Oh and yes, I agree with your unit distribution assuming no one gives us a more compelling case for a different distribution. Honestly, the distribution doesn't matter half as much as the combos/synergies you create between the units regardless of type.
Latari Elves Collaboration
All good ideas
And these make me desire the two Latari Elves Army packs so strong!
Come on FFG give us a sign!
I've actually almost finished my first draft of the elven troops. I'll post them up here when I do. They're based off of Budgernaut's idea (which was my favorite of those I've seen posted). I'd post them now, but I'm still tweaking 2-3 of the units and I've yet to have a really great idea for their tile.
I'd actually like to talk with you all about the tile a little bit. The thing is, Daqan and Waiqar have great tiles. Uthuk's tile is the worst (poor Uthuk got a lot of crap stuff in Warband of Scorn. At least that got that big beetle and berzerkers). Daqan Tile is good because it's easily usable by their 3 separate ranged units and fairly usable by both their cavalry and the Roc warrior with a little forethought. The Waiqar tile is good because it allows you to be more reckless with some of your units and wear your opponent down more quickly. The Uthuk tile is mostly difficult to use because it's almost never worth it to spend orders sending a unit away from the fight to heal and then more orders taking them back up.
Honestly, the tile will need to be made after we decide the units because I want to avoid the Uthuk situation where the tile is super difficult to use effectively. As a side note, the Uthuk tile would probably be quite useful if it was able to be positioned further forward. Maybe it could be placed like the barricade? That could be too much freedom, but maybe just being able to move it a hex or two from its initial position would make it better? Probably the wrong thread for this but it's at least sort of relevant to the idea of making a tile for the elves
Off topic but Uthuk tile becomes a lot better easily by allowing the same deployment rule as for the barricade. Which is that you can move it to any hex on your scenario card after revealing. This will allow it to be used on the frontline and makes it a bit too powerful perhaps.
edit1: Also Phalanx with 1 move and no immovable might be too weak, because they'll easily get pushed back and cause headaches to the commander fielding them. I'd add immovable or a conditional second move like Ironbound and Obscenes have.
edit2: Here's an idea for a forest related unit ability. Forest Warrior : When attacking from a forest hex, enemy counterattacks targeting this unit are done with -1 die.
It makes the unit powerful when attacking from a forest hex particularly if one adds on some additional bonuses (like the reroll from support characters or a lore card) and doesn't make them too oppressive when the opponent is trying to push them out of a forest hex during his turn.
Edited by barbababaEvasive was useless in the natural habitat of elves. I've fixed that. I also added a mass attack ability to the Forest Guardian, to distinguish him from the Chaos Lord.
Why is Evasive useless in forests? I don't quite understand.
On a whim, I decided to compile all the Elven unit abilities into a single document . It's not as helpful as I thought it would be, but there it is. Also, I cleaned up a lot of the wording of those abilities to bring them more in line with the text used on the current unit abilities. I left some abilities as written, though, especially if I didn't completely understand the intent or had a question about how it worked.
On a whim, I decided to compile all the Elven unit abilities into a single document . It's not as helpful as I thought it would be, but there it is. Also, I cleaned up a lot of the wording of those abilities to bring them more in line with the text used on the current unit abilities. I left some abilities as written, though, especially if I didn't completely understand the intent or had a question about how it worked.
For Web and Webbed there's a distinction.
A Web marker is the marker that is placed by the ability that causes Webbed condition. When an enemy is in the hex that has a Web marker on it the marker is flipped and becomes a Webbed marker.That's why a flying unit or Wraiths unit going through an already activated marker which is now a Webbed marker doesn't need to stop on that unit or get webbed itself.
That's the reason for the clause about "not becoming webbed".
I would probably propose that we make for elves
2 archers or 1 archer + 1 ranged unit not archer (i.e. ranger?)
1 caster
1 basic infantry
1 cavalry
2 elite
2 legend
I really think that the elves should only have one cavalry, because a lot of their units should be able to fill some of the usual cavalry roles.
Thematically, those would be
Deepwood Archer (archer class)
Darnati Warrior (infantry)
Storm Sorceress (caster)
Leonx Rider (cavalry)
Forest Guardian (legend)
Pegasus Rider (legend or elite, I personally would prefer legend)
Spider web thingy (elite or legend.)
Ranger (ranged unit with 1-3 range, 2 dice, 4 movement, 3 health, support ability)
Another elite, perhaps a dryad.
Okay now I'll leave my idea for the faction here (remember that I based this off of Budgernaut's idea). This concept probably isn't the best here, but it may have some useful concepts. These have also had a complete lack of testing, so regard it as a first draft:
DEEPWOOD ARCHER
Infantry, Archer, Ranged
Movement: 2
Combat Value: 2 (range 1-4)
Health: 3
Crack Shot: [Heroic] Ignore all other dice rolled during this combat and deal 1 damage to the target unit.
Mobility 1: If this unit was ordered, it may move up to 1 hex after your Attack step.
This unit I didn't change at all from Budgernaut's idea. I went through some of the math on the ability and it seems like a well balanced unit so long as the mobility doesn't turn out to be super easy to abuse. That will partially depend on their scenarios.
AYMHELIN SCOUT
Infantry, Melee
Movement: 3
Combat Value: 2
Health: 3
Stealth: When this unit is ordered, place a stealth token on it. Stealthed units do not block line of sight and roll 1 additional die in combat.
Enemies attacking a stealthed unit, roll 1 less die. The stealth token is removed after an attack is resolved against this unit.
[Heroic] Evasion: After this unit resolves an attack against an enemy unit and before advancing or being countered, this unit may move up to 1 hex in
any direction.
The idea of this unit was that it would be a twist on standard infantry stats. I liked that in Budgernaut's concept. I didn't really like the idea that a core unit would be so dependent on a tile type, so I made it so that it would be formidable in a forest, but still useful elsewhere. The stealth should also help the Latari archers find their targets more easily.
DARNATI WARRIOR
Elite, Melee
Movement: 2
Combat Value: 3
Health: 3
Overpower: When this unit attacks a unit with remaining health equal to or less than this units health, this unit attacks with 1 additional die and may also re-roll 1 die in this combat.
Grace: This unit may pass through units when moving.
Deflect: When this unit is counter attacked, this unit suffers a maximum of 1 damage ignoring the any additional damage caused to it during that combat.
This unit is your fearless shock trooper. I simplified the wording and effect of deflect, added grace, and made overpower match its function in Runewars the board game.
PEGASUS RIDER
Cavalry, Melee
Movement: 3
Combat Value: 3
Health: 3
Flying: Non-Flying melee units roll 1 fewer die when attacking this unit. This unit ignores combat and movement restrictions of hexes it moves
into or occupies.
Inspire: After using advance, grant an inspired token to another friendly unit within 2 spaces. That unit may discard the token to re-roll 1 die
in combat.
Glorious Charge: [Heroic]. During your turn, if this unit was not adjacent to the target unit at the start of your Move
Step, cause 1 retreat.
I tried to make this more powerful on its own so I had to reduce the power of the inspire effect.
FOREST GUARDIAN
Legend, Melee
Movement: 1
Combat Value: 4
Health: 5
Massive: This unit cannot move into or occupy building hexes.
One with the Land: This unit may move through river hexes. Additionally, this unit gains a bonus based on the type of terrain it occupies. Forest: Do not
suffer battle dice restrictions. Hill: Ignore the first damage caused against you in combat. Plain: Once per turn, after moving, this unit may move 1 additional hex.
Again, I didn't like the idea that the elves would be so completely dependent on forests. So, I made this unit good in different ways on everything. He will still rock it in a forest though.
STORM SORCERESSES
Caster, Infantry, Ranged
Movement: 2
Combat Value: 3 (range 1-3)
Health: 3
Word of Vaal: When this unit causes retreats, you may choose to have enemy units move toward this unit instead of away from it.
Fearful Display: [Lore] Cause 1 retreat.
I made no changes here. In fact, this unit helps to define a trait unique to the elves which is that they have very powerful abilities to cause retreats.
WARDENS
Elite, Archer, Ranged
Movement: 2
Combat Value: 3 (range 1-5)
Health: 3
Courage: When combat dice are rolled against this unit, it may force the attacking unit to re-roll up to 1 flag result.
Latari Blades: When this unit would make an attack or counter attack against an adjacent unit, it may instead make a melee attack with 3 dice.
I based this unit off the Woodland Longbows. The point of this unit is the act as the elves only defensive unit. I made it defensive because they needed something to hold a point to some extent and because I felt the unit need to be more distinct from the deepwood archers beyond just being "scaled up"
LEONX PATROL
Cavalry, Melee
Movement: 3
Combat Value: 3
Health: 3
Opportune Moment: During your turn, when an enemy unit adjacent to this unit would retreat for any reason, this unit may immediately advance into that enemy unit's hex.
Prowl: After this unit uses advance, it may cause 1 damage to an adjacent enemy unit.
This unit plays into a light "cause retreats" synergy in the faction. I wanted to also make it less of a flesh-ripper brute clone while filling the same role.
ELVEN LORD
Legend, Melee
Movement: 2
Combat Value: 3
Health: 4
Leadership: Each friendly unit within 2 spaces of this unit may, while making a combat roll, change the face of 1 die to a heroic result.
Vigilant: This unit cannot be countered.
Bodyguards: When this unit would suffer damage, it may transfer all but 1 of that damage to an adjacent friendly unit.
This guy definitely needs balancing (probably over-tuned at the moment), but if done properly, he could be the center of an entire army-type. I always thought a support legend would be fun.
I tried to build lots of synergy into this faction and give it some unique focuses and capabilities. It does share some mobility with the daqan, but the faction should play out very differently from them in the end. Also, I didn't get to a tile yet. Still working on that. I would probably make the tile so that it works well with units that maybe wouldn't see as much play otherwise.
EDIT: Also, I'm not going to claim this is balanced yet. I'm more putting it up for the ideas.
Edited
by Willange
EDIT: Also, I'm not going to claim this is balanced yet. I'm more putting it up for the ideas.
Storm Sorceresses have 50% hit rate on melee attacks.
I don't know if this is intended or not but that makes them really horrid targets for every elite unit that might want to go squish them. Lore does damage on melee range because of the retreat direction, flags do damage on melee and ranged hits do damage on melee. Besides this they can also choose to have the enemy retreat out of range of counterattacks if their attack does not completely decimate the enemy.
In addition they can also pull enemy units into friendlies when sitting on top of a hill or through the earlier mentioned stealth unit. This means they have 2 faces for damage even from range. It is too much in my opinion.
If this is the ability they are going to be designed with, I'd make it so that they can not cause damage on retreats or they can not choose the direction of retreats when the enemy is in melee range of a friendly unit.
Compared to Berserkers, Blood Harvesters or Doombringer who also have 50% hit ratio, their attacks always have some kind of deficiency to it like only 2 attack dice for Berserkers and losing models for Blood Harvesters or only working on infantry and cavalry for Doombringer. They also do not have range.
Edited by barbababaIf it ends up being too much, then I would probably just say that word of vaal can't cause damage or can only activate if the movement can actually happen. I agree that may be too good, but I have yet to test it as I said
Grrr! I wrote up a bunch of comments and the internet ate them!
@barbababa: The Sorceress does have to sacrifice a lore to gain the extra retreat, so there is a sacrifice there. Granted, it may not be much, but for the Blood Sister, not gaining lore when committing lore results was apparently pretty significant. It may not be much of a sacrifice for the elves, though, so it is something to think about. I think it should be playtested before being changed. And if it is too powerful, the next thin I would want to try would be "[Lore] Fearful Display: Spend 1 lore to cause 1 retreat." Now that ability is effectively costing 2 lore to activate. That's a pretty big commitment, I think. If you take away the ability to deal damage with retreats, then I would change Fearful Display to say, "Gain 1 lore and cause 1 retreat." It becomes a tech/support piece where you are altering movement in the hopes of gaining an advantage, but there is no guaranteed of an advantage like there is with instant damage.
@Toenail: The more I think about it, the more I think I like the idea of making Pegasus Riders Legend units. My biggest concern is that a single pegasus just doesn't look intimidating, in my opinion, but then, having 3 pegasi with wings outstretched may be a bit much for a single unit. The other reason I like that idea is because it lets the Daqan be the "horesemen." They will be the only faction with 2 mounted cavalry. The other factions will have 1 or 0 mounted cavalry (Leonx Rider and Death Knight) and 1 or zero "animal" cavalry (Fleshripper Brute and Barghests).
Also, Toenail, you mentioned having 2 archer units, but that is not a main type. Is it Infantry-Archer? Elite-Archer? Cavalry-Archer? If one of your Elite units was also an archer, that frees up an extra space for, say, a 2nd Cavalry. In that case, we could do Pegasus Rider and Leonx Rider as cavalry units.
@Willange: Interesting how you tried to avoid relying on forest hexes. I totally see the appeal of that, but to defend my original design, I knew we would have full control over what the Latari scenarios would look like, and I planned to put a lot of forest hexes in to many of those scenarios. Also, we have the option of printing a few extra forest tiles to include in one or both boxes, if the number in the core set is insufficient. Now, using lots of forests does run the risk of making the 12 scenarios too similar, so I think from a design perspective, your changes make sense, even if they are not as thematic as the originals. Regarding the Pegasus Rider, the original wording said to place 1 Inspired token on a friendly unit within 2 hexes. The Pegasus Rider is 0 hexes from itself, so it was eligible to receive its own Inspired tokens, so I never felt that it was too weak on its own. The ability to reroll a dice should not be underestimated. You changed the wording to "another friendly unit" which nullifies its ability to Inspire itself. I wasn't sure if that was intentional.
Ah, I see. Yes, I didn't mean to change Pegasus that way. Good catch. And yeah, you could bring the forest thing back. I was mostly just thinking in terms of easy of scenario design.
The way I see it (since I've attempted 2 homebrewed factions before), the scenarios are at least half of the faction balance. I'm not saying getting scenarios with lots of forests to work is impossible. I'm just saying it will take a lot of experimentation. The difficulty with putting lots of forests in is that, any elf unit that rolls more than 3d is now weaker. Also, your opponents will mostly just be funneled into choosing good forest units. For example, if I play uthuk, then I'm going as many berserkers as I can. This can totally work, but this will be an obstacle to overcome. You seem well aware of that, so it will probably be fine as long as we work on it.
I think instead of throwing stuff around, we should design each unit one by one, then tweak it.
So let's start with the basic footman (or two) and archer (budgernaut is right, we don't need two infantry-archers. What do we want a basic Latari footman to do?
Daqan has tactics.
Undead has raw dice
Uthuk has raw damage, with a drawback.
So what if we went with a mobile footman?
Aymehilin Rangers
3/2/3 4-cost
Strider: Ignore terrain effects that end your movement.
Teamwork: While another unit of Rangers is
Something like this for the archer:
2/2/3 4-cost
Unhindered: This unit may move one additional space, so long as this move does not put it adjacent to another unit.
Forest Dwellers: This unit can sight over other units as if they were in a hill while in a forest.
Edited by ToenailDon't forget regeneration for the Undead foot soldier. Also, the Undead and Uthuk are sort of mirrors of one another. One throws more dice as they get weaker, the other throws fewer dice. Maybe the Latari Infantry-Melee unit could be a sort of inverse of the Daqan one? In that case, I really like using the new Evasive ability for the foot soldier (This unit may ignore 1 damage per combat and suffers 1 retreat instead). Instead of forcing a retreat, it lets them retreat instead so it's sort of a twist on the same theme. I'm not a fan of introducing a new token (the stealth token) for this unit, though.
We could keep the mobility theme by allowing them to ignore certain terrain effects, too. I think that's not a bad idea at all. What would you think if it could ignore all movement restrictions of terrain except buildings? Yes, that includes crossing barricades and even water. But if it enters a building, it has to stop. It's probably too powerful. Are we thinking they should ignore movement restrictions at all times (like a Flying unit would) or just during the move step (which makes them like the Doombringer)? See, that's why I kind of like just ignoring forest and maybe water hexes. It's unique and flavorful. I think they'll still get plenty of use out of that sort of ability. Otherwise it's too much like Flying or Burrow.
For the archer, I don't want to brag, but I really like the archer I developed (that Willange used in his post above).
That Deepwood is really awesome that you made.
Evasive definitely works as an idea, though I fear the power level. Just Forest and Water is definitely a good place for Strider.
Great ideas everyone! I'm glad to see that people taking an interest in this and I have enjoyed reading it. I look forward to trying out some of these unit prototypes in the future.
I have one question though. What should we do about representing the units on the field? Battlelore is a highly visual game for me, and getting to play with miniatures is half the fun. Proxying the units with existing battlelore figures won't really bring much satisfaction for me personally, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I have been browsing all over the internet, looking for generic fantasy elven miniatures in a similar scale to battlelore, but not really come up with much. Has anyone else found anything?
Evasive definitely works as an idea, though I fear the power level.
One thing to consider about Evasive is that if you use the ability when being attacked by an adjacent enemy, you forfeit your counter attack. It's really good on ranged attacks, though, for sure.
Yeah I could support both those ideas. Do we have specific stats for the melee infantry?
I'm thinking that because of their mobility through terrain they should just have the standard infantry stats of 2 move 3 attack and 3 life. With the terrain mobility and evasive, this would make it a good strike troop with relatively little to fear as long as they have positioning. They would also have the weakness of not being anything special to hold points
Edited by WillangeI agree that 2-3-3 is good for the Infantry. It doesn't have attack modifiers, so mobility is all it has.
Another thought on Evasive is that it's easily played around. If the unit is unable to retreat, that ability is completely nullified. I think the Archer and Melee infantry are in a good spot and just need testing, which means we need more units for them to stand with. So, which units should we work on next? I suppose if we focus on the Caster, we'll be finished with all 3 Infantry units.
This is just a thought, and may be against the general theme for the elves that people have been going for so far. I'm not sure about the lore behind Terrinoth elves, but what about an army feel that is closer to elves from lord of the rings? (pike walls, with archers firing over and swordsmen for support). I was thinking that Daqan kind of already have the mobility game down and maybe the elves could be a defensive force, with one "army pack" focusing on the classic high elves feel of rigid formations, and the other pack being focused on the forest dwelling types, with harassment units and woodsy things like the spiders people have mentioned.
Edit: Oops, I now realize part of this is redundant: I just noticed barbababa already came up with an idea similar to defensive pike units.
Well the other games give us 6 solid units to work with. The theme of the latari is pretty much a high fantasy wood elf theme. A pikes unit might work but with the infantry we're making we only really have two more unit slots open.
1 slot for a cavalry or legend depending on what the Pegasus ends up being. Could also be another infantry or elite though if we do just 1 cavalry and make Pegasus a legend.
Then 1 slot for their second elite which I'm guessing will end up being a super Archer of sorts, but no one has decided really. Maybe the pikes fit here? Not sure. I do know we didn't want to necessarily make these guys the ultimate defense faction though. At least, that was my understanding
So I think the caster should be saved for a bit later so it can have some synergy with the more of the army. I think it would be nice to nail down the leonx rider as a cavalry unit for the faction. What were people thinking for it initially?
So if I'm following correctly we have the following rough outline
Infantry-Melee (done; needs a name)
Infantry-Archer-Ranged (Deepwood Archer?)
Infantry-Caster-Ranged (Sorceress of some form or other)
Cavalry (Leonx Rider)
[Elite or Cavalry]
Elite
Elite (maybe Archer-Ranged?)
Legend (Forest Guardian)
Legend
It seems to me that even if we did have an Elite Archer unit (which I think would be sweet), we still have another Elite slot to fill, and that could totally be the pike-men-like unit. I wouldn't count that idea out just yet. But I think Willange is right, and we can start working on the Leonx Rider
For the most part, I think there has been a consensus of
Leonx Rider
Cavalry, Melee
Movement value: 3
Combat value: 3
Health: 3
What we need to figure out next is what the abilities will be. Some proposals are ...
Pursue 2
Superior Tactics
Corner:
If the target unit cannot retreat and is not supported, roll one additional attack die.
Pursue 1:
Instead of using Advance, this unit may move up to 1 hex and perform 1 additional attack.
[heroic]-
Booming Roar
: Enemy takes a "confused token". Units with a confused token are considered weak, and before countering, roll a die. On a pierce, strike, or cleave result, they counter as normal. On any other result, they suffer a damage and cannot counter. You may pay 2 lore following the same rules as a stun token to remove the confused token. A unit may not have more than one confused token.
Spear Throw-
Instead of attacking normally, perform a 3 dice ranged attack against a unit at range 1-2. You may not trigger Booming Roar during this attack.
Opportune Moment:
During your turn, when an enemy unit adjacent to this unit would retreat for any reason, this unit may immediately advance into that enemy unit's hex.
Prowl:
After this unit uses advance, it may cause 1 damage to an adjacent enemy unit.
These are the abilities I've seen suggested for Leonx Riders. I haven't included other suggested Cavalry units, though. We might consider those as well, but if we're settled on choosing Leonx Rider to stay consistent with known Latari units, then we want the abilities to thematically represent that unit.
Edited
by Budgernaut
So, after much surfing about the internet, I may have found some suitable proxies for elven infantry units to use. They are by caesar minatures, and although the scale is 1/72, I found pictures of them next to a ruler, and they actually come out very similar in height to battlelore figures. There are two different sets, one very "high elf" looking and one with some rangery looking archers.
1/72 would be significantly smaller than BL scale