I've suddenly acquired all of the specialist cards and I'm looking at all of them and thinking that the idea of each player choosing two from the set just isn't going to do it for me. How do you do it in your games? I think it was Tom Vasel who said he has each player randomly draw four and choose two. I like how that attempts to keep players from choosing the same cards over and over. I do something similar in Runebound in an attempt to get all of the characters played. But still... only two? Seems like you'd want more if you're trying to explore what any one race has to offer. <shrug>

For awhile a friend and I played a variant of Call to Arms in which we would have war councils of 7 levels. For each level assigned to the Guest Spot, an additional Specialist card could be played. I had a lot of fun playing this way (was able to assemble some vicious goblin armies ).

While I haven't played the semi-blind draw method, those all sound like fun to me. Combining that with the above should yield some fun: Draw four, choose two, and then for each level assigned to the Guest Spot draw an additional two cards and able to choose an additional card (e.g, with 2 levels on the Guest Spot, draw 8, choose 4.

Not sure that I'll get around to looking them up, but Richard Borg had some variations to play that he posted on DoW and Board Game Geek.

Sometimes I handle this kind of an 'open' - This means one player takes all the Gobos, the other one all the dwarfes (epic battle) put them where they want in the first 4 lines and then start. the battle. I did nearly the same with the humans - splitt them in two identical groups (banners und standarts), place them on the board wherever you want in the first 4 rows and then the battle starts - medieval rules - very tough battle

Finally I prefere this type of battles, because the placing of the troups is an essential part of the game - place them badly and you're out of the game from the very start - and there are no cards to take the blame. And finally you feel more like a commander being able to place your troups wherever you want (eg all the cavallery on 1 side is possible, put the archers on the cliffs etc). And you save a lot of time makin' the battlefield ready (compared to choosing the cards, specialist-cards etc, revealig the cerds etc.) - and it's still BL - much fun to play!!!

It surely tends in the direction of a 'Points/Unit' System like TT-games have. But too me BL is not a Game to bother 'bout Points / Unit' as with the number of dice-rolls and the huge number of Units give luck too much importance, to make it worth bothering 'bout' some lousy unit-points'. So as we say in German 'wrist times pi' is just right (of course to be fair you won't fight with 5 green gobbos units against 5 blue cavalry units)

What I did not try until now is to make a pool of different units from which every player chooses one unit at a time, then the other player - consider the battle field, elaborate a strategy and try to get the units you want....

Or give each player the same pool of units and build 3 battlefields - now each player has to place all his troups on those three battlefields the way he wants - a lot of tough decisions will have to be made.

You see - lot's of possibilities to bring the specialists into play, not 'officially' of course, but still lots of fun playing

That's what I personally like very much playing BL - it's light, put the armies and battlefields together as you want, and while the battle rages, tactical decisions still are crucial.

Most important: have fun!

toddrew said:

So that's what a Guest is? Is a level of War Council really equal to a Specialist card? I guess it might be since one level is worth a creature.

I read through all of the threads here and BGG, but I thought the DoW stuff was all gone. Am I wrong?

cero said:

No medieval rules for me! I want the fantastic in my Battlelore!

I'm not too stressed about 'official' Specialist variants. I just don't want to create an unbalanced situation or get too nuts with tons of Specialist cards in play.

I'm not sure how practical it is for me, but I like the idea of having three battles and assigning specialists accordingly. Maybe lay down pics of three maps and each player sets down one of their deployment decks and a few specialist cards. Play out the three battles and add up the scores. <shrug>

This is the usual rule we used for the past year.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/202051

It includes all the current expansions.

"I read through all of the threads here and BGG, but I thought the DoW stuff was all gone. Am I wrong?"

As of this post, all the DoW web-related BattleLore content is still online through DoW's website. Feb 15 was the drop dead date for that stuff, but cracks abound about how deadlines mean nothing when it comes to BattleLore

"No medieval rules for me! I want the fantastic in my Battlelore! "

The medieval lore rules are fantastic All joking aside, your point is well taken with me - I also prefer the full war councils to the medieval lore rules, though I do enjoy both very much.

Tom : I don't want to mix goblins and dwarves, but that's a pretty simple fix. Replacing feudal levy tokens with expansion units is interesting. I have to wonder if it causes any imbalances though. Or maybe you don't mind anyway.

Todd : Thanks for the heads up on the DoW forums. I've bookmarked it and will skim through it as soon as possible before it actually IS deleted.

Trump,

The only imbalance we encountered is the mounted knight units. they are way too powerfull. Therefore, we limited a maximum of 2 units per side. So, even if you have the possibility to have more than 2 MK units, through specialists or tokens, you just can't get them.

Concerning the problem of mixing gobs and dwarves, we overcomed the psychological issue long time ago and it woks fine .

and finally, concerning the goblin band, which is Imho one of the best unit to play, we instored the rule that you need to at least possess 2 goblin units on the board to be able to deploy them. So when we echange the deployement cards it stimulate us to choose a gob card in order to give us a chance to get the goblin band.

But I would like to point out that the way we use the depoyment card and the specialist, make the game setup extremely pleasant: it is almost a game within the game, because what you don't take, you give a chance for you opponent to get it. the setup is about 40min and we don't see the time goes by, because we keep interracting with each other during the setup, instead of building our armies indendently. This setup process made me enjoy the game, because, I hate to setup scenarios... too long, boring and no pleasure at all to discover your army, since it is already decided.

We almost have a 100 game with the setup I gave above, and to be honest, we maybe had 1 or 2 unbalanced game, but it was because a very poor decision during the choice of depoyment and specialist

tom.

"Salut à tous !"

My point of view about Call To Arms.

1/ Benefits

• Add a very interesting tactical dimension based on the choice and the layout of the units to deploy (with, of course, a little part of hazard, specific to BattleLore).
• Increase substantially the number of balanced games to play.
• Allow to use units from differents expansions, thanks to the specialists cards.

2/ Disadvantages

• The setup time is longer, but this point isn't objectional.
• The deployment cards use only units from the base game. In practice, most of battles requires mainly base units. Of course, the specialists cards are available to overcome this point, but you can't create a battle "full dwarves vs full gobelins".
• The choice of a deployment cards set isn't easy : the sets are similar, they have not any specificities. It's not really possible to choice one set for a tactical idea (aggressive or defensive, full dwarves, fast units, ...).

3/ So...

I'm according that some house rules can easily improve these points, but I don't like the deployment sets such as those.

I think that an expansion to the CtA expansion would be a wonderful idea. This expansion may contain only additional deployment cards sets (each with its "personality"). Some sets may use few others expansions, some just one expansion, ... (I think that FFG has to admit to release an expansion which requires others expansions.)

My point is just : "Please, new deployment cards !"

What do you think ?

nwar said:

Other than a hint in a post by Eric @ DoW (or maybe it was from Richard Borg) I've no confirmation that this will happen, but I am expecting faction-specific deployment decks to come around before too long. Dwarves and Goblins have enough variety of units to justify them, and humans certainly do currently. I would hope that as future faction/races/etc. are released that it would be as a full army including deployment decks.

OK, it took a few days but I've read all of the threads on the DoW. Aw, who am I kidding? I did read a LOT of threads though and skimmed a few others. I think I've come up with a plan for the specialists/deployment that'll work for me. Understand that I like having a somewhat random situation thrown at me and then having to to make the best of it. I understand those who want a lot of control, but that's just not where I'm at now. Also, while these "rules" mention the Deployment cards, they'd pretty much work as is for the normal scenarios too.

One player is the Pennant side. One is Banners.

Take all deployment cards that aren't goblin/dwarf, shuffle, and split into two piles. Add all goblins to one pile, all dwarves to the other.

Randomly choose which of the three deployment decks to use. [i've considered tossing a set of 3 together, but I think I'd rather avoid the whole levy token issue.]

Each player is dealt 4 deployment cards and 4 specialists from their respective decks.

Deploy as normal.

Set up War Council, but with a couple of added rules. Guest slot can be used to play additional specialist cards. Levelling up is controlled by allowing either one lvl 3 character or two lvl 2 characters.

Set up 2 specalists cards from your hand of 4. Set up additional specialists if you bought guest spots.

Now I just have to come up with a happy way to generate the terrain when using the deployment cards.

Regarding random terrain:

* There was an attempt do do something similar to the CtA cards for terrain on the French Battlelore board at DoW. Was only half finished however, as far as I know.

* When I talked to Mr.Borg about 2 years ago he said that there is work done one some official terrain creation. If this will ever see the light of day is of course questionabe at this point.

Well if you follow the link in my signature and download my home brew rules there are rules for terrain deployment (about 120 different combos) whenadded to theCTA deployment rules that should keep you happy for a long long time ;-)

Chris

Elberon, how do you use your various terrains? Some sort of random roll to choose which one to set up? I just see a bunch of maps.

I see you have some campaign rules, but I considered doing something simpler and just try to play the scenarios in chronological order.

As an aside, I was given the Troll today so I decided to play the Troll scenario. This was my first Epic game. Wow. We had a great time with it and I look forward to more Epic battles in the future. That Troll is amazing scary with the meat cleaver. And that's a great map for the Giant Spider to do a lot of damage, which it did.

1) Just create empty maps with the mapeditor in days of wonder
2) Create 2 nations
3) Make map order, (include epic maps too).
4) Randomize 4 specialist cards to players.
5) Make map, roll dice to see who gets which side of the map.
6) Call to arms: Placement.
7) Fight.
8) Scoring: 2 points per win, and +4 flag win is 3 points.
9) Loser gets to keep one played specialist card.
10) Draw 2 more specialist cards.
GoTo 5) until all maps played.

You could give some cool bonuses from the win, but usually give them to the person that lost, so that the campaing is tight race to the end. Keep the rewards small. Like +1 level to war consul or something.

my 30 euros

Hi there

Each map is half a standard board (from your row one to half way toward your opponent), each player picks one in secret reveals and then you set up the board.

If you use the campaign rules then you're limited to choose from the terrain you move out from e.g. you were on plains you can only choose one of the plains.

The campaign rules I wrote allow you keep the same army for a series of battles so you have to adapt to having less and less troops (you should have two or three armies of various quality and state of health so you have to choose what to do with each) rather than one off battles that have no lasting impact into the next battle. The basic campaign should be doable in a long evening if you start at 6 ish

Chris