BL is (or maybe was) my all time favorite game but I am very disappointed in the sloppiness I see in everything BL. I just got the heroes expansion and there are so many ambiguities it’s hard to believe they released something like that. I should not have to hunt down and group all the heroes clarifications from the forums to play a game. I should not have to get up from the gaming table to look at the lore cards compendium pdf to play a game.

There are mistakes on the setup maps, on card text, on the card indexing system, wrong card backs, a creature without a FGG-produced summary card, etc, etc. Please get it together FFG and Richard! Just because DoW made an excellent games with crappy written rules does not mean you have to continue their legacy. It is evident that the only play test you guys do is for balance and fun. If you would have given the heroes expansion (with cards), as written, to anybody outside your play testing circle he would have come up with a long list of things that needed clarification.

At the very least, you guys need to come out with a condensed errata pdf ASAP. That pdf should include every single correction to be made, indexed by expansion. And also the Lore Cards and Creature Compendium. If it turns out to be half the length of the rulebook so be it. Many mistakes were made by DoW so it is shared sloppiness.

If I sound mean is because this has been my all-time favorite game but I am sick of all the errors. The heroes expansion has put me over the top. I’m close to selling off the whole system and publishing a nasty article on ErrorLore.

There are no mistakes on the Lore cards - the length of the compendium is due to answering questions posed by players regarding situations that arise when using the cards. The vast majority of the time following the text on the card will give one all the guidance one needs, but it is nice to be able to reference greater detail than the card face for the stickier situations that can arise.

There have been some errors (very, very minor in my estimation), and those have all been acknowledged and explained - up to Heroes anyway. Just a guess, but I think some of the delays in Heroes' release had to do with the ensuring coherency in the rules.

I think it is an exaggeration, and one that unfairly damages the game's reputation (which I feel has been mistakenly maligned often in the past) , to say that the few true errors that have occurred (wrong backings on specialist cards, really, that is the kind of stuff that ruins a game?) render the game unplayable. I understand frustrations that can arise, but I do think BL is owed a fair perspective.

(By the way, if you truly do feel justified in selling, I would be interested in Heroes and Hundred Years' War expansions at reasonable prices )

Yes, I would also be willing to take something reasonably priced off of your hands too.

Many of the "errors" I have read about can be had by a careful reading and not making assumptions. Still waiting to hear on the Battle Savvy question though.

Dale

Dale, to which Battle Savvy question are you referring? I may have unduly muddled your ideas of Battle Savvy with a post in another thread. To me, there is no question about what Battle Savvy intends.

Your comment about Days of Wonders rules being so error ridden is the exact opposite of my experience. DoW has some of the clearest rulebooks out there and other than some very minor clarificiation I have not had any questions arise out of the instructions received from them. I have not purchased an FFG expansion yet, so no personal experience on that one.

Lothiam said:

Apparently you’ve never played BattleLore. There DoW ruleset is riddled with errors of omission. This game is impossible to play without the Lore Cards and Creature compendium. you would have to arbitrate 2 or 3 times per game. The trample rules were sketchy at best. The hero rules and text on the cards are poorly written as well. When does double bold apply to heroes, creatures, troops under influences of spells, landmarks?

Look, when you see the game designer having to clarify rules many times it just tells you the game is poorly written. It has been from the beginning. I appreciate Richard clarifying doubts in the forum, but this is not the way to run a successful game franchise. Only a small percentage of us come here to read the rules clarifications, and it is a pain in the butt even then. The rest have to “wing it”. And “winging the rules” is pretty bad when you are in a competing to win a game. In any event there is competition; you don’t see the competing parties making up the rules as they go do you? It always leaves a sour taste to the looser that (well if we would have ruled it this way…) By the time the same situations come up again it might be a few months since you played so you have to wing it again, this time maybe opposite of what you ruled it last time. I’m pretty sure BL has lost a lot of casual board game players to poorly written rules. Why play a game where you lose due to some ruling when you can play many other games where you lose mostly because you made poor choices. I don’t mind losing at all, in fact I enjoy it almost as much as winning, but I have to lose because of bad strategy or bad luck, not because of incomplete rules that had to be improvised. We need consistency. We need structure. Heck this system is so messed up I think the only thing to save it is a BL 2.0. Re-written Lore and Command cards, rules, etc. Everything integrated, not spread across numerous booklets and downloaded pdf’s.

Or at the very least WE NEED ONE LARGE PDF WITH ALL THE ERRATA

El Cuajinais said:

The first few adventures in the base game are for casual gamers. I like to use adventure 7, Crisis in Avignon, as a way to introduce players to the more complex aspects of the game, and see how they like the taste. I would find it hard to believe that any players of CCG's (which BattleLore attempts to meld into a board game - and quite well, in my opinion) would find the rules poorly written. I can certainly understand how players without such a background (and even those that do ) would benefit from the Lore Compendium which spells out at length some of the more complicated interactions that can arise from Lore Card play. Calling this "errata" is not correct. In fact, it is the Lore Compendium which needs to be edited and errata'd as there are some incorrectly described judgements and ambiguous answers provided there.

Yes, the cards/rules could have been more explicit that the ability to ignore a flag or multiple flags is equivalent to bold morale. Yes, the trample rules could have been more concise (the root of this issue, however, I believe is due to a conflict between those involved with designing/publishing the game about what exactly those rules are). Aside from those two issues, I think the remainder of the game and its expansions (up to Heroes, anyway - I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet) are certainly up to acceptable standards for rule clarity. This ain't checkers or chess, with closed and elegant rule sets. There is some grit in the details of Dwarf Chieftans going head to hoof with Mounted Knights, especially when Wizards and Clerics are involved

Assuming the rules are what they aren't, and/or forgetting to apply them is not the fault of the game. An Epic Call to Arms Adventure involving full war councils and multiple creatures is not for a casual player of BattleLore.

Actually I have played Battlelore ~50+ times. I have taught 5-6 different player many with no CCG or Wargaming experience, and have found very little need for rule clarifications. 99% of the time they are in the rule book or can be easily brought through the rule structure to come to a fair ruling. In a game with so much complexity, I have found the rules, clear, concise, and simple enough for even a non-war gamer to quickly catch on.

To be honest not every game is suited for every player, BL may not be the right game for you, though I do agree a single point of reference for FAQ and errata would be great, something like a wiki for ease of asking questions and getting them all in one place and a dedicated fan to collate once a quarter for download (I'd prefer FFG to concentrate on getting more BL stuff out there than collating replies). It would be great to have the Lore and creature compendium on here too (I may well be utterly misguided in thinking that they aren't of course..)

Perhaps if some such could be drawn together you will find that BL could be right after all, more players the better ;-)

Chris

If you go over to www.battleloremaster.com/faqerratadownloads/ and scroll down a bit you'll get the last big pdf produced by fans that had every DOW question that had an 'official' response (for Lore and creatures), it's been a while since it was last updated (to be honest it's way prettier than anything I could hope to achieve) but it should cover the core game quite nicely

Chris

toddrew said:

Thank you. I’m glad we agree on this. Some people seem to think DoW and FFG are gods and everything coming out their presses is sacred. Now the only thing I’d like to convey is I don’t take these “rules-that-need-to-be-clarified” lightly. I’m sure many people who don’t bother visiting the games forums are on my boat as well, but there’s no way I can prove that. My way of looking at it is pretty simple:

You either can play the game out of the box, (without having to get up from the table to look in a computer), or you can’t.

With BL you can’t. With many other board games, you can. I would be willing to print out a pdf and keep it in the game box, only that pdf does not exist. And the compendiums in their current form take way more paper and ink than would be needed to convey the information. (Though I admit I’m a sucker for the nice graphics)

toddrew said:

I haven’t played heroes either, but reading through the rules and cards made me want to come here and post this thread instead of playing it. Too many ambiguities, many which Richard has clarified already but I would like an official errata where everything is gathered into one place so I would only need to print that and keep it in the game box. Maybe FFG can make a good color document with nice-looking graphics and make it downloadable for free and sell the printed version for $5 like they plan on doing with the new Tannhauser ruleset. Now wouldn't that be something.

Well spoken El Cuajinais!

I love battlelore, but i´d also love to read your Errorlore article.