Game: Battue: The Walls of Tarsos

Thread: More Bloodshed Means More Fun

VixenTorGames — 2008-07-09T04:54:04+00:00

Violent games are my personal favorite. I'm a red-blooded American male, so I like games where I get to kill people. And in Battue, you get to kill a lot of people, because you're in charge of an army of horse-riding barbarians sacking a perfectly civilized city. That's a Jerry Maguire moment right there - 'you had me at barbarians.' And I even hate that stupid, overused line, so you know I must like the game to stoop to using a bad movie-line cliché.

And if there's a way to make an awesome and violent game more violent and awesome, you know I'm a sucker for it. Battue: Walls of Tarsos is the second release from Red Juggernaut, and it takes the original game of Battue and turns it up to 11 (another overused movie cliché. Sorry). Now there is more violence, more mayhem, and more cool stuff to completely wreck in the rich city of Battue.

For starters, the expansion has these wall tiles. These sit on top of the walls that are printed on the board, and replace the values that were there. If you attack at a gate, you've got a good shot of getting in, and if you start at a tower, you're probably going to get to see some violence when all your guys get killed and you're out of the game on the first turn (not a great way to start, by the way). If you can eventually take a tower, though, they have great special abilities that will really help you. So don't start there, but get there sooner or later. You'll have to shed some blood to get what you want, but then, if you're squeamish, go play Tiddlywinks or something and let the grown-ups get some gore under their fingernails.

The new event cards add a lot more blood and guts, especially because some of them create a new horde on the board. This horde is controlled by the opponent who draws the card (well, mostly controlled - they have an ugly tendency to get out of hand and hit anyone who happens to be close, which is a kind of like my idiot little brother). And if they sweep in behind you, they can really ruin your day. I know, because it happened to me, and I wound up walking with a limp for the rest of the game (you know, because I got kicked in the nuts).

The new loot cards are cool, too. There's a new kind of loot card, the reaction, that lets you do something about the mayhem that gets tossed in your lap when someone else decides it's your turn in the barrel (like, say, if a horde of uncontrolled horsemen gallops through your back yard and then kicks you in the nuts). Plus there are some cards that give you a bonus when you complete a quest, usually occupying a particular building. These cards don't add much more violence, but they do add more variety, so I'm all for them.

And of course, the Battue expansion would have been worthless without new building tiles. My favorite thing about Battue is the way you can build this big, beautiful city and then discover it one piece at a time, and new buildings means new stuff for me to discover. And happily for those of us who also want to see some scrapes and bruises, these new tiles are real ass-kickers. A bunch of them are apparently rigged with booby-traps, because as soon as you flip them over you lose a warrior. Then they'll be really tough to beat, so you end up losing even more warriors, especially because you're not so tough after losing that first guy. Now that's my kind of violence - complete eradication on the whim of a die roll.

All this new violence comes at a price, though (I mean, a price beyond those who have to die to entertain me). The original game of Battue was heavy on the luck - if you wound up bashing your head against really tough buildings before you got going, you could wind up watching the game go by as you kept recruiting new allies instead of killing someone. And the combat was just a single die roll, which could easily go south for you and end up costing you, big-time.

Walls of Tarsos keeps that luck factor high, and since so many of the new buildings can so radically change the game, actually jacks it up even higher. If you were irritated with the luck before, you'll really hate it now. One game we played ended with a final score of seven, four, twelve and fifty. Yeah, the winner beat all the rest of us put together. And even he was the first to admit that it was all luck.

But you know what? I still had a blast. I don't care if it does all come down to luck, Battue is still one hell of a fun game, and Walls of Tarsos makes it even better. More violence, more mayhem, more chaos, and more fun. And if that's not a reason to get the expansion, I don't want to know what is.

Summary

Pros:
Lots of new toys for your toybox
Great new buildings
Cool new cards
Even more violence than before

Cons:
Luck can play a really huge factor
New tiles don't match the old ones, so you know when you're about to raid an expansion tile

Thread: Promo tiles: Have a spare Library of Tarsos; looking for Tarsos Vault and Templum Vulcan

dogmatix — 2008-06-24T03:01:45+00:00

Hey folks

I posted this in the Game Parts Trade subforum to no avail, so I thought I'd try here too. I scored a second Library of Tarsos promo tile from my local shop [they gave me 2 for buying both Battue and Walls at the same time]. I don't know if anyone missed this one when it hit the shops earlier this year, but I didn't get turned on to Battue until around the release of Walls. Unfortunately, thanks to my "late start," I've missed out the first promo tile [Tarsos Vault]. In addition, it doesn't appear that the Templum Vulcan promo has made its way to northern Virginia yet [and I have no idea if it will].

I'd really like to trade for or buy these 2 tiles. In addition, I'd be happy to trade this Library along to someone who might have missed it. While my first choice would be to swap for the Vault or Templum V., I'd be happy help out a fellow Battue fan who got a similarly late start on this game [or simply missed out on the promo].

Cheers
Justin/DogM.

Thread: Re: [BSG] Battue: The Walls of Tarsos Review

Harkonnen13 — 2008-05-08T16:46:20+00:00

Nice review. I've played the expansion once and it is a good addition to a good game. The most important part of Walls of Tarsos is the new walls and towers, gives variety and unpredictability right off the bat. The rest of the tiles are are good too and I think I can reasonably expect a board that is different enough each time to make me want to play Battue for quite a few more games.

Thread: [BSG] Battue: The Walls of Tarsos Review

Subhuman — 2008-05-08T13:16:42+00:00

Jim Long
Red Juggernaut, Inc.
2 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 60 - 90 mins
Suggested Ages: 12 and up (I think you can get away with younger)

I like game expansions. Some games desperately need them. Try playing Warcraft: The Board Game without the expansion I dare you. Others play better without them. Alhambra comes to mind as a great self contained game that plays perfectly well without the need for any of the multiple expansions that were released for it. Many games that I enjoy seem to lend themselves well to being expanded. I find these are often text based card games. Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords is heavily dependent on text based card, it also uses variable valued tiles and is prime for more. Simply a pile of new tiles would have made a fine expansion to Battue but there are many changes and additions to game play added in the slip cover box of Walls of Tarsos aimed at changing the gameplay. The purpose of the expansion seems clear. The 13 new loot cards 8 new event cards and 29 new tiles all nudge players to play a more defensive strategy to hold on to the tiles that they control. To go along with this many of the Loot and Event cards are geared toward taking control of tiles away from other players. All of this is gives the game a resource management aspect that was not really there in Storm of the Horse Lords.

Tiles

Let’s start with most noticeable addition to the game, the 16 new wall tiles. The border of Tarsos was previously protected by a printed on wall that players would first need to assault. All sides were fortified by 2 Walls surrounding a gate and a tower on each corner. The defense and reward for conquering the printed wall sections were the same on all sides. Wall tiles in this expansion replace the printed on outer wall. For the most part all the walls and gates are still similar to each other except for the occasional unguarded secret entrance to a wall section that has no defense. The major addition added by the wall tiles is in the towers. The towers are very well fortified, having a defense of seven, but with this risk comes a new reward of special abilities given by the towers. Icons depicting one of four different abilities granted to the controlling player of the tower. These special abilities can be very strong and can easily lead to Player Vs Player confrontation especially the Signal Fire which adds one extra recruit when a player rolls for reinforcements.

The 13 additional city tiles in Walls of Tarsos are not without their own new surprises. The city, which comes in the shapes of the smaller common tiles from Storm of the Horse Lords, adds several new elements to the game. The only dangerous one is an automatic lose of troop icon. This picture of a crossed out horseman will cause a player to lose one troop right away when they explore a tile. This adds an element of danger to the game that I really did not feel was in the base game. It also may make taking over an enemy controlled tile more inviting then risking exploring an unknown section of the city. My favorite added ability is Adjunct ability. Two tiles in the game now have a special ability of being worth 5 extra victory points at the end of the game if you control this tile and its corresponding tile. For example if you control the adjunct of Jupiter and the temple of Jupiter you will get five victory points at the end of the game in addition to the victory points already provided by these tiles. The rules also show that there are tiles that will allow a player to draw an extra loot card at the beginning of their turn or skip their turn in order to draw three event cards. I don’t remember seeing either of these come up in game play and I cannot find either such tile as I am going through the components now even though I counted and all the tiles are here. ??? Either way all of these add a welcome variation to the game that make exploration more interesting and also add to the worth of tiles making players want to leave troop behind to defend them and possible reach out and take tiles controlled by other players. An unfortunately aspect of the new interior tiles however is that Red Juggernaut decided to shade them a slightly lighter shade of tan then the original tiles. This makes them identifiable during game play and was done in an effort to reduce randomness. I don’t care for this because I really liked the randomness of exploring the tiles, especially with the added danger in the expansion. It is not really as noticeable or as much of a detractor from the exploration experience as it sounds. I had felt that the overly random aspect of Storm of the Horse Lords had come from the powerful dice and highly variable event cards.

Cards

Speaking of the cards there are several new Loot and Event cards added to the game. Of the thirteen loot cards eight of them fall right in line with the cards from Storm of the Horse Lords doing such things as canceling event cards, and preventing your opponent form retreating. The Loot cards that really stick out are the Enchanted Items. The Enchanted items are five loot cards in the expansion that have a city section written on it. After drawing one of these cards a player may play this card into their war chest at the end of a turn in which they control this city section. This leads to objective based game play that will cause players to begin searching for certain size tiles and once again encourage player vs player combat. I really like what these cards added to the game and wish there were more of them.

In Storm of the Horse Lords I thought there was a problem with the event cards swinging heavily between very good for the person drawing to kind of bad for the person drawing. Well the eight event cards in the expansion five of them are pretty tame. Things like everyone pass your hand of loot card to the left and the exploring player rolling to see if he loses or gains a few troops/loot cards. The other three however are devastating to the lead player. Two of the card allow the exploring player to gain control of an army of 6 neutral warriors, new figures included in the expansion, started them in an opponent’s controlled section then fight for control. If the player controlling the neutral party wins then the tile becomes uncontrolled and they may move the army to an adjacent controlled hex and continue battling. This obviously can be very bad for the controlling player but the focus of this expansion does seem to be area control so it makes sense. A player in Walls of Tarsos is going to need to leave troops on their more valuable tiles and tiles with abilities to prevent offensives such as this instead of forming two massive hordes and grabbing as many city sections as they can that seemed to work well in the base game.

Points of Interest:

* Lots of extra tiles. In a game where you are creating a different board each time with tiles being left over there really is no such thing as too many tiles.

* Shift of Strategy: Gather a couple large hordes and ransacking the city of Tarsos was great fun in the base game. There were not many different strategies that could be pursued however. With the addition of the enchanted Items and tile abilities there seems to be more strategy in trying to hold on to the tiles that you explore instead of just grabbing the loot cards and moving on.

* New Abilities: Part to the point above but still deserving their own spot are the new abilities of the tiles. Particularly the towers. Even though there is no rule stating that a player must start their horde on the side of the board closest to them this is almost certainly going to happen anyway. So the towers kind of give each player unique ability toward the beginning of the game, but carful if you get a good one because you are going to have to hold on to it.

Points of Caution:

* Marked cards and tiles: As I said above the tiles in the expansion were colored slightly different from the original game to reduce randomness. I really didn’t care for this. Now there are way too many tiles in the game for me to remember exactly what may still be left unrevealed or exactly what tiles are left to be revealed but I still didn’t like them being recognizable. The cards are also slightly off color from the original and cut slightly different but this was not nearly as noticeable as the city tiles as I had to look pretty closely to tell the difference.

* Large amount of Randomness: The card draws and die rolls in the game still seem very dependent on luck. I was hoping for more basic loot cards that would give bonus to attack and more so to defense to offset some of the luck of the die rolls. The card draws still swing wildly between good and bad. Hopefully someone on BGG will come up with “themed” decks for the event and loot deck to customize gameplay before hand.

Overall:

Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords is a game that I very much enjoy and was still being pulled off the shelf before I got this expansion. I think the base game is an excellent gateway game because of its great looking component, easy rules, and interesting game play. This expansion takes game play a step further without adding much complexity. All of the additions offered in Battue: Walls of Tarsos are sure to extend my interest in the game and I look forward to changes that may come in the future. I particular liked the added emphasis put on controlling certain tiles for either their ability or for scoring bonus victory points. This really added a nice depth to the game. If you enjoyed the base game then picking up this expansion is almost no brainer. I’m not sure that enough changes are added to make this a mandatory expansion but it is certainly a very good expansion. The amount of components and addition to game play is great for the price. However, If you did not enjoy Storm of the Horse Lords then this expansion is not going to do much for you. There is still a very high level of randomness that may scare off many gamers.

edit: grammar

Thread: Re: Color problem

BigOtter — 2008-05-01T17:08:36+00:00

This was, indeed, deliberate, primarly based on feedback from BGG players. Although Battue: SotHL is a gateway game, may players have raised the question of randomness in the game - dice rolling, card drawing, and tile flipping. Admittedly, there's a lot of that going on.

In putting together the expansion we decided to make the new tiles a lighter color to provide clues regarding the nature of the tile to limit some of the randomness. The decision was not made lightly, however, we certainly understand that some player want more, not less, randomness.

Thanx,

Thread: Re: Question Regarding new Tile Effects

BigOtter — 2008-05-01T17:04:05+00:00

The bonus Event card mechanic is used in the promotional tile, Hornbuckle's Tavern. We'll be giving this tile away during the summer, although we have not finalized the plans for such a giveaway.

The bonus Loot card mechanic is used in the promotional tile, Templum Vulcan. We gave this tile away at the recent GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas to all retailers who stopped by the booth. We will continue to make this available through '08, primarly through retailers and the convention season.

Thanx,

Thread: Re: Variable sized or shaped cities

Subhuman — 2008-04-29T15:37:58+00:00

mark_biggar wrote:

Another idea is to surround the Palace with an inner wall.

I like that idea. Ill have to give it a try.

Thread: Variable sized or shaped cities

mark_biggar — 2008-04-27T03:33:49+00:00

Now that we have the wall/gate/tower pieces from this expansion, the original board is no longer necessary. So if you want to make a smaller city when playing with fewer then 4 players, just use the new pieces to make what ever size city you want. With more then one expansion set you can make non-rectangle cities as well.

Another idea is to surround the Palace with an inner wall.

Thread: Question Regarding new Tile Effects

Keltheos — 2008-04-26T23:29:30+00:00

I looked through all the new tiles and could not find the tiles which created the bonus loot draw card and the every turn event draw (they don't have names in the rulebook).

Was this an oversight, or are these tile abilities for a future expansion?

Or, am I just too blind to see them on the tiles themselves?

Other than that, we cracked this open and added into the main set last night and had a blast trying the new stuff out. Didn't add to the game play time at all, but did make it even more entertaining.

The tiles are a bit lighter, but unless you've memorized all of the new ones it doesn't really make a difference. We've played numerous times but have yet to memorize the tiles (outside of the Barracks of course).

Thread: Re: Color problem

gschmidl — 2008-04-18T12:09:37+00:00

If you check out the rules, that seems to be deliberate.

Thread: Color problem

skeletodoc — 2008-04-18T01:39:15+00:00

The new tiles for the board have a lighter colored back than the original. This makes it easy to tell which tiles are old and which are new. They should have used the same color backing for the new tiles.

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Harkonnen13 — 2008-04-15T22:28:37+00:00

Box contents (nifty tray included)

Thread: Re: Release!!

Harkonnen13 — 2008-04-01T01:17:38+00:00

And I will be prompltly ordering from Thoughthammer tonight!

Thread: Release!!

BigOtter — 2008-03-31T21:00:42+00:00

Just a quick word that Battue: Walls of Tarsos official release date is today, March 31st. It should be in stores now (or in the next day or two, depending on delivery schedules).

Thanx,

Thread: Re: Rules

dbc- — 2008-01-16T18:35:55+00:00

Sounds cool!
And it's not even supposed to increase playing time? Nice!

Thread: Rules

BigOtter — 2008-01-16T14:51:49+00:00

A PDF of the rules, along with additional images, can be found on the Red Juggernaut web site for the product at http://www.redjuggernaut.com/battue2.htm.

In addition, in the retailer section of the site, http://www.redjuggernaut.com/Retailer.htm, there is a production information sheet and a 1-page play description of the product.

Thanx,

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BigOtter — 2007-10-10T23:56:06+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-10-10T23:55:35+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-10-03T14:10:15+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-10-03T14:05:22+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-10-03T13:37:39+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-10-03T12:53:22+00:00

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BigOtter — 2007-09-13T13:49:55+00:00

Templum Mars

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BigOtter — 2007-09-13T13:49:20+00:00

Adjunct Jupiter

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BigOtter — 2007-09-13T13:48:43+00:00

Imouha Trade House