Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
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Last week, my copy of BattleLore: Heroes arrived, so I trotted off to Randy's place last Thursday to play it. Unfortunately, our games of Space Hulk and ASL SK#2 took too long and so I didn't get a chance to try the new expansion.
However, on Friday I took my BattleLore game into Good Games Ballarat with the view to introducing it to one or two people so that one day I'd be able to play some of the more advanced scenarios with them. Nash turned up, and I talked him into a couple of games with me. (To be honest, it wasn't very hard to do so).
I've played a couple of games of Memoir '44 with Nash, so the basic concepts aren't unfamiliar to him, but BattleLore has quite a few tweaks, so I started with the first scenario: Agincourt. In which the English don't have Longbows. (It's a weapon type introduced later, but the first scenario doesn't have it).
(French to top, English to bottom)
As a result, the English are generally fated to lose Agincourt in this game. So, I took the command of the English and let Nash take the French. Of course, in my opening hand I had a Darken the Sky, so Nash was soon finding his heavy cavalry under attack with clouds of arrows darkening the sky. Both heavy cavalry units lost a figure and the right flank one was forced to retreat.
His cavalry charged again, but soon found itself in a great deal of trouble. I moved my medium infantry up to counter it, and although he was able to destroy on it its units, soon his cavalry had broken itself on my lines and I was able to take the two medals. Now it was going to be down to his infantry and medium cavalry, and his lines began to move up to meet mine.
As his medium cavalry outstripped his infantry, it came under concentrated attack, and was defeated. At this point, the score was 3 medals to 1 in my favour! One more and I'd take the battle!
With his infantry line now engaging my infantry and archers, the tide of battle began to turn. I was using "triangles" of units whenever I could - as was he - to make the units Bold and able to Battle Back, but his troops were far more effective than mine. Especially on my right flank, where soon three of my units were down to a single figure each!
The final rites of the battle occurred on that flank: Needing to destroy only three figures, he played an Forward card, activating 2 units in each area. This allowed him to outmaneuver me and attack my weaker units. Three units destroyed in one turn, and the victory was his - 4 medals to 3!
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