Thursday, 21 August 2008

Battlelore to Fantasy Flight?

Days of Wonder finally admitted what seemed to be increasingly obvious to their fans, they are not capable of supporting 3 big franchises. They have sold their fantasy battle game, Battlelore, to Fantasy Flight Games.

Here are some of my quick (and probably wrong) thoughts...

This is a good thing, Battlelore and Memoir '44 both suffered for additional resources. Battlelore, after an initial flurry of expansions seems to have leveled off and both Memoir '44 and Commands & Colors:Ancients getting more posted plays on BGG.

A little over a year ago I gave my thoughts on Battlelore and how it could cause issues with Memoir '44.

The reason why this is a good deal is that it will allow DoW to further develop the Memoir '44 line, their previous two releases being the Air Pack and the Bag (neither of which I purchased) and the lone announced release for Battlelore (the troll with the paper map) which I did not really want either.

Fantasy Flight will have to really start to flog this game to start recapturing it's glory, they need the Heroes expansion to come out this year (just before Christmas would be smart) and they need to start promoting the game again.


Why it may be bad is for another reason, Days of Wonder has created a Battlelore Adventures editor (link to the right) that I am hopeful but not positive that they will port over all the information.

This also makes me wonder if DoW will be around in two years, have the owners gotten bored and will they sell off their other products? Time will tell.

Sunday, 10 August 2008

Another day, another Descent...

I got a couple of people together Friday to play Descent: Journeys in the Dark on Friday night and it did not go well for them at all...

The adventure chosen was "Spoiled Brat", the fourth in the book, and in hindsight, may have been too tough for a group of three with 2 new players. They did ok getting out of the entrance, and they cleaned out the hallway before encountering the red rune locked door, so they turned around and headed back up to the top of the map. This is where things went bad, real bad...

Everything in that room was undying, and undying they were. I was hot with the dice and kept one poor sorceror around for 8 straight kill shots. This hosed them as it took 3 or 4 rounds to get out of that room. It was four rounds I used to summon a variety of creatures including the kobolds from the expansion. It worked out that I was paying 3 less for all my traps (one less/ master kobold and one less for being trapmaster).

The group did use some interesting tactics, heading to town to use the portals to avoid the clusters of monsters, but the sheer number of creatures I had on the board weakened them enough so that they could not survive the dragon.

I'm not dead yet!

I just have not had much to say. I am currently working on 2 things; first, my report on gaming at Waskesiu and lastly, playing Descent last night.