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Weekly Trash - BattleLore

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22 Dec 2008 13:25 #15641 by ChristopherMD
Black Barney wrote:
I was probably a victim of my own high expectations here. I was so excited to try this game, that I was probably setting myself up for disappointment. Luckily, the disappointment didn't happen until a couple dozen games in. Which means I had a great run with this game.

One of the best rule books I've ever read. It's clear and concise and illustrated and answers all your "yeah but..." questions. Very high quality pieces and such as well.

I love the gradual ramp up in rules to introduce you to the game's many rules regarding different units, terrain, and eventually lore (magic spells). My fiancee and I LOVED our first 20 games of this. After that, we were hungry for more so we started mixing in the monsters quite a bit which has mixed results (the spider is lots of fun but the hill giant is sort of overpowered and the earth elemental makes no sense to us).

Battlelore mostly suffers from having some of the worst expansions I've ever seen for a game. The ONLY good one was for Epic battles (and NOT for making them multiplayer-playable, which is HORRIBLE), but for expanding the battlefield to twice the size and making the rules more exciting and engaging. Those epic battles are MONEY. However, Call to Arms and all the other expansions are REALLY bad. I received 4 of them as a birthday present and exchanged them for other board games cuz I know how bad they were.

Battlelore is a great game in the beginning (like Shadows over Camelot) but eventually wears VERY thin after a couple dozen games.




Weekly Trash is a series of discussion threads in the F:AT forums. Each week a comment from the recommendations database is highlighted here. Don't be shy about posting further comments, questions, answers, funny stories, pictures, "this game sucks", or anything else related to the game.

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22 Dec 2008 17:49 #15648 by Juniper
Remember when this was being hyped as a gaming system to rival both WARHAMMER and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS? Why were DAYS OF WONDER unable to produce an expansion that realized at least some of the game's potential?

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22 Dec 2008 19:14 #15650 by Michael Barnes
Shit, more than that...it was supposed to be like CHAINMAIL and MASTER OF MAGIC too...

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22 Dec 2008 21:27 #15652 by metalface13
I think some of my first posts to the old F:AT blog were in defense of BattleLore. Since then I too have grown cold on the game. At first I liked it more than CC:A because I liked the emphasis on cavalry over infantry and it got rid of the annoying evasion rules of CC:A. Plus it's fantasy, who doesn't love fantasy? But the game takes too long to set up with the sorting and shuffling of the loremaster decks, there's not enough differentiation between the units, and I've never gotten much strategic use out of any of the monsters.

The first couple of games were pretty good, but now it doesn't really do anything for me. I've been half-heartedly trying to get rid of it for a while now with no success.

I wonder what FFG will do with it? I've heard rumors they're working on the Heroes expansion.

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22 Dec 2008 21:59 #15653 by Count Orlok
I ended up picking it up at a convention on a whim fro $30 when it was brand new. I still wish I didn't as it hasn't even proven its worth for that much yet. I've been trying to get rid of it for months with no success.

That about sums up my feelings towards the game. It could have been very cool if had been more towards CC:A than M44, but it just didn't pack enough punch to keep me interested in the 3 or 4 games I've played.

Anyone want my copy? Includes earth elemental and hill giant.

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23 Dec 2008 00:51 #15656 by Cranberries
I put my game up for sale along with Call to Arms and Epic expansions, and a Hill Giant. I don't think the bid is going to go higher than $40. Ouch. It had such potential, but since getting a copy of CC:A I'm less interested in it. The sculpts are too cartoony and it lacks the historical vibe and cleanness of CC:A. I thought I could lure my sons into playing with the minis but they are happy with Heroscape.

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23 Dec 2008 01:54 #15657 by metalface13
Yeah, I think the market is pretty much flooded with unwanted copies of BattleLore.

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23 Dec 2008 02:00 #15658 by moss_icon
I like it.

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23 Dec 2008 02:44 #15659 by DeletedUser
craniac wrote:

I thought I could lure my sons into playing with the minis but they are happy with Heroscape.

It's all they will ever need. ;)

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23 Dec 2008 07:53 #15661 by mads b.
After a couple of games this pretty much left me cold. It's interesting enough, the spell stuff adds a lot of variety, but the world is just so damn boring. Maybe the system is better for fantasy battles than for WW2, but in Memoir you have all the background and play out actual battles which is way better. And the idea of ostrich riders is kind of cool, but without background and explanation, they're nothing but a gimmick.

I have my little used copy for sale, but unfortunately noone seems to want it.

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23 Dec 2008 20:02 #15684 by jpat
Replied by jpat on topic Re:Weekly Trash - BattleLore
I gotta take issue with the idea that the rulebook is concise and clear. Concise? It's eighty-some frickin' pages. Clear is also debatable. I find it distressing how poorly the C&C system rules are written overall, even though all four iterations share a common heritage and are basically close variations on a theme.

I, too, bought into the BL hype, and although I got about eight games in on it, most online actually, I traded it and the promo minis away pretty early. Even though I like-to-love all of the other C&C games, BL seemed bloated in rules and conceit. The minis were OK but required a fair bit of (easy enough) work out of the box to unbend them. Trying to pick out units in a largely undifferentiated mass of gray plastic was no particular fun, especially considering I'm legally blind. The monster rules never seemed well developed; if I recall correctly, even the rulebook admitted that they were just "fun" and "theme." Adding Lore onto a system that already uses cards and dice creates a bit more chaos than even I care for. My board was warped fairly noticeably. Throw in the setup/breakdown time, and I'd rather play any of the other C&C games first--and maybe twice in the time of one BL game. And all this on top of DoW not living up to the blister-pack-expansion promise, which seemed like a really cool way to build varied armies.

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23 Dec 2008 22:06 #15686 by Bulwyf
Replied by Bulwyf on topic Re:Weekly Trash - BattleLore
I bougt BL early on as I loved C&C:A and thought C&C with a fantasy theme would be a real winner. I was wrong. BL couldn't make up its mind whether it was a fantasy game or a historical game. Also the mass of mediocre grey minis that were used by both armies were a real downer. Guess I had been spoiled by C&C:A and its distict block armies for each side. Besides those blocks were't nearly the PITA to set up and game with either than the BL minis. I ended up trading BL really quickly while the hype on it was still going. I got an Arkham Horror base game for it and I've never looked back.

-Will

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23 Dec 2008 23:24 #15689 by DeletedUser
Played it twice. Thought it was ok and enjoyed the games, although I found the C&C movement system a tad frustrating at times and I agree with Bulwyf about the fantasy vs historical confusion. I was heavily invested in Heroscape and didn't want to split my purchasing power so I let it pass. After reading more than a few negative opinions of the game on this site, I think I made the right call without realising it at the time.

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24 Dec 2008 09:07 #15694 by kookoobah
I played a lot of Battlelore in the past year, probably more than 50 games, around half of those epic games and I must say I enjoyed most of those games. Granted I only started the boardgame hobby last June, and I hadn't really seen what other games had to offer.

Burned out on Battlelore a little over two months ago, around the same time I started playing Heroscape, which blew it out of the water. Been playing a lot of Descent lately, and I've come to realize how much better some of the other games out there are, in terms of theme at least.

Played a couple of games of Battlelore this past week, and I realized where Battlelore fits, in my mind at least - it's a simple wargame that doesnt get bogged down by the rules, unlike Descent.

Still hoping FFG improves the theme though, everything feels flat and bland in Battlelore.

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24 Dec 2008 12:36 #15700 by Gary Sax
I don't think this system ever had enough gameplay levers to pull to make it into the boardgame Warhammer some were hoping for. There just isn't enough meat in the game's rules (and I love CC:A, the CC system is good) to make a good "system" game out of it. I've been similarly disappointed by C+C:A expansions as well, and I've come to the conclusion the problem is there just isn't enough to build off of.

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