any fan made decks out there? Anyone have any thoughts on how to put together a deck of my own? (Or basically how the Dwarf and Goblin units should be weighted compared to the existing decks.)

I have made my own deployment decks but to tell you the truth, they are not very well balanced. I play the goblins and should have much more units than my opponents, but since I made the cards I didn't want it to seem like I was cheating. On a few of the official dwarf vs. goblin scenarios (I can't remember where I found those at the moment), the numbers seemed to be about 1.5:1. In other words, the goblins should have about 50% more units than the dwarves.

For example, in the scenario "All Along the Watchtower" (I have it printed out, but can't remember where I found it) the units are as follows:

Dwarves:

Spears x2

Crossbows x1

Cattle Riders x2

Blue Bagpipes x1

Red swords x1

Clan Chiefs x1

Blue Swords x1

Blue Axes x1

Total: 10

Goblins:

Ostrich Riders x2

Hyena Riders x2

Lizard Riders x2

Red Spears x2 (with drummer in both units)

Red Sword x1 (with drummer in unit)

Green Swords x2

Archer x1

Slings x2

Blue Swords x2

Total Units: 16

There is another scenario in which the dwarves have 5 units +1 Human Blue Horse and the goblins have 9 units. So it seems likely the goblins should have about 50% more units.

As for deployment decks, I scanned one deck for each side, then I erased the units depicted on the card in photoshop, leaving empty spots on the cards. I then wrote in what units are to appear on each card. The player then chooses what units listed on the bottom of the card are to be placed in the empty spots on the "map" of the card. This helps stay true to the random type deployment of Call to Arms.

If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. I also am eagerly awaiting an official deck for the dwarves and goblins (as well as all human).

Hope that helps.

One more thought. If you are interested in an all human army I think they fall in between the dwarves and goblins. In other words, a human army should have about 25% more units than an all dwarf army.

Okay, found the link. Scroll all the way down near the end of the page and look under "Other". There are some examples of Dwarves vs. Goblins.

http://www.battleloremaster.com/adventures_official.html

Cool. Those help. My big worry as for balance is I have never played an all goblin or dwarf army and don't know how they compare. For instance, are dwarf cattleriders really comparable to human or goblin cavalry. But even a starting point of 1:1.25:1.5 (Dwarf:Human:Goblin) helps. And actually that matches my gut response.

The next question is should any of the races be weighted towards infantry or cavalry? Or should those ratios remain constant?

RARodger said:

Like you, Rodger, I am eagerly awaiting deployment decks that are human, dwarf, and goblin specific - as well as any other races FFG would like to trot out I haven't dabbled in creating my own as I am equal parts patient and lazy , but oshfarms' 4:5:6 ratio seems spot on to me. A similar ratio for mounted units seems good too. Something like 6/8/10 (dwarf/human/goblin) dispersed amongst each Deployment Deck, or maybe even 5/8/11...something to tinker with certainly.

FWIW, in the deployment decks w/ Call to Arms, the gobs get 1 extra unit per card. If any gob units are deployed on a card, that card has 5 units. All non-gob cards have 4 units.

Personally, I'm looking forward to new decks for humans, too. What if I don't want to have any mercenaries?

What about just increasing the limit of specialist cards that you can use for a given game?

Jakews said:

That's one possible fix towards the end of generating race/nation specific armies, but I really think race/nation specific Call to Arms decks are necessary (and more fun ).

So, one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about this is for campaign play. I’m sure Heroes will have some thoughts, but so do I.

My current thought is to allow players multiple armies, probably three. Then to work out how many units are in a deployment deck (D), adjust for race ® and allow player to assign three times that number into three decks as the like. ((D*R)*3)

So you could have one deck that’s cavalry heavy and another that’s archer heavy or however you like it. Each deck will be 15 cards, just like the CtA setup, and you have to draw your four cards from the appropriate deck. (So Army #1 always draws 4 random cards from Deck #1.)

I think this should allow both customization with ease of set up along with some of the random card play element that is central to BattleLore’s design philosophy.

What do you think?

I’m spending the day hiding in A/C so might try to run some numbers to show an example.

So this is what I’m thinking. Each player gets to make 21 unique deployment cards, seven for each of their three armies. They have a number of units to distribute across the cards as the like.

Humans get:

18 Green Archers
12 Green Infantry
33 Blue Infantry
9 Red Infantry
12 Blue Cavalry
8 Red Cavalry

(I’m relegating creatures to the lore council.)

I don’t have any expansions that add figures, so I don’t know if things like Cattle Riders or Spearbearers and the different Goblin cavalry should be represented on the cards or using the specialists cards. From my understanding I’d want them to be on the cards so you can fully use the cards. But since I’m not sure how that would work (currently lacking the expansions… thankfully payday’s acomin’) I’m just generalizing here.

Dwarves get:

14 Crossbows
36 Blue Infantry
7 Red Infantry
16 Cavalry (assuming Cattle Riders are roughly equivalent)

Goblins get:
21 Archers
15 Green Infantry
39 Blue Infantry
6 Red Infantry
27 Cavalry

Fair enough. I think I would like to see one or two more races come out first before making specific race distribution cards.

I would too, but that seems to be taking a little bit of time.

Jakews said:

Why wait? or do you mean that you would rather FFG spend the time putting out more races before spending the time making race-specific CtA decks? I don't see this as an either/or situation. All of the nations/factions/races should be released "complete" with Deployment decks. The piecemeal way that DoW unveiled the gobbos, dwarves, and humans should not be continued.

I guess it would be necessary to not only bring out call to arms decks for dwarves and goblins but also boost their regular armies.

Currently the basegame has

3x blue dwarf infantery, 1x red dwarf infantery, 1x green dwarf crossbow unit

4x blue goblin infantery, 1x red goblin infantery, 1x green goblin infantery, 2x green goblin riders

in order to keep the specialist card system up, there would be an expansion necessary where they not only include deployment decks but also more of the above mentioned units. Surely with the existing goblin and dwarf units it would be possible to bring out deployment decks, but they would be limited. Plus if you would play against a human army which exists only of normal units you would get quite an advantage if both (the human and the "race" army) get to choose specialist cards.

But what if you include the released expansions as additional base units and not specialists? I guess this is what I'm assuming you would have to do. Some of the Dwarven Infantry would have to be the spearbearers for instance.

Do the expansions have new standard bearers? Can anyone tell me what color the different specialsts would be if they were complete units?

RARodger said:

Yes they do. And for the most part, while different colors can be used for many of the units, there is a "suggested" banner color.

Off the top of my head (corrections and additions appreciated ):

Dwarves:

Spearbearers: blue

Cattle Riders: blue

Axe Wielders: blue

Bagpipes: blue (average strength) or red (extra-strength)

Clan Chiefs: blue

Goblins:

Spearbearers: red

Slingers: green

Ostrich Riders: green

Hyena Riders: blue

Goblin Band: green

Embedded drummers could work in the Deployment decks, but work well as Specialists only too.

Humans:

Halberdiers: Red

Arbalestiers: blue

Longbows: green

Spearbearers: blue? red? not sure on this one

Hornblower would be a good specialist only, but could work well in the Deployment deck too.

Well I just recently stumbled into this forum here and after reading through this I think the ideas sound good and about right for ratios. I think the solutions to everything are fairly simple and tried and true through FFG's way of doing things.

What I think would solve things the easiest to implement is what's been done with other games be done for future expansions whether it be new races or repackaging of the old stuff (that to my knowledge isn't being printed by FFG at present (the dwarven battalion, hundred years, goblin skirmishers, and goblin marauders)). The games Drakon and Twilight Imperium for example has gone through several different versions, and are both on their third edition I believe, but in earlier versions they had more expansions that when reprinted were part of the core base game. So I'm suggesting to make decks that use the specialists to make up for everyone that has them already. Then in all future printings include the cards with the pieces so the lack of pieces wouldn't be an issue. Chances are that the first step may be skipped which would probably just make people upset when they have to buy another set of figures to get the decks that would be nice.

I think the closest matchup in games is more along the lines of Tide of Iron, since it's a scenario based war game that has a base game and then each expansion doesn't build off the others but adds it's own thing. The beauty is that with CtA had allowed things to be a bit more customizable and interchangeable. To maintain that the simplest thing to do for decks besides the other plan I said could be to do some sort of hybrid symbol on the cards that lets the user pick what they have available. Which if you think about it they'd just have to do "foot melee unit," "foot range unit,"and "cavalry unit," though it might be better to split the cavalry to melee and range as well giving an ok way to customize everything. To appease everyone the base unit like just having it as foot unit, common bow, and long sword cavalry or whatever base unit for every race, then vary the specialists either basing off the scenario, a player agreement where two is the default if they can't agree, or a random way like roll X many dice and however many say kire symbols show up is how many cards one side gets.

I don't really know how to gage the creatures on the cards since there is a flavor aspect to putting them there, but there's valid points to keeping it just on the lore council as well. It also depends on whatever other creatures show up since some make more sense then others.

I really don't know how much any of this gets read by anyone that actually has a hand in development but that's what comes to my mind.

Well, here's my more specific break down:

HUMAN
Archers
Green 12
Blue (Arbalasters) 6
Foot
Green 12
Blue 31
Blue (Spears) 4
Red 8
Red (Halberds) 2
Cavalry
Blue 12
Red 8
95

GOBLIN
Archers
Green 21
Green (Slingers) 4
Foot
Green 12
Green (Band) 3
Blue 39
Red 6
Red (Spears) 6
Cavalry
Green 15
Green (Ostriche) 6
Blue (Hyena) 6
118

DWARF
Archers
Green 14
Foot
Blue 21
Blue (Spears) 6
Blue (Axe) 6
Blue (Bagpipers) 3
Red 7
Cavalry
Blue (Cattle) 16
73

Well my problem with DIY deployment decks are the same with a points system*, how do you achieve balance? It would be all to easy to create cards with formations that can quickly support each other and optimise troop placements and lead to all other cards not being used etc (much the same way that some specialist cards are never chosen...), thats why I used the CtA as presented for my homebrew stuff as I guess that many many games were played with lots of versions of the decks before it was released.
So chalk me up in the lets have official single race deployment decks for all races (including humans)

Chris

* how do you cost the price of a red cavalry when its value can change depending on which row it is on and even then their value would have to change if you have a level 3 wizard or rogue who can move it across the board, I hope there is never a points system for Battlelore.

Well, I don't know how I'd do it for a generic deployment set, but my intention in this is that each player would assign the units on the their deployment cards how they like. So I would presume that the players would all be designing optimal placements for their units. Perhaps this would lead to something unbalanced, but that would be an unbalancing based on player's skill, not the design.

For our DIY deployment decks I picked 7 cards from each side (I can't remember if it was the A, B, or C deck) and scanned them and then photoshopped the assigned units on the card out. Then based on the percentages of what my friends and I owned, I tried to make those units available for placement amongst those seven cards. For example: let's say that on the seven cards there are 30 potential spaces available (the 30 units that I removed in photoshop). And then let's say that for one human army the archers represented 10% of the units available to field that army. Perhaps there are 60 total human units available in our collection and there are 6 archer units. I would then do simple math and disperse 3 archer units amongst the seven cards. If blue infantry units were 30% of the army, then there would be 9 blue units dispersed amongst the seven cards. I simply wrote on the bottom of the card the units available to place on each card. They had to be placed in the spots that were previously occupied by the official card. This adds a little more custom deployment without letting everyone set their armies up already in full support.

I am not sure that is easy to follow or not, perhaps I can clarify if anyone is interested. I'm not sure how balanced our DIY decks are (in fact, I know the goblins are a little weak. Since I play them and I made the decks I didn't want to make it appear I was making them too powerful). For now, it works okay, but I very much look forward to official decks.