BattleLore

by Fantasy Flight Games

Product Features

• Over 200 highly detailed miniatures
• History meets fantasy in a world of adventure and epic battles
• Age: 10+
• Number of Players: 2
• Playing Time: 60 min

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 11.8 x 11.8 inches ; 6.1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000LZI2S6
• Item model number: BL01
• Manufacturer recommended age: 10 years and up
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,301 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

In a world that bridges history and fantasy, BattleLore puts you in command of a vast array of miniature troops on the battlefields of Medieval Europe. Assembling a group of wizened old Lore Masters - men of faith and magic, tricksters and grizzled warriors - is only one of many challenges you'll face. The proper deployment of troops, careful choice of allies, timely spell-casting and good old fashioned treachery are all important skills to master. The BattleLore Base Set includes hundreds of highly-detailed plastic miniatures, a large board and terrain overlay tiles, the battle dice and command cards that form the backbone of the Command and Colors system, a book of scenarios including basic scenarios and advanced scenarios for experienced players, and much more.

Product Description

In a world that bridges history and fantasy, BattleLore puts you in command of a vast array of miniature troops on the battlefields of Medieval Europe. Players are introduced to the card-driven BattleLore game system through historical armies of men, but those troops are quickly supplemented with mercenary armies of fierce dwarves and goblin hordes and powerful, mythical creatures. Soon players will be employing Lore Masters - men of faith and magic, tricksters, and grizzled warriors - to lead their armies to victory on the fields of battle!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just Short of Perfection, January 24, 2007

By 

Tracy R. Hickman "trhickman" (South Jordan, Utah, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BattleLore (Toy)

In my dreams, I imagine a game ... it is filled with fantasy magic, monsters and battle, overflowing with toy figures to push around an a brilliantly artistic, colorful board, adaptable so that I can play different scenarios or maybe even design my own, easy to teach to my dubious friends and even easier to play.

BattleLore, it turns out, is the promise of my dream - but not quite its fulfillment. Now, I believe Richard Borg to be a game design genius and I sincerely like the folks over at `Days of Wonder' but their products tend to leave me with a heightened state of ambivalence. The quality of their game box and its color printing are absolutely superb - but their choice of cover art is pedestrian - especially compared to the other components in their box. Their rules are gorgeously printed in full color replete with illustrations - but the organization of their rules makes the sequence unclear and overly complicates the simplest of concepts and tasks. As a former game designer, I found a number of brilliantly conceived linkages built into the rules to allow for unlimited expansion ... and yet these feel like abrupt dead ends as they are portrayed in the written rules. Such problems made it difficult to grasp the overall flow of the game and how its component rules fit together into a working system of play. Once we understood the rules, playing the game was easy and fun - but getting to that point was work and difficult.

Then there were the absolutely incredible number of fantasy figures included in the game - knights, archers and warriors of various strengths and kinds - that seemed literally to overflow the box and needed no assembly in order to play the game. That was wonderful but once again instantly offset by the small number of fantastic creatures included for play. Moreover, these were limited to dwarves, goblins and a single humungous spider. The iconic staple of epic fantasy - the dragon - was nowhere represented or even hinted at.

Perhaps this is the aspect of BattleLore which, for me, was the most disappointing - lack of fantasy context. The two opposing sides in the game are - French and English. I don't know about you but I have visited both France and England and while both were fantastic, I didn't count them as fantasy trips. The very first scenario in the game is called Agincourt, October 25th, 1415 under the leadership of the opposing Henry V and Charles d'Albret. Now for all you Shakespeare and Henry the Fifth fans, you may want to start your game with the St. Crispin's Day speech but I was leery. Was this game a fantasy game or a historical simulation game? It seems unable to decide.

All of this appears to be set in France - admittedly a France of the 13-1400s populated with some dwarves, goblins and one huge spider - but France nevertheless. This game proclaims on its cover `Epic Fantasy Adventures' and yet it contains only the barest of elements of what we think of as epic fantasy. This is my biggest problem with BattleLore; that it does not deliver the context of epic fantasy for which I had so earnestly hoped.

If you are looking for a fabulous design in a deceptively simple game with breathtaking tabletop displays ... then you will find this game well worth the price. It is achingly close to the game of my dreams ... but also achingly just short of perfection.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best, March 12, 2007

By 

Charles Bame (Flagstaff, Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BattleLore (Toy)

While the chance element is rather high in this game, it is one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a long time. There are other games filled with detail if that's what you want. This one is just plain fun. It features one of the clearest rulebooks I've ever read. The replay potential of the various scenarios seems endless. The upcoming expansions will add more fantasy elements, which I will purchase, but the basic games is just fine the way it is, in my opinion.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Value and Hours of Available Gameplay Out of the Box, January 26, 2010

By 

Bryce R. Christiansen "Bryce Christiansen" (Mesa, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: BattleLore (Toy)

My story for finding and eventually deciding to buy this game started over 15 years ago with another light war game called Battlemasters from Milton Bradley. I opened the box at my Grandma's for Christmas and pulled out a giant mat that was about 4 1/2 by 5 feet. The game consisted of miniature knights, archers, wolves, goblins, a canon and ogre battling it out using essentially just cards and dice. Over the years my brother, friends and I got good use out of it, slowly lost pieces, and eventually left the game in a bedroom closet back at the parents. However, the game always stood to amaze me. Any time we pulled out that rug size mat, anyone who walked by in the house would notice, watch, and be curious.

About a month ago I walked into our local game store and saw the great artwork on Battlelore's box and immediately was drawn to it. I flipped the box around and noticed the familiar hexagon shapes and plastic figurines. At that moment, I immediately had memories come shooting back from the days growing up playing Battlemasters, this looked like a slimmed down version of the same thing in concept. I came home and over the next week or so looked up reviews and videos demonstrating the game. Sure enough, it was very similar but had some very nice additions and improvements. After that I was hooked, bought the game, played two scenarios with an old friend of mine, got him hooked, and now he has bought a copy for himself.

As far as gameplay and general rules go, words can not accurately and efficiently explain the concept. I suggest searching "Battlelore board games with Scott" on youtube to see a very well thought out, but cheesy demonstration and explanation about the game.

If you are looking for a game that you can play with your kids, wife, husband, teenagers, or other adults, than this game can work at all levels satisfactorily. The game has an incredible amount of depth without requiring a day's time just to get through the rules. They essentially build up on the rules step by step through scenarios, each adding additional elements as desired. You therefore, learn as you go with this game. For example, the first scenario introduces a small army for both sides and introduces you to the combat, then from there you can add goblins, then dwarfs, then a creature, then lore, then a war council. Eventually, you can have a pretty diverse set of options to play with, yet the design is so well done you never get overwhelmed and therefore have to play every game looking up rules every turn. In fact, the rules are essentially laid out on cards and as you progress you just add additional cards as reference sheets to the rules.

The rule book is 80 pages but you can play your first game after reading less than half of it. 80 pages seems like a lot but this is mostly due to their excellent diagrams, examples, glossary and appendixes.

This game is designed to have great longevity and I don't see it going away any time soon. For starters, many people choose to paint the figures as a hobby and to add a nice touch to the look of the game. There are over 200 of them out of the box so this can be quite the task. Second, the game has lots of support and has several expansions for additional units, creatures, play systems, and options to increase the number of players.

Overall, it may seem that $[...] is a high price for a game, but afterwards you will see that the game easily provides more than enough in both design, pieces, and depth of game play to justify it.