Cards

Having redesigned Battlelore's combat rules, I then ran into another problem. The areas of Battlelore that I wished to retain - the command rules and the lore rules - both relied on cards that didn't fit in with the redesigned combat rules. So all the cards need to be redone as well!

The cards have been designed using Nandeck, which is a rather useful bit of kit for anyone designing their own games.

First up, the command cards. I didn't need to do much work here. The main change is that as I no longer have troops defined by banner colour, the cards that order troops by banner colour are redundant. Instead, I added Deployment cards. Some units are not deployed on the board at the start of the game - either due to the unit type (e.g. Deity, Lurkers), due to stratagem cards (more on them later) or due to scenario limitations. The Deployment card allows these units to be placed on the board.

An example of a command card

I have made the command cards dual use - they also function as event cards. At the beginning of the player's turn, one command card is drawn and the event is resolved. Some command cards have no events, most just modify the score on the weather table (more on the weather rules later). A few cards have more interesting effects. The event portion of the card is ignored in other circumstances. I have shamelessly stolen this mechanic from Combat Commander: Pacific, a game which I love.

Slightly more work went into the lore cards. I wanted to expand the number of lore decks available from the four in the basic Battlelore game. This would give certain characters and races a different set of powers, helping to further differentiate between different armies and adding more flavour to the game without adding complexity. And as the lore cards often effect combat, most of them had to be amended as well.

An example of a lore card

I have only completed the four basic lore decks - Warrior, Sorcery, Stealth and Priest. Other decks in the works include: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Rune, Vampire, Necromancy, Demon, Illusion, Forest, Beast Master, Death, Assassin, Master Baker (for the Halflings!), Ice, Lore Mastery, Lycanthropy and Drum Lore!

I just noticed an error in the above card - the duration should be "One Turn" rather than "Immediate". Oh well, I knew this was going to be the first draft.

The four basic lore decks all have 13 cards. The other lore decks probably won't have as many - I'm looking at a minimum of 7 cards and always making it an odd number. This would be so that 1 card can be discarded at random and the rest of the deck shared between the armies if both armies have a unit capable of using that particular lore deck. Most of those additional decks have been written up, I just need to design the cards themselves.