On Sunday, I finally got a chance to demo BattleLore 2nd Edition at GenCon. Below are my impressions on how it compares with BattleLore 1st Edition. This is based on the demo and flipping through the rule book:
Physical Components:
-The hexes and terrain tiles appear to be larger than BL1.
-The terrain hexes were very thick.
-The figures were nice and large and not fragile at all.
-The dice were of high quality. The six faces were: sword, double-swords, flag, crown, lore, bulls-eye. Swords are melee hits (except for “weak” units), double-swords are melee hits, flags are retreats, crowns activate special abilities, lore is lore, bulls-eyes are ranged hits.
-The cards looked very nice, especially the art. The lore cards were stamped “demo” or something that lead me to be believe they were not final.
-Command cards were a common deck that included both section cards and non-section cards (like cavalry charge).
Units:
-Gone are the color-coded units. Instead, each unit type has a unit card that lists it’s movement, combat strength (# of dice rolled), health (# of figures) and any special abilities. Every unit card in the demo had some sort of special ability. For example, the blue archers could shoot twice if they didn’t move and the red archers got poison arrows.
-Movement has no effect on combat (outside of special abilities). In general movement rates appeared to be slightly higher than in BL1. Most infantry seemed to be able to move 2 and all cav in the demo moved 3.
-Each unit in the demo had three figures, except for the large figures.
Lore/War Counsel:
-The basic lore mechanics appear to be unchanged. Lore symbols rolled on the dice either give you lore tokens or activate lore-based abilities. At the end of the turn you get either 2 lore tokens, 1 lore token and 1 lore card, or draw 2 lore cards keep 1 and discard the other. Lore cards have a lore cost (from 2 thru 9) as well as timing rules (when they can be played) printed on them.
-The lore cards appear to be about the same in terms of relative power as it related to lore cost. 386
They varied from cost 2 which were useful and topping out at cost 9 cards (1 in each deck) which were very powerful.
-One notable change is the War Counsel: It’s gone. Instead each faction has their own separate lore deck that they draw exclusively from.
Setup:
-Setup is no longer entirely scenario based. Each player gets a card that shows their half of the battlefield and where they can deploy their units. This card also shows the location of objective hexes (more on this later) and any special rules. There were several cards to choose from for each faction.
-According to the demo guy, units are no longer predetermined. There is a build point allowance (I think he said it was 50 pnts) and each player would choose their forces from this allotment. Basic units (infantry, archers) would be 4 points, elite units (cav, special infantry) would be 6 points and the large multiple-wound models were 8 points.
-During set up each player would place markers (including decoy markers) in hexes and then reveal the markers. Then the actual units would be set up.
Gameplay:
-The basic turn structure is the same. The active player goes through a command step (playing a command card), then activates units accordingly, moves all activated units, resolves combat with all activated units, gets a new command card and has a lore step.
-Combat was basically the same, with a few differences.
-Every unit gets to battle-back in melee, so long as they weren’t destroyed or retreated out of the hex.
-Terrain affects seemed simplified. <PERSON> reduced combat dice to 2 (before modifiers) both into and out of. Buildings allowed the defender to ignore the first hit.
-Retreats are directly away from the attacker (as opposed to always towards your board edge).
-Damage to units does not affect the number of dice rolled, however if the unit is reduced to 1 figure then they are considered “weak” and hit only score a melee hit on double-sword results. Normally melee units hit on sword and double-sword results.
Victory:
-This is perhaps the biggest change. You no longer gain victory points from destroying units. Instead, you gain VPs from holding objective hexes (1VP per hex, awarded at the end of each of your turns) and any special VPs from your scenario card. I think you play to 13 or 15 VPs. 100