Battlelore 2nd edition review

Warhammer Fantasy Battle... for dummies?

A word of introduction first so that you know my tastes and their origins (as in the profile section). Since I was 8 years old I have played videogames. At some point in that time I met GONDOR, classic board game and I fell in love. Then, being 12 years old I discovered miniatures wargaming and went from Warzone through Warhammer 40k (since 2nd edition) to Warhammer Fantasy Battle (R.I.P.). At the same time I loved roleplaying games, especially Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Cyberpunk 2020. Then, as an adult, I fell in love in boardgames once again. I grew up on videogames like UFO: Enemy Unknown, Panzer General, Jagged Alliance, Silent Storm, Sid Meier's Civilization, Baldur's Gate, Temple of Elemental Evil. I suppose these classics also defined my taste for board games. I love thematic games and strategy games, and when you can combine these two – that's even better.

You might wonder why the provokative subtitle. My adventure with Battlelore 2nd edition began after watching Tom Vasel's videoreview of the game, where Tom Vasel stated something like: „Why would I need Warhammer if I have Battlelore 2nd edition!” Tom Vasel's review was very positive. The game also seemed to fit my tastes perfectly: classic fantasy setting, beautyful miniatures, good ruleset. So I bought it and played it around 20 times. And I can tell you one thing: it compares to any edtition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle like riding a bike compares to riding a motorcycle or like first grade math compares to university level math, or like checkers compares to any modern strategy boardgame. No offense, Tom!

So I will go to conclusion at this point, to avoid too much negative emotions piling up against the author, and then I will try to explain my point of view in details. I suppose you already get my general point. Please don't get me wrong, Battlelore 2nd edition is not a bad game. It's... just fine. It's a decent game, decent enough to play it 20 times and expecting to play some more if in right mood. But it's just not as stunning as I expected it to be.

Components:

They are absolutely gorgeous. Really, it's top notch quality, miniatures are beautiful, sculpts are great, graphics are awesome, you could just sit there and watch the components to have some fun of having this game. Personally, I don't really like the style of terrain tiles, for me they are a bit too „artish”, I prefer either more realistic or more cartoonish one, but 1) it's only a matter of taste, 2) it doesn't affect gameplay, so it shouldn't affect my assessment. Still, in my personal opinion, there is just not enough diversity in the base set. After a few games you have a feeling that you've seen everything and there is not much more. I understand mathematical argument of 49 possible scenarios (7x7), of different possible roster set ups and all but it gets old quickly. In the base game you get only 5 units per side, and as the mechanics are really simple, it's not much.

8/10 – quality of the components is great, but the base set lacks diversity

Gameplay:

Set up time: 10/10 (doesn't affect gameplay)

It takes 15 minutes to set Battlelore up. It is a quick game to set up.

Rules clarity: 9/10 (some questions arise)

It's a simple game, the core set of rules is really short and clear, however cards interactions and special unit rules interactions can be confusing. Despite that fact, second, reference rulebook is great and helps a lot. Other answers can be easily found in the forums.

Fun and general feeling:

Battlelore is based on famous Richard Borg's command and colors system. It means that while ordering units you are restrained to command cards which tell you how many units in one of the 3 sections of the board you can move. In the beginning of the game both sides randomly draw one scenario card, which together form the battlefield. You also have lore cards which allow you to enhance your units or conduct special actions for lore points aquired during the game. Combat is resolved by throwing unit-specific amount of custom dice. Dice have 6 symbols on them – 2 cause hits for melee units, 1 causes hit for ranged units, 1 causes the target unit to retreat, 1 gives you a lore point and 1 allows some units to use their special ability. Almost every unit has 3 hp. There are no defence dice, so you hit giants just as you hit basic skeleton warriors, so elite infantry is just as durable as the most basic cannon fodder. Every game revolves around gaining Victory Points for ocupying specific board tiles and sometimes other special conditions, like having 3 units on forest tiles etc. Usually you can gain around 2 pts per turn, game ends when one player has 16 points, checked at the beginning of player 1 turn. That's basically it. Game mechanics are neat and simple.

Too simple.

That's the whole problem with this game. There are many reasons to say that it's too simple. First of all, despite 49 possible scenarios from the base set (you have 7 scenario cards for each side), every single game looks very similar due to the Victory Point mechanism. Because Victory Points are the only determinant of victory, you do everything to gain them as quickly as possible, and – if possible – to negate the opponent from doing the same. You do that basically by rushing units to occupy Victory Point hexes. Because you have very limited number of orders per turn (usually around 3) you can't conduct a well prepared offensive manouver, you just rush available inrange units to these VP hexes. Moreover, you can usually be quite sure that the opponent will push you back in his turn. Then you will push him back. And so forth. So despite 49 existing terrain setups, every game after more-or-less 5^th one feels identical. What's more, some scenario combinations are really imbalanced.

The second problem is the situational usage of lore cards. You start a game with 2 lore cards chosen from 3. Every turn you have too choose: either you take 2 lore points or 1 lore point and 1 lore card or 2 lore cards discarding one from your hand of lore cards. The problem is, many cards are usable only with certain units. If you don't choose these units to your roster or they die before you get such a card, it's useless. Using the cards is expensive in lore, so early on you can't really afford them, and the more advanced the game is, less cards are useful. We had plenty of games where almost no cards were used because of this reason. Using card combinations would be fun, but it's only theory. You would need 8 turns to go through half of your deck while taking 1 lore and 1 card. But the game usually lasts around 8 turns. Even then you would take only 8 lore, excluding lore from combat dice. In effect, if you have a bit of luck, you get to use around 3 single lore cards in the whole game. If you get lucky on the other hand, you can easily win a game by using the proper card in the right moment. I have a feeling that's quite an important part of the game being wasted.

Combat is simple and very dice dependent. Apart from lore cards you have no options to modify your dice, and as noted above, their usage is limited. However, I have to admit that learning to use specific units according to their strengths gives a lot of satisfaction and is one of the most amusing parts of the game.

Conclusion

I am kind of a FFG fanboy. Seriously. I own a large set of X-wing, almost complete collection of Descent 1^st ed., big collection of Descent 2^nd ed., complete set of Talimsan 4^th ed, complete set of Tide of Iron. At this point FFG should send me games for free :) I really wanted to love Battlelore 2^nd ed. Expansions and user scenarios change things in favour of this game, especially user scenarios which help with „victory point hex pushover”. However, the base set has it's flaws, which make the game repetitive and a bit boring after a few games – for aforementioned reasons. It's really nowhere near Warhammer Fantasy Battle or any other miniature wargame that I know of. It's a beer and pretzel „wargame”, quick and simple. In my opinion it's not an „easy to learn, hard to master” game, it's just „easy to learn, period” game. It has very limited depth. It has nice theme and neat mechanics, it's good to play with your kids or casual friends.

Because I am a collectionist and a miniaturegeek I am planning to buy more expansions and check out more online scenarios. When I do that, I will surely do an update to this review.

pros:

- beautiful arts, high quality miniatures

- quick to play

- entertaining for a few 75-90 minutes games

cons:

- becomes repetitive quickly,

- some scenario combinations can be really inbalanced,

- feeling of being very much dice dependent,

- lore cards mechanism makes the game even more luck based.

6,5/10 (base game only, without any downloadable content)