Besides the 2 designers, there’s only 1 copy of Battle Lore Call to Arms in the US – and I got it! (It’s scheduled for release in about 2 weeks I think) Richard Borg had one to donate to the prize table at The Gathering. I was lucky enough to win the Battle Lore tournament and took it as my prize. (Richard was kind enough to sign it for me too). Ok, enough gloating – on to the review.
The Call to Arms expansion offers a couple of new additions including new weapons, new terrain (marshes, archers’ stakes, and cliffs), and rules for random battles. Also in the box are some additional banners, information cards, and markers.
The new weapon is the English long bow. Depending on scenario, some or all of your archers may be designated as having the English long bow. This allows them to hit with sword-on-shield rolls as well as the banner color. This makes them equivalent to crossbows but with a range of 4. They can be VERY lethal!
A new addition to the game is the 10 Specialist cards. When playing a random battle, each side will get two specialist cards. These have various effects on either the game set-up or how it will play. They can deploy additional units, change units’ starting positions, create over-strength units, upgrade weapons (English long bows!), improve defenses, etc. They could also be added to existing scenarios at the players’ option, in order to change things up a bit.
The real heart of the expansion, though, is the army deployment system. This is a method for generating a random, roughly equal battle. It works with a set of cards for each side, pennants & banners. For each side, there are 3 sets of 7 cards each. Each set of 7 cards depicts a number of units in set-up positions in the first few rows of the board. Each player selects a set of cards and then takes 4 at random. 3 of these are then assigned 1 to a sector; the fourth is the reserve card. A map is selected (6 different maps are included with the rule book, but players could just as easily construct their own random map), and then the units are deployed. Each player may then place 2 units from their reserve card in the back hex row of their side. Other reserve units may also be placed depending on the specialist cards selected by each side. Players now select their war council, if playing those rules, and start the game. The player who deployed the most green units gets the first turn (they’ve “out-scouted” the other side). Victory conditions are determined by the map chosen, or whatever the players agree upon before starting.
This is a very easy and fast method for generating random battles. It’s much faster than any points/purchase system I’ve seen. I’ve only played one game so far, but even with reading the new rules, the set up was fast and we were underway quickly. The game was balanced as well. We used the first map in the book (“First Encounter”), a war council of 6 points, and played to 6 victory points. The whole thing took less than 90 minutes, and I won 6 to 5 (better luck next year Paul).
All in all, I’ve found the Battle Lore system lots of fun to play, and the expansion allows for an endless supply of new, roughly balanced scenarios. Kudos to Richard and Days of Wonder for adding a slick idea to an already great game.
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Posted Mon Apr 9, 2007 5:07 pm
