Does anybody know of a point based system of deployment for Battlelore? I enjoy Call to Arms, but even using specialist cards doesn't result in a satisfying mix of units in most cases. For example, if you want to field a dwarf heavy army, the specialist cards tend to remove just as many of your dwarves from the board as they add. Ideally what I would like to see would be new Call to Arms decks that favored different styles of armies and included all of the expansion units.

In the mean time, it seems to me that an easy fix would be a unit list with corresponding point values that would enable players to pick their own armies in a balanced way. I've played with the idea of making my own list, but since all units of a given color are clearly not created equal, I'm not really sure what fair values would be. So in short, my question is: does anybody know of an army point list for Battlelore that I might be able to use?

The other problem with point based system is it'll need to take into account an units starting point too, e.g. is a Red infantry worth more on the 4th row or the first (I'd argue yes but can see arguments for no too). But I recall a number of point based systems over on board game geek in the files section.

Do post what you come up with though as it will be interesting to see if you can crack the of not leaving an obvious 'optimal build' which to a large extent defeats the point of point based systems - Not too sure if you saw Mr Borgs post about of races to come and hints of race specific army deployment decks?

Chris

Race/nation specific deployment decks are the answer, but yeah, as Chris said, there are some player-made points systems out there. I would be surprised if someone doesn't post more about them here

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I found one of the point systems over at Board Game Geek. I'll fiddle with it and see what I think.

You are probably right Elbaron about any point system having an "ideal" cookie cutter army. Either red waves would be clashing against each other or the red troops would be so over priced that there wouldn't be any.

I think I'll play with the point system as just a guideline to help balance the sides of a couple homebrew scenarios and see how it goes.

Thanks

Ive played other games with points systemsthat have the same issue. The way around those problems were to have ratios for the more expensive/specialist units. Basically you divide them up into what are considered core units and what are considered special and maybe rare. Then for example for every 3 core units you could add a special. Or you just say you can only have a max of each type of unit per level of points eg if 100pt army then only 40pts could be spent on units that were special or rare.

I've been contemplating doing a points and unit type breakdown for a while but have just not got around to it. Would make sense for then starting a campaign. Now that I have the Heroes it just might be time to do that!

I've seen a few points based systems posted around.

As has been noted, the obvious answer is deployment decks for the individual races. This is so obvious, that I'm sure they are planned. I expect to see new human-only deployment decks as well. Right now you're forced to mix the races whether you want to or not.

One problem w/ a points based system is that the units aren't obviously better than each other. In a typical points based system, you'd have some units that are really weak, and they would be very cheap. Other units would be really powerful, and they'd be expensive.

In BL, green units don't hit hard, but they are faster. Red hit very hard, but they are slow. Cavalry have lots of bonues, but only get 3 figs. What this means is that the cost spread of the units wouldn't be large.

Doesn't make a points based system impossible. However, if you were building a game with points in mind, then you'd almost certainly design the units differently.

For that matter, it's not too hard to tweak the system. A base green unit has a cost of "1", but only gets 3 figs.

Anyway, enough rambling...