2 Questions:

1. Can Cattle Riders move also 3 hex when "Mounted Charge" is played?

2. If a unit with a musician is destroyed by an "Ambush" card, can the second unit, which would support the Musician, battle yet?

Bayernkini said:

Only if it is a red banner Cattle Rider.

"2. If a unit with a musician is destroyed by an "Ambush" card, can the second unit, which would support the Musician, battle yet?"

I would like to hear a ruling on this one (unless it is explicit in the rules that I haven't read in some time ). I would think that if the Hornblower could no longer attack that the attack of the unit "called" by the Hornblower would also be forfeited.

Well Todd,

both questions can be an issue, both aren´t clariefied in the old DOW forum.

1. Perhaps DOW forgot by creating this card, that cattleriders, which is a unit with also a 2-hex move, is following

2. Here is Hank (and me too) the opinion, they get an regular order, so the can do there own battle, if the musician unit is destroyed

Agreed that both questions have room for interpretation. I think it is pretty clear that the Cattle Riders only move 2 hexes when ordered by mounted charge, but getting the intention straight from the designer's mouth would be nice. If in general the intent of mounted charge was to offer all cavalry that have a movement of two to have a movement of three, wording needs to be altered on the card, or should specifically be mentioned in relation to particular units.

For the Hornblower question, I think that it will be resolved that the unit being called still may battle - I just like the risk/reward implications if it would not be able to battle

1. Cattle Riders are Blue banner. Mounted Charge only gives Red Banner mounted units the +1 hex movement. No room for interpretation. It is crystal clear: Mounted Charge does not benefit Cattle Riders. If the intent was to let Cattle Riders benefit from Mounted Charge, I am sure they would have made them a red unit with a -1 die roll instead of a Blue unit with a -1 hex movement.

2. The Horn Blower issue is less clear. But the rules state that the Horn Blower no longer grants the unit any benefit. This seems to be immediate. Since both units are orderd, and no dice are tossed for the attacker yet. So I would say if the attacking unit is not completely destroyed or forced to vacate its hex, then it can attack as normal without support. And since the supporting unit did not toss dice, and is still ordered, I would say it gets to attack as normal as well.

But I can also see this going the other way in that you committed the troops to that specific order. If the attacking unit is destroyed or vacates, then no dice are tossed for either unit. If the attacking unit survives, then it would toss all the dice: attacker and support dice.

ColtsFan76 said:

I've been going back and forth with this one. I know that I would like it to be that the called unit's attack is also forfeited, but I'm not sure what the intent of the designer was here. I was thinking that if Scatter/Evade were the play that it would also seem that the called units battle would be forfeited, but also not sure. Additionally, I am not sure that one case (First Strike/Ambush, for example) couldn't go one way, and the second (Scatter/Evade) not go the other

As Colts Fan 76 stated - A Cattle Rider unit carries a blue banner. when ordered by a Mounted Charge Command card the Cattle Rider unit will in melee battle at +1d but the Mounted Charge card only allows red banner mounted units to move 3 hexes and battle. Some of the community have expressed a concern that Cattle Riders are rather weak, what the community is not aware of at this point in time is that a Cattle Rider unit has the ability to Bull Rush, an ability that was not detailed on the Cattle Rider rules or summary card but was always an intended ability for this unit, one that will be presented in the future.

toddrew said:

How we play it:

If a player with a Horn Blower figure unit has announced that it is calling on another friendly unit to fight with it and the Horn Blower unit is eliminated by a ambush / first strike, the friendly unit that was called, may not battle. Likewise, a unit called to join a unit with a Horn Blower, but the unit that was being attacked scatters / evades, the unit that was called may not battle another unit now that the enemy target unit may no longer be attacked.

Enjoy!

Richard Borg

Richard Borg said:

I've enjoyed the fact that the Dwarven cavalry are weak compared to other cavalry, while the foot soldiers are strong relative to other foot units. The goof was serendipitous as far as I'm concerned. But I also enjoy the Cleric Spells, so what do I know

Thanks for the clarifications, Richard

Nice to hear that nicest figures in the game are getting some boost. Now they are used as punishment card Cool. Can't wait to here more about this. I love to get CR on the attacking side.

I like to get more attacking power to cattle riders, but I don't like Clerics spells so what do I know - Toddrew you really have lot in stake in cleric-issue hahaha

Richard Borg said:

And that is why I still haven't lost my hopes for this awesome game. As each expansion was published, I enjoyed studying the new units and what the new possibilities are when using them. I have noticed a few of those Specialists were not so special after all. But one of the reasons I got into the BattleLore frenzy is the statement that the designer has playtested exhaustively the game in order to produce a well balanced game. I really like well balanced games and absolutely hate using house rules. So I had/still have faith in this game.

The problem was that as I used the new specialists some patterns begin to emerge. Some Specialists didn't seem as good as others. I was baffled.

For example, I still cannot find Goblin Slingers useful. Cattle Riders are another example. Axe swingers don't deserve to be 1 of your 2 Specialist card picks. etc etc.

Richard Borg's comment above made me happy. Why? Because I always suspected {hoped?} that there are things {namely abilities and rules} that are not revealed to us yet and waited to see them. I even posted about it in the old DOW forums whenever there was a discussion about weak specialists etc. That comment confirmed my suspicions and erased any thoughts about using any "dreaded" house rules in order to "fix" units I considered weak. I'm all about the "designer's intent" and I think knowing that BattleLore is being constantly playtested for balance is what keeps me still interested in this system despite everything that has happened with DOW and the lack of news from FFG.

{I guess my opinion about the designer's intent covers the subject regarding what I believe about the infamous HR/FF/RR cards... }

P.S. OK, speculation...

Bull rush! That will give Cattle Riders a needed boost. I'm expecting a similar "ability add-on" about Goblin Slingers, maybe Axe Swingers too. Or someone to give me insight why they are not so bad as they look...

Now our Call to Arms sessions revolve around Mounted Knights and Goblin Bands. There are some Specialist cards that never get picked and I don't like that fact. It means those Specialists are not as good/useful as others.

One other thing I've noticed is that some Specialist cards replace units and others add units. To be more specific the more powerful Specialists replace units and the weak ones are simply added. I thought that this was enough to balance the units but after a few plays this is not the case. I think that just adding numbers to your army is not that much of a bonus because of the victory conditions of the game... I can't write more about this subject because it's off-topic but some of the more experienced players could create a new thread regarding how much of a bonus is the "adding weak units" effect and compare it with the "replacing unit with stronger ones" effect. Hope that made sense...

All, but the bull-riders are quite useful for me, those are nice flavor wise, but are not on par with the other specialist cards. That is nice for scenarios. OTOH the Heavy Knights might be too strong as a specialist card.

As far as axe swingers go, they are the best unit (except creatures) to get enemies out of woods/hills/... as their special ability is not reduced by the terrain.

The slingers have to be combined with a good commander IMO. You get lots of fast units that will enable you to keep the remainder of your army supported. As a bonus they can take random shots at the enemies, something that archers cannot do well due to their on the move penalty. You just have to make sure you switch them around some way to keep everyone supported and find a place to fire random shots at everyone. As I said, high number of command cards will be vital to that strategy.

Alistaja said:

I think that the points brought up in FragMaster's post do deserve a thread of their own - and I just might start that thread

But, since the topic of the thread has been adequately addressed, I see no harm in letting the thread drift a bit

kilrah said:

Agreed about the cattle riders. In my post above where I expressed my appreciation of the cattle riders as-is, the niche they fill/create for scenarios is their quality in the game is what I appreciate, certainly not their Specialist Card if one is selecting it with the goal of strengthening ones army in a Call to Arms session.

However, I do think that the specialist card plays a nice role if one is playing a blind draw version of Call to Arms with regards to the Specialist Cards.

well, as said previsiously on BBG, I complained a bit concerning these minions. they are slow, not powerfull, and make us loose some nice bold dwarf when using the CtA specialist.

On my side, with the specialist cards, we are now deploying the cattles by replacing a blue unit, whatever the race it is. usually, we replace a blue human infantry by a dwarf cattle rider. Still not great I have to say, and I am still waiting for an update of the rules of these guys (remember Coltsfan? )

But now that Richard says that the bull rush will be implemented in the futur, it satisfies my quite well.

toddrew said:

By all means, start the thread. I 'd start it myself but I don't have the time right now and I don't believe that I am that much experienced with the Specialist unit yet...

Maybe Richard Borg will give us another insight...

One note though. I didn't mean to imply that these Specialists are weak in fixed scenarios. A fixed scenario can provide a lot of means to correct any unit imbalance, for example different War council levels or victory conditions etc. etc. My problem is with the Call to Arms scenarios only. Everytime I watch myself or another player trying to decide what Specialist card to choose I notice the same thing. Some cards simply don't "cut it" and some others are chosen with ease. That's got to mean that something is wrong, don't you think?

I too enjoy the variety these Specialists provide in a fixed scenario but I also need them to be balanced for Call to Arms scenarios . I want players to have a difficult choice when picking their Specialists. I want every single Specialist card to be equal to each other {exception: player choice bias because of advantages/disadvantages from terrain or enemy camp's army setup}. I don't want niche Specialists that matter only when some random A,B,C,... rare conditions are in effect.

For example why would I setup my whole army and War council in such a way so that I can use Goblin Slingers with some effect when I can ignore them altogether, create any other War council composition I like and then pick Mounted Knights or Goblin Band to do the same job maybe even better? The same goes for Cattle Riders. Why pick them and struggle with their disadvantages when you can pick other more powerful Specialists? Richard Borg today gave us the answer. It's because we haven't seen the whole picture yet! Now it makes perfect sense to me!

Ah... sorry this is defined as off topic... I wanted to use all the specialist cards in my game, so i created a set of battles and the players draw specialist cards that will be used in the battles to come. Draw one card per fight, and loser gets to select one card that is used in the game that he lost. This way almost all the cards are used. EXCEPT cattle rides

But as we find out more about the heroes, those can bring some COOL effects to units, and in my personal dream, there is a hero that can boost some weaker specialist units in to new level with some cool combinations.

I would like also to have more combinations, like illusionary troops + good specialist unit --- And perhaps some "long bow" type specialist cards, that effect units stats. Not adding any new figures, but for example gives elite status to some unit and it makes non-bold unit to run in panic if flag is trown.

But cool... I love this system and I love to hate some aspects and Best thing is that there will be some development in the future. Thanks Borg for trowing some cool stuff to here forum. Its so nice hear something now and then