I would love to hear what criticisms and fixes people have come up with for this game, especially who have played this game a dozen times or so.

Please include house rules and any physical modes of play, meaning manners and courtesies of game play (such as announcing turns, placement of tokens in certain ways, etc.) that clarify game play or make certain rules easier to follow.

The enhanced rules really did enhance the game. I don't want to play the game anymore without them. I did, however, make a house rule to treat withdrawals as a forced retreat because withdrawals seemed too strong against cavalry.

I estimate that I've played the game 15 times, painted the minis, sleeved the cards, constructed my own trays to carry everything in an organized way and speed setup. I also scanned and corrected the Battle Plans so that I could print out extra copies and further speed setup, so that both my opponent and I could have our own plans to setup simultaneously. I've also read all the session reports and most of the threads on BGG and on this forum. I've also already posted a thread detailing my house rules and the reasons for such. I consider them a work in progress and a labor of love. And, yes, I'm pretty much obsessed with this game.

Generally, I'm happy with the game, but I had two or three major issues right from the start:

Overpowered Commander's (pretty much fixed by coordinated attacks, because sometimes you just have to have a couple of flags to have a chance against certain commanders in objective-based scenarios)

Command Limits because it seems anti-thematic to have commanders that are only capable of playing one or two cards per round. I have a particular issue with the Mountain having a command limit of 1. My house rule makes command limits indicate the number of orders on a card that any given commander may execute, rather than the number of cards.

Overly Restrictive hand management ... I eliminated the Command Tokens (not the order tokens) and use hand size at the end of the round to determine advantage.

You can a detailed list of everything that I changed over at the thread that I started.

Well, I'm admittedly a n00b here, having played the game only four times since getting the game for Christmas 2010. We've gotten through the third scenario, and I have to admit that it has helped tremendously coming to this forum for clarification on some of the rules.

That said, we don't have any house rules, and I don't anticipate any developing soon. We've discussed different rules, such as the forced retreats and some of the commander card options.... but by sticking to the rules as they are, we've been having a very enjoyable time so far with this game.

Still, I look forward to seeing what other people come up with, but for now, the limited number of commands per round, for instance, seem to make sense to me - when you think of the Mountain, for instance, he's just this evil brute - it's hard to imagine him being able to formulate more than one cohesive thought per round, much less convey it to a group of warriors! At least, that's my impression of the character from the novels.

Happy gaming!

-oo-

Huh, Meinymoe's comments make me think the constant need for rules clarification's might be why dice tower called this the top disappointment of the year.

Pulsar said:

I think Tom Vasel and co. were disappointed because they had to glue the figures and the banners, but that was too much work for them. Also, Tom did a whole video review without making any significant comparisons between Westeros vs. any other similar game.

In short, I don't think he was enthusiastic about having to do work in order to get the game off the ground. And he didn't mention a word about rules issues, so that leads me to believe that he didn't play the game more than once or twice. And I would be frustrated too if I played without gluing the banners or figures.

KenToad said:

Totaly agree with Ken Toad It´s seemed to me that Tom Vasel didnt even now what kind of game it was

But, even if it was the top disappointement of the year, to me, it seem quit a very good game

Altough we complain about the lack of rule clarifications the fact is that the game works wonderfull either with a 100 house rules or even if we stay strict by the books

About wha tmeineymoe have said for the limited number of commands per round i have to agree with him.

Tank you all

I'm so new to the game that it's still in the mail but I thought I'd comment on the Tom Vassel thing.

I found Tom Vassel's review really helpful in getting an idea on the basics but I agree he was a little biased against it. First he's a HUGE fan of Memoir '44. You can see his eyes light up every time he mentions it in that review or any of his Memoir '44 unboxings. Which is awesome. I love when geeks are passionate about their games. But no Commands & Colors game will ever be Memoir '44 to him. In addition he's a little caught up on the "Battlelore shouldn't be mentioned on the box" thing. And yes it's obvious glueing together the miniatures was a huge thing he disliked.

I have no doubt that to many hardcore BattleLore fans BoW's is indeed the big disappointment of the year. And I think you can include Tom Vassel among them even if he is primarily a Memoir '44 player (perhaps even more so because of that fact).

But BoW's isn't trying to be those games. Why should it? Those games already exist and are supported currently. There is no real point to having an almost straight port of BattleLore into the Westeros setting. It fills no new niche. BattleLore and (especially) Memoir '44 are meant for board gamers primarily. Where Battles of Westeros, despite being based on the same rules system, is more of a true boardgame/wargame hybrid and is meant to appeal to both types of players. Or maybe to those who really like full miniature wargames but without the hassel.

Battles of Westeros is to BattleLore what Tides of Iron is to Memoir '44. That's it's niche. There's a bigger divide between the two WW2 games but it's a similar idea.

They each sound like good and worthy games. But they all do something different. As they should.

To be fair to Tom Vassel though he did a decent job of keeping some objectivity in his initial video review. He made it clear though it wasn't quite HIS game that it was a GOOD game and would appeal to the demographic it was meant for.

I may be the niche - I haven't played any other Battlelore games, but sought out BoW because of the fire and ice novels, and the impending HBO series.

So, I came to this game with no expectations, and no point of reference from any of their other board games.

-oo-

These posts are simply pointless. Just do a search of his messages. Three things are clear. One is that he doesn't own the game and in most cases hasn't played the game he's posting about. Two, it appears these posts are to get his Points up for contests. Three, he also has appointed himself chief critic of FF Games, even if he hasn't play them.

I can't say whether that is true or not but either way the conversation that spawns from it can be interesting.

DragonWhimsy said:

Yeah, I could care less about the motivations of the OP, as long as the content he posts is relevant.

The Old Man, however, is trolling.