Monday, September 18, 2006
BattleLore discussed around the Boardgaming Roundtable
Mark Kaufmann and Eric Hautemont of Days of Wonder discuss the history of the company, their games, as well as their upcoming game BattleLore. Download the MP3 episode at Garrett’s Games and Geekiness Podcast or go directly to Garrett’s Games and Geekiness 33 to listen via QuickTime (via Boardgamenews).
Confirmed: the board is the exact same size as Memoir ‘44, double-sided. The regular side has slightly shifted (by half a hex) flank lines to M’44. The flip side has the same terrain but you can rotate it 90 degrees and line it up with another board to play ‘epic’ battles—thus making the epic game area more of a square. Even more web support is planned for BattleLore than M’44 (including epic scenarios).
Non-historical scenarios (those with magic and ‘legendary actions’) are called Lore Adventures. Lore cards are drawn from a separate deck from Command cards, and use a new mechanism—at the start of a game you are given, or can choose, a War Council, your ‘party of advisors in the field’ that give you special powers, and allow you to use certain Lore cards from the common deck. So you can choose powers based on the type of scenario, the lay of the land, the forces involved etc. You will have to manage a pool of Lore tokens to let you use your legendary actions when the time is right.
All these choices should mean that scenarios (now called Adventures) play very differently each time.
In the individual figure blister pack expansions you also get a summary card, plus a cardboard terrain piece that is the lair of the creature.
The box is 50% deeper than the normal Days of Wonder box, and the game is US$70.