The new preview of Stannis and Melisandre is stunning. House Baratheon is shaping up very colourful and with a number of unique tactics to be used - something that I'd like to play quite ASAP.

golem101 said:

Nice to see a little magic creep into BoW,I hope Melisandre "ability" isn't too much I don't remember her being a Battle Mage in the books.This is a Must Have of course

OD

Old Dwarf said:

This! The Melisandre/Stannis duo look really fun to play with and opens up even more strategy and planning. Really looking forward to this one!

But, on that subject and I already got 1 comment about that, would you still buy this Baratheon expansion even though you don't plan to get any of the Wardens and other expansions?

SolennelBern said:

As you can see in the preview, for Battle of Blackwater, Parts 2 and 3, you need Wardens of the West. Does not matter if you plan to play skirmish only, but otherwise?

SolennelBern said:

I have all the Expansions so it's moot for me but why not?You would still have 3 playable Factions.However Stark & Lannister w/o the Expansions may be a bit underpowered as opposed to Baratheon.

OD

Well the Rules are up & my concerns about Melisandre are laid to rest,she's not a flame throwing Battle Mage.She has some interesting abilities & yes it would be a good idea to take her out if your the enemy commander.She is limited as to her success chances of her Rites but if successful they can help turn a Battle,still she's not mega powerful.

Of course until we get her on the table & see how she works in an actual game it's hard to tell what her actual effects will be but from the Rules it appears FFG has done a good job in adding some magic to BoW without making it a game changer.

OD

I think Melisandre may have an alternate command card since there are rules for creepy shadow babies. Or maybe it's just a scenario. Anyway, sounds like shadow babies are goning to be everywhere.

Oh, and how awesome is Robert's war hammer. Possibility to kill a full red commander with three green dice (if I'm reading this right).

I think creating shadowspawn may be part of a leadership card (maybe as a tactic?).

Melisandre's troop conversion seems like its going to be pretty hard to do. You can only put tokens on adjacent units, and the zealot forces will be unable to run away. I doubt that she will be a red infantry unit, blue at best. So she will be locked in combat if you move her up, and she'll get hit (as a blue?) with Valors, Flags, and blues thats half the die. She'll be too tasty a target if she gets up in melee. I think she will be best served as a healer, and a killer with Shadow Babies, whenever you can do that.

Shipping now!!!

I spent most of last night unpacking this game. I was very excited to get it home and open it up… I will probably still be working on sorting everything tonight for another hour or two

I'm just sad I wont have a chane to play any of my friends in the new scenarios for a couple week, We are still working our way thru all the earlier expansions..

carnage4u said:

Cool! If you have the time, could you list who fights against whom in the scenarios, and which expansions are required? We'll probably get the German version, just for consistency, so we'll have to wait somewhat longer (and we only have 2 scenarios from BwB left to play).

I dont have it in front of me, but they do a good job, of adding into almost all the expansion stuff between all the scearnios.

Many of them are just the core set + this set, but there are many scenarios they use models from all sorts of expansions. Only one I dont remember seeing from memory was brotherhood without banners, and that might also be included, I just dont remember it.

there is 1 scenario that uses the battle board from the box WITH the battle board from main game with an isane amount of troops on the table.

I don't even think my game has left the store yet