Hello,

For the past few months I've been using heroes during the course of gameplay. Obviously these are homebrew rules, but I grew VERY tired of hearing about the new expansion which never materialized. I've come up with various "hero abilities", but I'm looking for more. This is a sample of some of the abilities I have so far:

A) Ignore first retreat flag.

B) Gain +1 attack die.

C) Force opponent to roll one less die.

D) Force opponent to re-roll one die.

E) Allow unit this hero is attached to act as a support unit.

I place the hero figure with a chosen unit, and his/her ability affect that unit only. The hero only has one of the above abilities, and when using multiple figures an ability is never duplicated. I've tinkered with some leader abilities, but those are not quite fleshed out.

-rob

I think one of the biggest advantages a hero will provide, in addition to any funky cool effects, will be adding 1 figure to a unit *.

Having said that I really hope that heroes do more than + 1 dice or ignore a flag** as I don't think surrendering a lore council level*** for that sort boost to one unit at a time would be a good swap compared to a creature.

My thoughts along lines of
Can be moved without use of command card (hey they don't wait for no stinkin' orders) but cannot battle/ battleback
Rogue ignore negative effects of terrain (eg forests don't block LOS etc)

Chris

* unless they exist until flag bearer is captured
** though having a mechanic for such would be good (eg Free Lances)
*** based on the guest slot on the lore council sheet

Here are some of the possible hero abilities that I've come up with:

• a hero's squad that successfully damages a squad with an opponent's hero causes the opponent to discard one command card (the opponent draws back to his full number of command cards at the end of his turn).
• a hero's squad increases its Bold rating by one.
• each hero might have a favored terrain type - when his squad in on the terrain some effect happens, such as line of sight restrictions are removed, or +1 attack die.
• a hero's squad that successfully damages a squad gain a second free attack against the same squad - only banner colors hit.
• at a cost of 3 lore token's a hero's squad may move immediately upon seeing the oppenent's command card just played and before the opponent activates any squads. This is just a free move, no attacks.

I haven't play-tested any of these. Let me know how they play out.

Christopher

I've also been tinkering with "leader ability" rules wherein the figure affects any adjacent unit (i.e. the six surrounding hexes) by providing a +1 die to any combat. Or he can chose to enter into battle with a specific unit. He then provides a +3 dice bonus to that unit only, and negates a flag.

The idea is to make the player decide how to best use the leader figure.

I've also thought of heros fitting one of the character types of the war counceil:

• a warrior hero enables its squad a free "attack of oportunity" on any oppenent's adjacent squad moving away from the adjacent space
• a cleric hero can attempt once per turn to heal its squad or an adjacent squad. For each lore spent one die is rolled. Only banner collors return a figure to the wounded squad
• a wizard hero causes lore costs to be reduced by one (both for moving a creature out of zone and for playing lore cards)
• a rougue hero enables its squad to attack first, then move.
• a commander hero allows the player to activate one squad in addition to the designated squads listed on command cards; however, when the commander dies, the player's number of command cards immediately is reduced to 4 for the rest of the game.

Bismark said:

neat idea

Another idea is when a hero rolls lore it, he can use it for certain effects like rerolls,immunity to battle back, even attack again after either a failed or successful battle back against him or her.The list could be endless. I like the idea of a hero being associated with the war council. Heroes could also fight better in certain terrains.

I really like the idea of "Mini wizards".

Warrior hero can "challenge" other heros to a duel (the respective units still fight) while boosting units abilities

wizards can cast weak lore abilities every turn that affect their unit

clerics can do much the same

rogues should have a movement based ability

I also quite like the idea of legendary units like dragons: tke up your creature and guest slot but you get a red flag fire breathing monstrosity

Lord Zurgling said:

Or a wizard (or other classes too) could hold on to an extra lore card for you, but there would be limitations. Like max lore cost of the card (this could be raised for a higher level hero) held and/or card playing limited to movement/attack phase.

all in all if heroes would have multiple abilities they should be minor and not overshadow the warcouncil.

Last night we tried some variations to hero abilities. Not all heroes behaved the same, so that provided a nice variation across the battlefield. The 'Robin Hood' hero proved to be devestating but, since he boosted only one longbow unit to veteran rank, his ability wasn't too unbalanced. My French army had the counterpart 'William Tell' hero. All I can say is that he still needs some work.

Another concept which we experimented with was the effect of battlefield leaders. I've been intrigued by Osprey's rulebook [Field of Glory]'s use of commanders in that they can be attached to a specific unit to provide big bonuses, or remain unattached behind a battleline to provide a passive support in the areas of command and control. It was thrilling deciding which option to choose, and ultimately proved to be the decisive maneuver on my left flank (along with some lucky dice rolls). Too bad my center collapsed.

-rob

here's my two cents (which is about what it's worth).

the heroes you get are the ones in your war council.

a level one hero has a green banner

a level two a blue banner.

a level three a red banner.

heroes can attach to units and apply hits aginst the unit they are attached to.

attached heroes roll their dice before the units they are attached to.

heroes issue challenges.

the elimination of an attached hero counts as a flag against the unit the hero was attached to.

a hero is bold, equivilant to his level, thus a green hero ignores one flag, a blue hero two flags, a red hero three flags

they also hit on bonus strikes.

any lore rolled by a hero is placed on that heroes portrate in the war council sheet, these lore may be used by this hero only.

each shield rolled against the hero negates a hit against the hero up to the heroes level.

example combat: a red cavalry unit rolls four dice against a blue heroe with a unit of infantry, the cavalry unit rolls a flag, a red helmet and two shields , normaly this would result in a hit against the target unit, but because of the twos hields no hits are registered the flag would also be ignored. If however the attacker rolled three shields a hit would be registered, because the heroe is attached the hit could be applied to the infantry and not the hero.

example two, challenges: if the attacker in the above example were to have a hero attached a chalenge would be said to have been issued, in which case the first hit that goes through would be registered against the defending hero.

i would give no other special abilites to a hero since their special abilities are in the form of the lore cards themselves.

so I would see the packaging of a hero expansion as follows:

one of each type of hero for each camp (ten figures).

two red standards, two red pennants

three blue standards, three blue pennants.

six green standards, six green pennants.

this packaging would facilitate any combination of the default level six war coucil, and prevent a "superhero" war council with three red heroes.

Bakblast:

Thanks for the input! These are the ideas which I am looking for. Its apparent that you spent a lot of time and thought on this. I'm gonna try out quite a few of your ideas next game night.

Thanks again.

-rob

there's not too much thought in it.

it's just a matter of staying within the existing game system.

Well after reading Richard Borgs post...

I'M WAY OFF BASE!

Just off the cuff.

BL already has its Hero's, we just use them the wrong way!

Put the warcouncil members on the battlefield.

Make them part of a unit. e.g. A rogue with a light infantry unit etc. He is also the banner bearer, meaning the last one to die.

The unit keeps it normal abilities but is boldened one step because of its Hero. The Hero uses his lore abilities as long as he is alive. When dead his lore abilities are lost!

The only thing you now have to do is find some nice miniatures.

Harry

And then I read the post by Bakblast. and then I thought, I should be so fast and read first. READ the forum.

Sorry. My post was more or less redundant (though I believe me idea was somewhat simpler)

Harry

But now on a more practical note:

Anybody a good link to nice hero character miniatures?

Harry