Hi, I realized I just registered, but I have been playing battlelore for some time, and I have recently purchased the heroes expansion, but I have some concerns and was hoping for some other people's thoughts.

I really like what the Heroes expansion brings to the game, it is really fun having a powerful unit leading your forces. When I have played however, I have noticed 3 major things which in my opinion are not balanced.

1. Champion vs. Leader:
As a champion, your champion takes a casualty roll with sword/shield hit and a lore hit. This is cool, I like this mechanic. The leader however, takes a hit from a shield/shield hit, a lore hit, and if its unit dies. This means that a hero is more vulnerable as a leader than a champion. This does not make sense to me lore-wise (why would a guy be more vulnerable with a troop around him than a solo hero), nor gameplay wise as I do not believe the advantages of having a hero as a leader do not out-way the disadvantage of the increased vulnerability. Also this encourages you to choose a champion-type hero like the warrior (who is already over powered as it is) who is not burdened by this increased vulnerability. In my opinion, this can be easily fixed by making Leaders only take casualty checks from lore hits and when the unit dies. My balancing reasoning is that in general a champion hero who can fight on its own is better than a leader hero, where you only have 1 unit instead of 2. Making the leader less vulnerable than the champion balances this.

2. Warrior is overpowered :
Let's look at the skills:

• - The warrior has a base attack of 2d and this can be increased by hack-and-slash and Blademaster to a permanent 5d.
• -Riding & Bruiser: one of these 2 skills plus the 2 mentioned above produce an extremely power champion and a hero that is stronger than all other heroes, but not overwhelmingly so.
• Assassin: This skill is truly what makes the warrior broken. With assassin, HnS, and Blademaster, you have a hero with 5d and 6d with an additional casualty roll against heroes. Riding, HnS, and Assasin is just as bad. That is just plain rediculously broken. Assassin should also be the signature rogue skill.
• My suggestion: Ban warriors from taking Assasin and buff the other classes (espessially the rogue). Making pathfinding a prerequesite of hack and slash is another option (but I don't think I will do this).

3. Rogue is underpowered:

My impression of the rogue class is that is is supposed to be a champion-type hero with a penchant for being the anti-hero hero and for trickery.

• The issues: 3 of the rogue skills are very poor: Pathfinding is outclassed by riding, Thievery is okay but very situational (the chance at rolling 2 lore symbols is low, and even lower considering it has to be against a hero to do anything), and Leech is just plain horrible. This leaves Blademaster, Assassin, and Riding (all 3 of which the warrior possesses o.0) and at a paltry 2d (3 against heroes), compared to the 5d warriors recieve, this is broken.
• My suggestion: Start by increasing the rogues starting dice to 2d (another option I am considering is giving the rogue the option of dual daggers(2D) or dagger and common bow (1D but can make ranged attacks)). This would give the rogue 3d (4d against heroes, w/ an addition casualty roll) this is acceptable I think, but the rogue still needs at least 1 more good skill. One thought of mine would be something like "Vanish: The rogue may not be battled back against." I think this fits the theme and would go a long way at taking down other heroes like the warrior (battling back with 5d is really nasty). I think this produces a much more balanced hero that would make it a viable choice over the warrior.

Other Classes:

The other 3 classes are fine and can be played as is, but I think small tweaks can be made to make them more in line with the champion heroes.

• Field Commander: Obviously a leader-type hero, Outflank, Call to arms are both good skills, My only gripe is Scouting and Lead by example are too situational, but its okay. My only suggestion is to increase the Commander base strength to 2d (this would make 3d with blademaster and make it more in line with my other changes, if you wanted to use him as a champion).
• Wizard: I have no comments on the wizard skills, they are fine. I am considering giving the staff weapon the ability to do a ranged attack at the cost of lore (like a range 3 attack at 1d per lore max:3) This would make it so the wizard isn't completely useless as a champion.
• Cleric: My only concern is you will have major lore issues. My suggestion is to add an ability to the mace weapon such as "for ever lore result rolled by your hero, gain 2 lore instead of 1" I think this is balanced because you will have to attack to make use of the ability.

So, those are my concerns and suggestions, I'll admit that I have not done much playtesting yet, but something must be done or else no one will ever use anything except the warrior hero. I realize my entire focus is on heroes with the max 3 skills, but I truely believe most players will ignore the campain rules and go directly to max level heroes for their games. (I love Battlelore for being a casual wargame, and the campain rules contradict that, but I digress,) Even at lower levels, the problems would still exist.

Thank you for reading this.

Hello,

I just bought the heros expansion today. I have yet to play it, but I have read the rules. They do seem a bit over powered just from reading and battle savy seems to be just a rule to throw in their to balance against Heroes. Battle Savy seems too agressive of a rule for me, it is no longer a laid back and position for combat game with B.S.

I would first like to play out the heroes and see. But I would not complain if FFG made a PDF errata of the heroes if it calls for a more balanced game.

B.S. seems to be more of a rule best for scenarios and various (appointed) troops to use as a specialist card.

If there is enough interest FFG may reply?

Only had the one game with Heroes, but having checked out the cards and read your thoughts, which are intriguing. I can kinda see what you mean. I hadn't really considered the balance of Classes before, but I can see that the Rogue may indeed have a difficult time of it compared to others, especially with his abilities shared by the more powerful warrior. A ranged attack sounds good and fits perfectly with the character. However, I don't think the warrior is broken by comparison to the others, especially the wizard. So the Warrior might get a dice or three more through two skills. The Wizard hits on Lore, meaning he has a 1:3 ratio compared to the Warriors 1:6 and that's with his starting skill, let alone the other lovely tricks he can Presto out of his hat..

As for the Champion Vs. Leader balance, it's only one additional Casualty check thanks to the death of a unit, but this could be the difference between life and death, I guess. Personally, I thought that this might be countered by the Artifact selection for Leaders Vs. Champions, but I haven't rifled through the deck to see if this is so. A simple balancing suggestion could be to ignore the first Casualty check received from a Sword on Shield when acting as a Leader.

What might be intersting is running a series of battles where the commander starts with 3 lore council levels and needs to run heros until they can become full lore council members, so a warrior will be **** hard then when it beccomes a council member it will be 'slightly weaker' compared to the other council members.

Chris