Battlelore

MARVELLOUS WARGAME.

A big box game replete with quality components, cards, rules, and board. Also comes with a funky set of coloured battle dice, similiar to the ones used in M44.

The game plays quickly and easily, with surely the prettiest rulebook ever to grace this land helping out with any sticky points in the ruleset.
BattleLore is a great deal of fun to play, with enough room for tactical maneuvring to quench the thirst of a wargamer, and light enough to appeal to any other gamer with a hankering for this type of thing.

I will not be buying C&C:Ancients now - there simply is no need: Battlelore fills the gap between miniature wargaming and boardgaming nicely. Also plays well solo.
The morale rules are a neat idea, and battleback is very nasty indeed. The lore magic system is also well implemented, but I have simply played too few games using them to fully get to grips with all of their effects upon the battlefield.
The game is powered by cardplay, and the tactical playing of these cards will make or break your strategy during a battle. The winner is always the player who manages their pool of cards the best - make the most of what you're dealt, to coin a phrase - rather than the player who rolls lucky on their battle dice.
Big monsters spice up the stew wonderfully, and these MUST be handled with care by the opposing force, because a loose cannon like the giant spider can reap terrible damage upon the flanks of a goblin army, etc. You have been warned!
I must say that the game's design is quite brilliant, IMO. Count me in as a fan of THE SYSTEM!

Some gamers ramble on about the luck factor in the game. Ignore those people. Large-scale combat is a messy business, and unpredictable too - not that I've fought in any wars, but you know what I mean (though I have handled a sword and shield in battle against hordes numerous; the delights of LARP). What I'm trying to say is this game is a blast, and the luck involved is all part of the fun. To the naysayers I declare: have some cheese to go with your whine!

I shall certainly buy some of the expansions for this scampy little puppy, though I haven't figured out yet what type of extra units I'd like to see. A guess a dragon or a gaggle of trolls could go down a storm.

If you buy Battlelore, you will get a box of delights. It really is a great pleasure to open, with more miniatures, tokens, dice, cards and assorted bits and bobs than most games, by a long way.

The manual and materials are all beautifully decorated, and considerable thought has been put into making this an accessible game. It is actually very involved and complex, but if you follow the game's recommendations and slowly work through the scenarios alongside the manual, you will actually enjoy slowly learning all the parts of this complex battle system.

It's not a game of perfect fairness. There is a condsiderable luck element, and sometimes this is enough to swing the game. There are also some very unbalanced scenarios in the book, so don't be disappointed if you feel you can't win sometimes.

That said, we found that there is generally a great atmosphere of fun and variety on the battlefield when playing. There are lots of meaningful decisions to make. You need to maximise the number of dice you roll, so sometimes even good play will lose, but you rarely feel that the whole course of battle was ruled by a few chance die roles. A possible exception to this might be the creatures. They are killed using a system that can be very unpredicatable. Sometimes they survive forever, sometimes they die to a pinprick.

Lastly, do make sure you have 2-3 hours for each game, until you are an expert. The time you will need to set up and clear up will take the play time to easily 2 hours.

(If you have some bent pieces in the box, boil up some water, drop them into it for 20 seconds, then fish them out with a spoon, straighten them, and drop them into a bowl of cold water.)

I played this game recently for the first time. I have to say that I was amazed by the variety available in just the standard box. The quality of both the figures and the board and tiles was amazing.

With a minimum amount of set up and a brief explanation of the rules I was placed in charge of the french at Agincourt! With pre-laid out maps and a list of units used in the battle we were ready to go.

The turns work very simply and have a nice fluid motion. From your command hand of card select an order to give. The battlefield is divided in 3 left flank centre and right flank. Command cards will order a number of units in 1 of the 3 sections. Only those units activated can move and fight if they end up in the next hex to an enemy. Archer units can fire a number of hexes if they have been activated.

Each unit will be either light, medium or heavy and this determines the hexes they can move and the dice rolled in combat.

The combat phase is very simple as well. You simply roll a number of dice equal to the amount available to your unit - heavy cavalry roll 4 dice. The dice used are specially designed - each of 3 sides coloured green, blue and red for light medium and heavy, a shield for an extra bonus if available, a rune symbol and a retreat symbol making up the 6 sides. Each roll of the same colour removes a unit from the enemy formation. Each retreat symbol rolled forces the enemy to retreat that many hexes towards their own line. If a formation cannot retreat then they lose an extra unit.

Cavalry are very effective if they roll a retreat they can attack again and not just the same enemy but any other enemy that is near them.

With simple movement and combat dice we quickly finished our first game and immediately started a second with more units and a war council!

A war council adds another dimension to this game allowing you to use spells and random events to turn the tide of battle.

With a host of expansions available this game is certainly replayable and even without the expansions there is a lot of fun to have.

With games lasting between 45mins - 2 hours you can quickly get through a campaign in an evening.

Great game.

This is a light wargame, in the same line as Battle Cry, and Command and Colors: Ancients.
Battlelore is set in a fantasy world, Utopia, where classic aspects, like Elves, dwarves, etc. combine to create more peculiar elements, such as dwarves riding bulls, and green-skin goblins on ostriches.
The components are crammed in a square box, and are beautiful. You get a ton of miniatures, banners, cards, dice, tokens… even a couple of plastic cups for storing lore (mana).
Once you attach the banners to the miniatures, one per unit (a unit is normally 4 infantry, or 3 cavalry), you will realise that you may need to find an alternative storage solution, as they won’t fit in the box.
Also, trays for the cards are included, so that you can place them there, and play hands-free (a nice addition, as opposed to having to roll the dice, move units, etc. with cards in your hands).
The rulebook is lengthy, but only because it’s full of drawings and pictures and diagrams showing different situations to better explain the rules. It’s made this way so that all the components are very visually appealing, and easier to understand.
As the rules are posted in FFG (Fantasy Flight Games) website, I won’t go in detail. Suffice to say, they are really nice, and precise. The mechanic of the game is one of card-driven wargame, meaning that your actions are dictated by cards. That is, in your turn, your choice of which units to move depend on the card you play. This somewhat recreates commanding troops in a battlefield, sometimes your orders won’t be implemented as you desire. Also, it makes for a quicker game, with no apparent AP (analysis paralysis).
The base set is perfectly playable by itself, but if you want to, there are lots of expansions readily available, with more units, cards, etc. another one ‘Call to Arms’ that lets you customize your troops, and another one that adds another gameboard, resulting in a huge battlefield.
Highly recommended.