Saturday, September 23, 2006
Official Word: Battle Dice
The official DoW blog has been updated with a look at the colourful Battlelore Battle dice. Basically, damage is determined by the colour of the helmet symbol, modified by Bonus Strikes, terrain, weaponry and Lore factors.
Coloured Helmet symbols count as hits against that unit’s banner colour, ie, a blue helmet rolled means a hit is scored against a blue banner unit, and a figure removed. The orange ‘sword and shield’ symbol is a Bonus Strike.
This summary card for the Shortsword (click the cards to see larger images) shows not only whether the weapon is melee or ranged, but the type of damage, the chance of rolling Bonus Strike symbols, and any special rules.
Here we can see that the shortsword ignores one Bonus Strike if fighting cavalry. The long sword, which has greater reach, will count all Bonus Strikes against cavalry. A Bonus Strike is, of course, an extra hit.
This Battle Dice summary card shows what the various symbols on the dice mean.
The Black Flag symbol is the familiar Retreat result, which usually means the unit must retreat one hex towards its own side of the battlefield.
The Stars symbol, which is also in the Battlelore logo, is treated as a miss in historical battles, and a Collect Lore Tokens (collect one Lore token) or Trigger Lore Effect result in Lore adventures.
Thus, for reasons that will no doubt be explained in future reports, it seems that lack of success in battle allows you to build up your Lore tokens (shown at right), and thus your ability to use magic or legendary actions. Apparently we’ll be learning more about Lore after a few more blog entries.
I’m not sure how this works thematically, but I assume it would certainly help to even out the luck factor, allowing those ‘unlucky in battle’ to be ‘lucky in lore’.