Battlemasters Dice

[The Admiral]

I've just received my third set of 6 BM dice. 2 Small rounded EU sets and 1 large square US set. Unlike the HQ dice they are soooo durable. You just need to consider the two blanks as , and the single White Shield as .

[Maurice76]

I actually never liked the blanks . To me it always came across as "we're lacking inspiration for any kind of symbol to put on it to indicate a valid outcome". For the nerds among us, the blanks always feel like "null" to me instead of "zero".

[Kurgan]

So I had a closer look at the back of the box... those dice look different!

So the ones I was used to seeing are square and have the images painted on. This is the US standard. I think the EU standard (as shown on the box) are inscribed, have rounded corners and more closely resemble the HeroQuest dice (but plastic). The square ones are notorious for the images rubbing off (have to seal them with clear varnish, much as with our German colored dice).

I really want these inscribed ones instead, too bad they're so expensive! ($40 for a set of 5 including the overseas shipping).

[Pancho]

For that price you’d be better off buying a copy of the whole game. It would be more off course, but it’s also a great trove of period and size compatible figures.

Edit: I saw saw that you’ve just already bought it on another thread

[Kurgan]

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).

[Kurgan]

Doing a side by side comparison... I take it back about the Ogre Champion from BM... he's about the size of the Reaper Ogre Guards I'm using for HQ, so that's not so bad. He could be used for the "10 body point bad guy" thing, but good luck tracking down enough of them for that (I guess the rare reinforcements "Chaos Warband" pack released exclusively in Europe has 2 extra Ogres in it).

Manipulating some of the designs and then 3d printing them seems better than modifying the actual sets to add to HeroQuest, but that's my opinion...

[lestodante]

Kurgan, I have some of this Giant Ogres if you are interested.
Also, I've seen someone having a 3D print of the BM Ogre, printed in the same scale of the HQ Ogres. It was very cool but th ephoto was not perfect so I can't say anything about the quality of the print.

[Kurgan]

@Lestodante: Thank you but I'm okay. I have five "Giant Ogres" using the Reaper Bones figures, which I love a lot, which I've painted and glued to square bases for use in HQ. I also have a 3d printed "smaller" version of the Battlemasters Ogre which I also think looks great. Appreciate the offer!