I'm having a lazy Sunday so lets speculate on what heroes could be about.

I see a good number of possibilities for this expansion

1. Antonym to epic BattleLore

The expansion will shrink the scale of battlelore. Unit figures will no longer represent massive numbers of troops but will become one to one representations as the game shifts to squad level combat. The change of scale would facilitate adding powerful new heroes to the game, who would act individually both powerful in combat and granting unit bonuses (easily tracked with hero banners that plug into the banner hole of the unit figures) in thish situation your counsle members would also become hero figures and would likely keep a few reusable lore cards.

2. Guest counsel members (most likely)

The expansions will provide a number of characters that can be added to the guest space in the war council. Like creatures these will take up counsel levels but instead of lore deck mastery they will be pieces on the board. The heroes will act in unison with units granting special abilities to them. While the hero's will be able to move from unit to unit they will be unable to combat alone.

I could also imagine the expansion adding more role playing elements but i'm not sure how that would work.

What do you think heros will bring?

Sounds more like a completly diffrent game than an expansion.

If memory serves, I do believe the DoW post about it, earlier this year (February 08??) did include a few pics of the figures included.

As for SPECIFIC heroes, your guess is as good as the next person's. Only one person knows for sure (Richard) and I doubt he'll spill the beans!

Cab

I like the idea of Heroes being separate entities and not just a slight change to a units composition (a la C&C:Ancients). I would hope that the Heroes define a clear presence on the board, like creatures but maybe more focused on what they can do to improve your army (strategic/defensive) rather than just a powerful offensive unit. The guest spot would be a nice place to "pay" for their deployment, but they better be pretty powerful to take the spot of a Creature or extra Lore levels.

Caboose said:

Link to the DoW post:

blog.daysofwonder.com/2008/01/08/battlelore-of-heroes-and-some-missteps/en/

Personally I wonder where the heroes will fit between creatures and musicians. Their slot seems to be mostly taken already for me, so I am very curious about the actual mechanics.

As for the guest area. I am not sure this is where heroes go. We might as well get a sixt, sevent, eight,... lore master. There were talks about a Necromancer once. The advantage of such a guest lore master is the surprise factor. The downside is that one will most likely only get 5 cards as the enemy won't have the same one.

kilrah said:

musicians?

kilrah said:

musicians?

Good point, Kirah

The key aspects of the game are Set-Up , Card Choice, Movement , Combat, Morale and Lore . Creatures are combat specialists and musicians cover morale (either creating support/Bold or forcing retreats). Heroes would likely fall into another category (most likely Lore?) or alternatively bring an entirely new aspect to the game.

How heroes are to be introduced, is anyone's guess at this point, but my first thoughts on seeing the pictures of the two models way back when was that they looked like Avatars of the War Council. If this was so, I see two divergent trails of thought, one where Heroes are an option ( you reduce the effectiveness of your council, but increase your options on the battlefield with an Avatar ) or the other where they are a constant - a requirement of play ( you pick the War Council, you get the relative figures (with relative ranks (and stats/skills) ).

But then I'm no game designer, and my imagination is infentesimile when compared to that of Grand Master Borg and co, and so there are probably a bizillion other ways this expansion could play out - and it;s probably likely to be one of those.

Whatever happens, I'm on hooks!

One thing I hope that doesn;t happen is that they take up the "Guest" part of the council. I always saw this as providing an alternative to the standard Councilors, as suggested with the Necromancer. This leaves FFG wide open for expanding the Lore Deck in new and interesting ways that could potentially allow players to customise their army - give each players War Council some uniqueness (not that there isn't already plenty of variety, but you get my point - I hope!).

I have always thought that the war council members should be on the battle field issuing commands. This would allow the opposite army to take council members out via fights and thus reduce the other armies effectiveness with said members.

Killing the wizard for example would make it so the player can not cast ANY wizard lore cards. This would add a new dimesnion of defensive and offensive strategies.

HonorforONEFilms said:

The expansions introduced the idea of embedded units like the Goblin drummer and the Horn Blower. Plus, there is the Goiblin band and the Scottish bagpipes.

spacemonkeymafia said:

Eh, what the hell do you know about C&C games

Pure conjecture: I don't think the Guest spot will be for Heroes. I think they will be embedded figures that operate similar to Leaders in C&C:A in that they influence the unit in which they are embedded as well as those around them. How exactly they do that will be interesting to see. Like mentioned above, I think it will be tied into lore rolls - hits on lore, flags on lore, other affects,....

toddrew said:

yeah yeah yeah...I was just waiting for you to sum up for real

I know that you've mentioned your belief of the C&C:A embedding system is the likeliest scenario but I think if it were that simple, DoW would have had them out sooner or FFG would be a lot closer to completing the component. I think that the delay is in the implementation of something altogether new to the mechanics of the command/color system.

To expand upon SirV's second thought on Hero deployment (Hero figures come with the selection of the appropriate War council member) is to make it even more specific....You choose a 3rd lvl Warrior and you get to field Ghrim Deathblade , the greatest Dwarven Hero to ever live. He has specific banner (Red likely), a unique figure sculpt, and affects the game with a unique ability (like a creature). He also adds 1 (or more) unique Lore cards to the Warrior Lore deck only available when he is chosen on the field. Balancing the overt power of using him may be as simple as SirV said- losing Ghrim in the field means that you treat your war council as having no levels in his profession. This can be expanded to lvl 2 and lvl 1 Warriors, each with unique lore cards and the corresponding blue and green banner. Maybe with unique figure sculpts, maybe not. Expand this out to the rest of the council and that could be a huge variety in Lore play.

The Guest spot can then be served by adding not only a new Lore council member and the corresponding Lore Deck (Necromancer was mentioned) but still offer the ability to field one of 3 Necromancer Heroes (ex. Hristrat the Black , lvl 2 necromancer, blue banner, summon undead ability, 2 unique Necromancer Lore cards - "Blighted Earth" and "Contagious Rot"). Ok, that's about it for this Battlelore fantasy :-)