BattleLore - Tips & Strategies

Don’t let your cavalry units get separated from your main forces unless you are routing the enemy. A classic beginner mistake in most wargames is to over-extend your front both in terms of penetration into enemy ranks and spreading across the field to thinly.

This notion is actually brilliantly captured in Battlelore through use of the supported units rule (See Jim’s Strategy below “Be Bold”).

You want to ensure that you have the opportunity to attack as much as possible, but don’t do so at the expense of having a valuable calvary unit do a follow through maneuver just to take out a lowly green flag unit…you will likely be able to deal with that unit at a later time.

Sometimes it pays dividends to reign in your horses (literally) and hold off on the follow up movements rather than plunging headfirst into the fray only to be cut off and cut down. Losing a blue flag cavalry unit while chasing down a green flag infantry unit is pretty much never a good trade-off.

Because mounted units generally have less individuals than infantry units (those horses are big!), they are actually someone easier to eliminate – you may need a better roll, but you need less of them. So be very aware of getting cut off and surrounded by pesky foot units. You will lose support, be unable to battle back, and get cut down by a propensity of dice.

Sometimes caution is the better part of valour.

Never underestimate the power of a bold unit!

For one, after your opponent attacks one of your bold units, your defending unit gets a free “battle back” attack if there is at least one man left standing. Since you can only order around 3 units per turn, free attacks are huge. Then there are the flag rolls and retreating. Being able to ignore a retreat against your bold units keeps you close to your opponent so you can use your next turn to attack rather than to just advance.

An example of a good bold formation is to put a red short sword unit in front, backed by two blue short sword units. The red unit will likely draw the attention of the attack, and can battle back with 4 die (note this formation would hurt the red unit if more than one flag was rolled). Then on your turn you can move the blue units up and destroy whatever was attacking you.

Board Games with Scott – Battlelore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq2lmtpLuuA

If you own Battles of Westeros, try playing the game with the 8-sided BoW dice. I know a lot of people disliked that change, but in our group we have found that it makes for a much more bloody an interesting game since the number of flags + lore results is reduced by a significant amount.

This house rule does unbalance most scenarios however, so it’s best used with Call to Arms only.

Here’s a simple house rule you may like: units who’s strength has been reduced by half (2 or less infantry figures remaining or 1 cavalry figure remaining) role one less die in combat (minimum of 1).