by Kurgan » Friday October 15th, 2021 12:55pm
Originally I had no interest in Battle Masters, because I figured it would be too difficult and expensive to get a complete set, and even less probable that I'd ever play it with someone! I don't have the same nostalgia for this one as for HeroQuest, and I see myself playing it a lot less, but it is tangentially connected and I could see it being a special occasion kind of thing (like a battle between quests to represent the greater "war" going on behind the scenes). Kind of like a cross between Risk and HeroQuest...
I wonder if the general BM rules could be adapted for HeroQuest deathmatching rules? Having a deck determining who gets the initiative is a neat idea.
My first impression is that they didn't seem to go for the customization with this game, even though it seems like it would be fairly easy. With the slotted bases you could buy all kinds of Warhammer fantasy (GamesWorkShop: CHA-CHING!!) figures in there and create your own custom labels. You could place other objects and create new tiles to place on the field. You could create your own blankets, I mean game mats, etc. You could do all this instead of wadding the whole thing up, tossing it aside, and playing "true" old hammer war games on your fancy terrain table with big piles of dice, everything painted etc (money is no object).
But it takes up a ton of room (several people have created "smaller" versions of the whole game and there are computer simulations of it), and there is a lot of setup time and a lot of flimsy parts. The plastic for the figures I got is a little flimsier (or it could be a lot of these parts got stepped on... when kids leave the game sitting on the floor all day, that can happen... or if they start playing "Weapons and Warriors" and shoot marbles at them).
As far as cannibalizing this for parts to use in HeroQuest, I don't see it as helpful. Sure, the Orcs are wearing more armor, but they don't look as cool and dynamic as the HQ orcs. The horsemen are cool but make a lot less sense running down hallways with their lances in a treasure vault, dungeon or crypt. The Ogre is awesome but he's way too big to really "fit" (hence the many shrunk down versions converted to HQ).
All the talk about converting these minis to use in HQ I mostly disagree with. I would probably go the other way and come up with ways to put the HQ minis onto the BM field. Auxiliary units like on StratosVX's page. I imagine the Wizard healing his unit, or casting Ball of Flame like a one-off cannon shot. I imagine Chaos Sorcerer's resurrecting a "dead" Chaos unit as a platform of undead. That would be cool. Dragons on the battlefield? Sure, suddenly the bad guys have a cannon. Or why not have a third faction? Maybe Undead or Skaven or Ogres aren't under the Black Banner and are running amok? Bring some elves and dwarves in there, etc.
Lots of fodder for ideas, but I think I'll try playing this new game as its intended first.
I watched some videos and not only do a lot of people put the figures out backwards (name plates are meant to face the person controlling them, rather than facing the enemy). That's right, Board James got this wrong, sorry (he also used elite tokens despite it supposedly being their very first battle).
I saw another video of this cute couple playing, where I swear the cannon blew itself up on the first shot (this isn't how it works... if you draw the explosion tile first, you are supposed to draw AGAIN to see if it's damage from a bounce, miss, or ANOTHER explosion that wipes out the cannon). Also, the Mighty Cannon, like the archers, moves or fires, it doesn't move and fire on one turn. Right?
The Ogre has an interesting way of working where each damage hit gives him one less card. I thought perhaps that meant discard one card from the Ogre deck each time he takes damage. But that would kill the odds, so I would think a better way would be just drawing one less card on the Ogre's turn (draw 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then if he gets hit one more time he dies).
I see that the Skull tiles can fit into the spare slots on the unit platform, but nobody really has a set way of doing them. The individual figure placement on each unit platform is another area you can do what you want, although the instructions tell you to put them in certain formations.
But the EU dice seem a lot cooler and more useful. You could certainly use HQ standard dice, where you count only Black Shields for defense, and consider the White Shields to be "misses" (blanks).