Hi,

I don't understand the difference between the red Mounted Knights of the Code of Chivalery and the red Mounted Knights of the base box (if there are any). Both have long swords... but different banners symbol and miniatures.

While they have the same basic attributes - move two hexes, battle with 4d, ignore first bonus strike rolled by a short sword unit (any unit that is not mounted?). Now, in addition to those attributes, the Mounted Knights with Long Swords ignore the first bonus strike rolled in melee combat by any other unit (i.e. ignore two bonus strikes rolled by short sword units) and are bold. In addition to all those, the Lancers roll an additional die (in addition to the additional dice , +2 total) when ordered by Mounted Charge.

toddrew said:

With all due respect, here is my understanding. The Mounted Knights card in Code of Chivalry applies to both Mounted Knight units; it replaces the card in Scottish Wars, and the "Mounted Knights" of Scottish Wars have been renamed "Mounted Knight Lancers." (CoC clearly says they are the same unit).

Further, the Lance weapon summary card in CoC replaces the one in SW. This means that the Lance itself no longer allows a wielder to ignore an additional S0S in melee, though both Mounted Knights units share the same summary card, which does grant them that power.

Thus, BOTH the Mounted Knight Lancers and the Mounted Knights Longswordsmen have following characteristics:

1. As a BattleLore Mounted Unit, they ignore on SoS in melee from any foot unit, unless otherwise stated on a weapon summary card (e.g., Halberdiers)
2. As a BattleLore Mounted Unit, they may make a pursuit action and a bonus attack
3. As a Red Banner Mounted Unit, they move 2 and battle with 2 dice
4. As Mounted Knights, as per the CoC unit summary card, they ignore an additional SoS in melee from any source

The Lancers further gain another die when battling with the mounted charge card.

Further, the Lance weapon summary card in CoC replaces the one in SW. This means that the Lance itself no longer allows a wielder to ignore an additional S0S in melee, though both Mounted Knights units share the same summary card, which does grant them that power.

Thus, BOTH the Mounted Knight Lancers and the Mounted Knights Longswordsmen have following characteristics:

1. As a BattleLore Mounted Unit, they ignore on SoS in melee from any foot unit, unless otherwise stated on a weapon summary card (e.g., Halberdiers)
2. As a BattleLore Mounted Unit, they may make a pursuit action and a bonus attack
3. As a Red Banner Mounted Unit, they move 2 and battle with 2 dice
4. As Mounted Knights, as per the CoC unit summary card, they ignore an additional SoS in melee from any source
5. As Knights of any kind, they are Bold and have three figures

The Lancers further gain another die when battling with the mounted charge card.

OK. It helps a lot my understanding. Thanks!

Just one or two points :

Line 3. : I suppose you mean they battle with 4 dice (instead of 2)

Line 4. : the additional SoS ignored in melee is also applicable to the foot Knights longswordmen?

brol2 said:

Correct. They battle with 4 dice. And yes, the Foot Knights ignore a SoS from any source, even ranged.

I guess I'm still confused...the core set comes with red banner foot knights and red banner cavalry. Now CoC has...red banner foot knights and red banner cavalry, though these units are being marketed as "new." What the heck? I understand the original red foot knights were short sword equipped, if I recall, but weren't the original cavalry already longsword units? These two new units seem really lame now that I think about it...they are just too similar to units we already have, and they actually seem sort of confusing with units we already have. I was hoping for new units that were quite different and unique than anything we already had. With Horrific Horde, we got the cool goblin halberdiers and ogres, and with Bearded Brave we got the cool bolt throwes and spotters. With CoC we get two red knights with nearly identical traits to the red banner knights we already have...lame! The lancers are cool and unique, but we already have knight swordsmen. Give us more halberdiers, or some other very unique unit, such as some wicked bad barbarian mercenaries with warhammers or axes or maces or something.

Also, I understand that only the standard camp gets banners for the crossbowmen, but no pennant banners to field crossbowmen. This seems cheap. I understand that in the Hundred Years War the English dominated many battles with their longbow, but this does not translate into the game, in my opinion. The longbow in BattleLore is very underpowered compared to the longbow of Medieval European history. Give us a new longbow card, and make the longbow units blue banner units or something, because right now, rolling green battle dice...you're lucky to get one kill, and this is not consistent with the devestating effect of the legendary English longbow of history. Also, I'm still wondering about the flaming arrows in the knight's shield pictured on the box. Does CoC come with a rules card for flaming arrows? That would be cool and somewhat redeem FFG for giving us all these lame red banner knights that don't seem that relevant. It would also be cool to get a little burning cauldron miniature or something to set next to archer units to show they have flaming arrow capabilities. Anyway, just ranting a bit.

Taeblewalker - I think you are on the same page as I. The source of confusion may be that I assumed the OP was referring to the base game's red banner cavalry when asking about the "Red Mounted Knights of the base game", not the Red Mounted Knights of the Scottish Wars expansion (which are now known as Lancers). I was noting the difference between the three types of mounted red human units that now are in the game. I certainly don't understand why the distinction between Mounted Knights with Long Swords and Lancers is so subtle, nor the reason to change the sculpt for the former abilities and rename the "new" ability of an additional +1 modifier on Mounted Charge, but here we are.

A bit lame as Interceptor points out, but for me the lameness of CoC is the call to arms integration of the new units. I wasn't too pleased with the efforts in Horrific Horde, nor Bearded Brave, but the addition of a single card to each of the CtA decks in order to add any human units aside from the base game units is quite disappointing. I'm not holding my breath any longer (turned blue long ago...), but I do hope that this is still a transistionary period for CtA, not the final product.

Interceptor - while I agree with you in some respects, overall so far I have liked the impact of the "new" units on scenarios. I have played through each of the CoC scenarios twice, and do enjoy the interplay between clashing Knights, and Knight on non-Knight units. Things get interesting and tense relatively quickly. The Foot Knights really do provide some difference to the game, much more than I thought they would.

I must disagree with you on the Long Bows - I find them to be devastatingly effective units. They control every scenario they are in, and if facing them must be the primary target to neutralize. I don't like the rule change to the arbalestiers allowing them to fire on the move (and have changed back to the old rules after trying the new ones out in a few scenarios), as it does put them a notch ahead when played that way, but if they are relegated to firing only when stationary, I would take the long bows over them every time.

Standard banners only is weird to me - I guess it has to do with the English v France thing, but that, along with standards only for dwarfs and pennants only for goblins has led me to believe that we won't be seeing more races. Someone tell me I am wrong...

I haven't played Longbows enough to say how much they dominate, but I do agree with Interceptor that Blue Longbows would be nice...that's why my custom Elves have them.

As for what we will see in the future, it seems that the existing races are well fleshed out. I would like to see more truly unique units like the Ogres.

Taeblewalker said:

Well, let's get you on Vassa l and change all that

You should have some idea with your Elves, though - a blue foot unit that can reach out and tag another unit from 4 hexes away without fearing a battle back...yikes. Plus, that first Bonus Strike is not ignored by the mounted units...double yikes. And then there's Leadership, BattleLore, Darken the Sky, Take Aim, Eagle Eye, Magic Missiles...tripl-well, you get the picture We've seen some of these blue angels of death in our games, through the magic of the Warrior's Training Camp upgrading a long bow unit.

I can see the need to keep the Elves pretty rare. Here are my customs; well considered, but yet to be tried.

GREENWOOD ELVES
All Greenwood Elves have the following power:
• Forest Born: When in a Wooded Terrain Hex, a Greenwood Elf unit ignores movement and combat restrictions, and is considered to have one point of support.

Greenwood Elf Irregular Archers (4 figures)
• Green Banner Foot Unit
• Long Bow
• Forest Born

Greenwood Elf Forest Trackers (4 figures)
• Blue Banner Foot Unit: May move 2 and still battle
• Reflex Bow
• Forest Born

Greenwood Elf Longbows (4 figures)
• Blue Banner Foot Unit
• Longbow
• Forest Born

Greenwood Elf Regular Infantry (4 figures)
• Blue Banner Foot Unit
• Long Sword
• Forest Born

Greenwood Elf Enchantress (1 figure)
• N/A; embedded only, added to an Elf foot unit; does not count toward number of hits that unit can take.
• Removed when banner bearer is killed.
• Beguiling: When an attacking unit rolls at least one Lore symbol and at least one banner color hit against the Enchantress' unit in melee, the attacker must change the banner color hit into a Lore symbol. The attacking unit may still collect a Lore Token for any Lore rolled, including the banner color hit, or activate any powers involving Lore Tokens.

Taeblewalker,

Those are some very cool ideas for elves...makes me want to see a BattleLore elf expansion. Someone mentioned not seeing new races because of how the standards and pennants have been split between the goblins and dwarves. I think that this could signify two new races will be introduced instead of one. As for me, I think elves and undead are the way to go. Personally, I would love to see undead...there are so many possibilities, and the idea of clashing with an undead hoard on the battlefield is very enticing. There could be skeletal archers, zombie infantry with meat cleavers, wraith cavalry, ghouls with meat wagons, vampire counts, undead dogs of war, necromancers to summon more unholy allies in the midst of a battle ...bring on the undead, I say.

Interceptor said:

Thanks! For Undead, I have some figures, but not much interesting in the way of powers, except to make them Bold2 or something like that...except for my idea for an embedded unit.

The embedded Reaper would be added to a foot unit, like the Dwarven Spotters (i.e., not in replacement of a figure). When the unit attacks, if it rolls a Lore symbol and scores a hit, the attacking unit can ressurect one figure it has lost (like Zombies Rise Again in Heroscape).

Both of my Elf and Undead minis are from Ceasar Miniatures. They are 1:72 scale (fits pretty well with BattleLore) and unpainted plastic.

I will definately look into these miniatures. I used to play Descent, but not much anymore...it just took so long to set-up and get everything in place. I find the battlefield carnage of BattleLore much more satisfying anyway. However, I have taken the Chaos Beast from Descent: Altar of Despair, and turned it into some gibbering, crawling chaos entity for use with BattleLore. It's not the same scale as the BattleLore miniatures, but is a crawling chaos; a mass of writhing tentacles, insanely gibbering mouths, and stomping hooves, so as a monstrocity from beyond the beyond, I don't think scale matters. I like the idea of sending my wee little knights and soldiers to attack the monstrous mass, only to be hurled acorss the battlefield by the blasphemous fiend. I want to come up with some sort of insanity rule for this beast...an effect that causes units in too close proximity to the creature to have to check for panic losses or something similar. Anyway, long live BattleLore!

Interceptor said:

Likely me to whom you are referring - I hope it is either just a misunderstanding of the game or a simple cost saving measure, but limiting the Goblins to pennants and the Dwarf to standards seems to suggest that that is it for races. If another "standard" and another "pennant" race were to be released, wouldn't that suggest that whichever is the standard wouldn't be meant to face off against the Dwarfs, or how would that work exactly?

I guess we will find out relatively soon, sometime this year, I would expect - whether it be through more "clues" from whatever the next expansion is (or isn't, etc.), or through a more direct announcement. But the denouncement [ see the question "Will the classic BattleLore game continue to be supported?" of the linked article ] of Richard Borg's post about the currently existing races in the BattleLore "universe" coupled with scrubbing the Dwarfs down to standards-only and the Goblins to pennants-only are the clues I am currently going by.

Interceptor said:

Panic losses sound like just the right thing for such a beast.

Interceptor said:

Interceptor said:

Panic losses sound like just the right thing for such a beast.