I've only played the game once so far, so this is mostly based on reading the rules. I didn't find any other threads on this topic, so I thought I would bring it up. It seems to me that the rules do not provide the appropriate advantage for troops attacking from elevated terrain, specifically cavalry and archers. Obviously units attacking from ground to elevated terrain should be penalized, which is accounted for. However, logically, aren't units attacking downhill at a distinct advantage? Especially cavalry? I would think that Cavalry charging downhill should be able to attack with more than two dice. Also, it would seem that archers firing from elevated would be at an advantage also. Perhaps an extra tile of range to units that are lower?

On the other hand, I'm by no means an expert in medieval warfare, so maybe there is a explanation for this. Just my $0.02. Does anyone play with house rules using something to this effect?

In my opinion Red units on a hill should get some sort of bonus as well as they are penalised just standing there. Personally a heavily armed and armoured unit at the top of a hill should count bold even without support.

thbrown81 said:

They use 3 dice.

If you think about it, the only one "penalized" are Red (heavy) cav and infantry, to everyone else it's an advantage. As far as bowmen, they are only 2D troops, so it is already an advantage for them to be on the hill, as it restricts those attacking them and doesn't penalize them.

At its core, Battlelore is a tactical battle game, more than a "realistic” battle simulator (although one could argue that heavy cav and infantry attacking downhill are unbalanced, and at a disadvantage, IMHO). Sometimes rules are there to provide more tactical choices, rather than to provide dozens of minute variation rules to attempt to simulate reality.

Mr. Borg has created an elegantly beautiful game that is both balanced an infinitely playable with different tactics and variables coming into play with every game. It is my guess that after a few more games you will start to see how all these rules come together to form the cohesive whole that is Battlelore.

All MHO

Infinite replay value with call to arms and balance. Those are hard to acheve.

Usually in first game some detail will get to ones nerve, but as the game progress to more complex levels, you start to get the whole picture and start to see that the level of details is "OK" level and fun factor is on "awesome" level.

But I don't put usually red troops near any terrain. Some troops to screen them and Mounted charge to kill em all (or cleric lvl3 (a runnig joke in my every message)

OH... BTW I have created neat campaing structure that is on playtesting right now. It uses call to arms as deployement and Specialists are implemented in. Scoring per win (2), and more than 4 point win is 3. But the point is that loser will gain one specialist card from lost battle, so usually loser takes one card from the winning side... maps and all are ready and some "tools" to create raport from the previous battle.

Its in finnish so need to translate that to another language. But lets see how it goes