Them against them

A game of BattleLore in progress. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Battlelore with magic this week as we finally began to get to grips with the "Lore" aspect. A meaty-feeling and fairly balanced scenario without the dwarfs or goblins but with plenty of other units and the opportunity to "cast spells". We both had the aim of gaining six banners and the first play through saw Crabro wiping out my right flank and eventually winning 6-4. This week it was his turn to carefully plot an attack on one of his own units. Last week it was me. It may be our age, but the lust to wipe out a single-piece unit sees the blood-lust cast judgement out the window sometimes. Mind you, the only thing that distinguishes one side from another is whether the banners are vertical

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

or horizontal so I think it's easily done.

After a pleasant lunch chatting, and eating some very tasty bread with our cuppas we returned to play the opposite sides of the scenario. For some time I thought that it was going to be two wins for Crabro as I failed time and again to finish off his units and he managed to move the remains back and "hide" them behind healthier units. Eventually he was poised for the win on five banners as I struggled up to four, then finally a sensible and effective use of a spell turned the tables as "Creeping Doom" took out four of the weakened units in one fell swoop leaving the score at 8-5 in my favour.

Bone die found at Cantonment Clinch (1823–1834), an American fort used in the American Civil War by both Confederate and Union forces at separate times. The fort was also used in 1898 in the Spanish-American War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The addition of lore had seemed fairly natural and painless with steady build ups of lore enabling occasional plays of use low cost cards like "Eagle Eye" giving extra dice when needed and a couple of frustrating denial spells putting a stop to our magic at times. On the whole I felt that the low cost spells with definite but small gains were better to have than saving up lore tokens for things like Fireball and Creeping Doom with the benefit of possible large gains but still requiring a lot of luck, however, the former gained me an instant banner in the first play and the latter definitely got me the win in the second so perhaps my judgement is too hasty. More magic next time anyway.

At one point during the first game I heard myself, rattling dice in hand, say "Them against them" and it suddenly summed up the joy of this game for me, taking me back to my big raw ACW miniatures games of youth with our huge armies of Airfix OO/HO scale figures (some crudely adapted to Civil War from other sets) and some homemade rules using a ruler and a D6. Pointing to a particular regiment (with their miniature home-made flags) and then at an enemy unit while repeating that magic phrase.

Gaming doesn't get more fun than that for me. "Dudes on maps" as Grumbletweezer sums this kind of game up. Dudes on maps with dice that is. Dudes on maps with dice AND cards. Geek heaven.

This tough scenario didn't leave us time to get into Trajan again so we finished off with a game of Cribbage. I was tired by then and my brain had turned to pudding. Not surprisingly Crabro won (and would have done anyway) but the margin was one of which to be truly ashamed.

I just remembered, and should mention, that it was Crabro who generously pointed out that there was a slightly better (for me) place to target the "Creeping Doom" spell. While this wouldn't have affected the win, I believe it did contribute to the size of the score, and this generosity deserves to be mentioned.

Throughout, actually, a spirit of fair play was noticeable despite frequently backfiring on whichever of us was being generous at the time.