Expansions...

By Elliphino, in BattleLore

I guess you intend Rune Blade, right?

You roll 4 dice (regardless of the attack type and whatevs, like modifiers and so on). Then:

a) you must place at least one die on the lore card, preserving the result(s)

b) if any of the dice are still not on the card, you roll the remaining ones and repeat a) until your pool of "free dice" is reduced to zero

After all dice are placed on the card, you resolve them as if this was your combat roll

Lemme know if it has sense or you have further questions, always happy to help :)

only few things are not completely clear.. for example the Lore Card Runic Sword, (it. Spada Runica), it's not clear how use it (throwing dices on the card.. i don't know)

I can't say what the literal translation of the Italian text says, but with Rune Blade, you don't need to roll the dice don the card directly, but you roll the dice and place results on the card (basically "locking" them until you are done), which you can do mulitple times until all the dice are on the card.

thanks for answers, I think the card is Rune Blade!

So let me give you an example to make things clear:

I do an attack with Citadel Guards (i roll 3 dices of attack) and I play the lore card Rune Blade, and so I resolve this attack rolling 7 dice ( 3 dices of the normal attack of citadel guards + 4 dices of the card Runic Blade)

Is it right???

thank you

No, when you play Rune Blade, you roll 4 dice instead of what you'd normally roll.

After each die roll, you must "keep" at least one result by placing them on the card, and then reroll what's left. Do this until all dice are on the card.

So even though you are rolling 4 dice, you have a very good chance of getting some good results out of it :)

thank you Sigmazero and Julia,

you are clear.

now i understand that, if you think it cost only 5 lore, the rune blade is a really strong card!

poor me .. because I play with Uthuk .. things are getting harder :)

Yeah, Daqan's lore deck sometimes puzzles me too. If there's one card that I hate is Runic Barrier (and I always play Daqan). That card should cost X Lore, where X is half the cost of the Lore card that has to cancel. True that the Uthuk keeps the Lore, but you have only one copy in the deck of certain cards, and once they are gone, they are gone :D

The best way to "counter" Runic Barrier is sometimes to try and provoke Daqan into either playing another card first, or to try and poke them with less important cards at key times, hoping to get them to burn it.

I like the card. Yeah, it's annoying when it cancels a card I really wanted to play, but I try to play so that no Lore card is ever the crux of my victory strategy, just a nice helper :)

Sure it is, it's annoying but not game-breaking. Still, there are elements in the core game that, for me at least, and with all the respect for the designers and the testers, could have been balanced better. Viper Legion a little more dangerous, some Lore cards rebalanced, Immovable that could be applied only to Cleave but not Strikes otherwise many Scenarios are just like "Rune Golem on VP banner in a building. C'mon, move me", the Chaos Lord with a little bit more of mobility. Not saying I dislike the game (actually, it's in my top ten) but there's that 2% margin of improvement

Sure it is, it's annoying but not game-breaking. Still, there are elements in the core game that, for me at least, and with all the respect for the designers and the testers, could have been balanced better. Viper Legion a little more dangerous, some Lore cards rebalanced, Immovable that could be applied only to Cleave but not Strikes otherwise many Scenarios are just like "Rune Golem on VP banner in a building. C'mon, move me", the Chaos Lord with a little bit more of mobility . Not saying I dislike the game (actually, it's in my top ten) but there's that 2% margin of improvement

I just played with the Chaos Lord for the first time in BattleLore: Command today. That thing moves 2 hexes! It just doesn't feel right to me. Not only that, but now I feel like my board game version is wrong.

LOL. The point about the Chaos Lord moving two, is that the AI activates the units with a proximity algotythm, so that, if that thing moved only 1, then it'd be hard to see it actually doing something

(but agreed, first time we tested that we were like "OMG, what happened???" and then we wanted our CL to move two also on tabletop version. It's the only dude actually capable of forcing runegolems to leave their VP banners!!)

Julia you are perfectly right.

the viper legion is too weak ( and so I never use it) and I use the Chaos Lord only if I have to stay on a hex with a Victory banner on it!

just another question about Flesh ripper brutes:

their ability "Bloodthirst" can be used in the same turn I have made the first damage to the enemy unit??? I give an example:

I attack an enemy unit with no damages ( with 3 soldiers) and I roll 3 dices, the dice result is : one "crossed sword" , one "lore" , one "hero" (the symbol crown).

So i cause two damage (one for the crossed swords and one for the ability).

is it right? or the enemy has to be damaged in a previous combat???

thanks

The enemy needs to be damaged from a previous combat. Let's give a closer look at the combat sequence in the ref guide.

Step four: you commit dice. Hence you take the Heroic rolled and you commit the die to trigger the ability. This is the point you need to check the conditions for the effect to be triggered? Is the unit damage? Nope, because damage is applied at step 6 so that since the unit is undamaged, you cannot deal it any damage via Bloodthirst

It's different from Viper Legion: Viper Legion grants you the option to commit Heroic to Poison, and Poison allows you to commit Lore to deal damage. So, you commit during step 4 both Heroic and Lore, and choose to apply first Heroic. This poisons the unit, making the target eligible of suffering damage via Lore committed. Please note that Lore committed deals the damage during step 6 of the combat resolution

Hope this helps

The best reason to use the Viper Legion, as far as I'm concerned, is they are the only way for Uthuk to use some Command cards as intended - having a well-rounded army of Archers, Infantry, and Cavalry is rewarded by the game's design. They are the least effective units, sure, but somebody has to be, right? Generally, though, I find Poison is hardly worth removing unless it's on a Legend unit.

Edited by LongDarkBlues

LDB is right, one should be the worst by definition, lol. Let me add that while attacking a poisoned unit, all other units gain the option to commit Lore to trigger the damage; often this is mistaken by players who think that the damage from poison is triggerable only by VL (not so sure whether this was clearly explained in the Italian edition of the game)

Sorry to derail you all, but as this is the Expansons thread, I thought I'd use it insteas of starting another.

I jus used Malaana for the first time today in the app and she was awesome! I guess it's because I've described a few species of scorpion or something, but having that giant scorpion on my team felt so good! I really hope they make a miniature for Malaana. Her stats may need some toning down, but I just really want to see that figure on my tabletop!

Thank you for answers.

Only now I discover the existence of the character MALAANA, she is awesome!

I would like so much to have her to guide my uthuk army... I really hope that FFG will make a miniature for the boardgame!

and what about the Hero on horse (who is attacked by 2 Flesh ripper brutes) that we all see on the boardgame box?????

The sad thing around here is that this game is completely unknown :(

I love BL2 but no one seem to be willing to play this...but i'm not dropping the ball yet, i'm gonna find someone as cool as me (since I love cool games lol) and play this.

I'm also really excited about these expansions, especially the neutral units, can't wait to learn more about those.

So... lemme try and steer this topic back to the subject it was originally intended for :P ....

Expansions! I mean, no offense to anyone going offtopic here, but I think most of those questions could be answered elsewhere in this forum.

I'd really like to get back to discussing/speculating about upcoming expansions! :D It took me some time to catch up reading all the pages of this topic so now I wanna drop my 2cents on the subject of expansions. Rather than speculating about 'what' will be in a new expansion, I was pondering about the 'when'.

I did a little researching, purely based on the documentation on the original FFG news page for BattleLore 2nd edition. I’m gathering some intel because I can’t believe there isn’t a BattleLore 2nd Edition Wikipedia entry, so I decided to start building :P

Product / Expansion Time release after announcement | Time after previous release

BattleLore 2nd Edition Core Set 4 months -
Scenario Builder (open beta) - 1 month
Dice Pack 4 months 5 months
Army Packs: Hernfar Guardians & Warband of Scorn 9 months 1 year
Reinforcement Pack: Razorwings 3 months 3 weeks
Reinforcement Packs: Mountain Giant & Great Dragon 7 months 2 months
Army Packs: Heralds of Dreadfall & Terrors of the Mist 4 months 2 months

(couldn't copy+paste my excel table, sorry)

So from what I've gathered and put in this list above, after an announcement has been made, FFG releases 'thing' from said announcement in roughly 5 months on average.

The time in between releases is kinda all over the place. In this table, I didn't include BattleLore: Command, nor the Promo Kit, nor anything Battle of Westeros or other stuff from FFG. So, that could be the reason the actual releases aren't in set intervals.

Also the timeframe of the reinforcement packs is kinda interesting because Mountain Giant and Great Dragon were announced about 2 months before Razorwings, but Razorwings were released 3 months after they were announced and the other two were released 7 months after they were announced. So although Razorwings were announced later, they arrived sooner.

I guess this puts in perspective that the production time makes a planned time schedule quite difficult, so 'set interval releases' are quite difficult. The latest two releases were 2 months apart, but then again the latest release was about 3 months ago.

BUT this intel at least gives us something to fall back on, once something new has been announced :P .

WHY did I put this together? Well I wanted some insight in when to expect the next release, sharing my thoughts in the process!

So, even if FFG were to announce a new release tomorrow, chances are we could expect to wait another 5 more months before we see an actual release.

Onto upcoming expansion release speculation: as the latest release was kinda a two-in-one I speculate the next announcement to be around June/July this year and then to see a release December 2016 / January 2017. Although, I sure as hell wouldn't mind anything sooner :P .

Hope you guys like long posts :ph34r:

Release dates are all over the place, x-wing playmats were just announced and were available straight away.

Usually 5 to 6 months after the announcement is the release date for all their games. Some of them are a little faster, some are a little slower, but on average, that's the timing. I think it's really difficult to say "a new game will be out in X months according to the past experience", basically because there are too many elements that we don't know. The only games that have a more or less fixed pace are LCG lines (more or less one release / month) and games like X-Wing or Armada, where wave after wave arrives (and these are all games that make cash flow a lot). Other games always had some more discontinuous pace (see the hiatus Descent 2nd has been through) to be kind. Again, if you look at the designers working on their games, if you look at their testers, if you look at the other people involved in these projects, the truth is that it's always the same guys that cover different lines and a lot of stuff and this means time is needed. I honestly prefer having a great game, well-balanced, with good wording and brilliant ideas to having a "mass production" that keeps quantity, but loses in quality. So, I just sit here, patiently, playing BT when possible and if the next exp will be out in two months or in two years, for me it's the same, as long as it's good as the previous ones.

Usually 5 to 6 months after the announcement is the release date for all their games. Some of them are a little faster, some are a little slower, but on average, that's the timing.

[...]

I honestly prefer having a great game, well-balanced, with good wording and brilliant ideas to having a "mass production" that keeps quantity, but loses in quality. So, I just sit here, patiently, playing BT when possible and if the next exp will be out in two months or in two years, for me it's the same, as long as it's good as the previous ones.

Haha, well your view on the time of release after announcements at least sorta proves my math. But the last point you made, about rather having a good quality product than a hastily produced one, I totally agree on. I didn't speculate on release dates because I don't want to wait any longer, I was speculating to keep the BattleLore 2nd Edition hype going (or even, to revive it a little :P ). I don't even own all the expansions yet, so it's not like I'm a spoiled brat who wants more and more game regardless of quality. I simply hope to boost the 'talk' about expansions, because hey we all want to see the BL line continued, right? Also, and this is purely my personal opinion, we as a community should keep the BattleLore 2nd Edition hype going! So keep on speculating and discussing possible expansions! (along with other cool BattleLore-related discussions!). Because, when I can't play the game I wanna be talking about it! :D

You're perfectly right about wanting the keep the hype high and the line going :) I'm all in :) Sorry, didn't want to sound as a party pooper :D

If it's just to speculate, then I do want terrain packs for BT to alter the semblance of the board, and a new sea board to bring naval battles on Terrinoth (aye, if I'm allowed to dream, let's dream big)

I want organised play, with the the command cards from the battlelore app (I don't think the command deck fits a competitive game).

I want heroes.

I want elves.

Well, when speculating about the contents of future releases, I'd like to put in some thoughts derived from my marketing background.

When looking at the release-content so far, there are 3 things that I see: 1 is army expansions for the core game factions, 2 is an entirely new faction, and 3 are neutral units which can be used in all factions. But aside from that, FFG has released a scenario builder, a cross-platform digital game version and for WoU they've also released a Promo Kit which retailers could buy so that they could introduce new players with the game itself and existing players with the new faction.

When I look at this data, I kinda get the feeling that the marketing guy behind BattleLore has been trying to push the game over to a broader audience. With that I mean, not just veteran Warhammer-players, not just specifically wargame-players, but everyone who's looking for a fantasy game with more strategy than your average Eurogame :P . It is, after all, a game that in my book is like a wargame designed for previously-non-wargamers. It has a pretty low threshold to play, comparing to other wargames and games in this genre. The app kinda gives me the idea that they wanted to expand their brand to those who would previously not be so much interested in a wargame or game with miniatures. If this is their approach, I expect to see smaller but more frequent expansions as soon as the FFG marketing team has hit some specific sale-targets. After all, when looking on BBG the game has slightly over 2000 ratings. Compared to 'big commercial games' that's not a whole bunch. So I expect future releases to aim towards getting the more casual gamers on the BattleLore bandwagon. Honestly I also hope they do take this approach, because in my experience (as a non-Warhammer, previously-non-wargamer) this is THE gateway-game to the genre. I think this game could potentially reach a much wider audience, but that would also require future releases to be aimed towards this concept.

Yeah, so, no, I usually don't write short posts, I know. But in short I expect, as others have also stated, small expansions which will increase the exposure of this game in the store shelves. Also, smaller and more easily affordable expansions will result in every household having a 'kinda customized' game, where not everyone will own the same expansions. I'm thinking FFG could also start mini-army-expansions. Comparable to the neutral units, but being faction-specific. So something like a Uthuk/Daqan/Undead Legend, a Uthuk/Daqan/Undead Elite ranger, and so on. Also Lore deck expansions would still be viable. And different kinds of small terrain expansions would also really be nice. So like, when looking at expansions 5 years from now you could have a lot of options what to buy and what not to buy. A totally new map (or alternate core set) could also work, but then again I think this will mostly resonate with existing players and players with a wargame-background, not so much with potential new players. And attracting new players (and a wider audience) is what I feel FFG should be doing with their BattleLore 2nd releases