Today's review is of the 2005 release, Battleground Fantasy Warfare. For two players, it takes 60+ minutes.
Overview
Amass your units, place them strategically, give them orders wisely, and may the dice be in your favor! You win if you destroy all of your opponent's units first.
In this game, you first create an army (my term; I don't have the official rulebook). An army consists of units, each of which gets their own card with:
- an overhead view of the beings in it
- attributes to include health, strength, damage, movement, and courage
- a space for recording that unit's standing order (given by you at the start of the game, and can be changed throughout for a cost)
- special abilities (if any), often shown on the back of the card along with that unit's cost to include in your army (we played a 2000-pt game, and most of my units cost 170 or 270 points).
After choosing your army, you set it up on the table and give each unit a standing order (close [on enemy units], hold, and so on).
On your turn, you (simplistically):
- spend command actions (you get four per turn) and move your units (up to their movement speed, depending on their orders or other factors). Command actions can be used to change a unit's standing orders, draw a command card, or other things.
- perform any ranged attacks
- perform any courage checks
- combat
- perform any post-combat checks
For combat, you roll a number of dice equal to your participating unit's dice number, subtracting your attack value from your opponent's defense value to determine the number of dice that hit (in this game, you want lower numbers). Then you take the number of dice that hit and roll them again, subtracting your damage value from your opponent's toughness value to determine how much damage the opposing unit receives. Throughout, one command card can be used (per side) to provide various modifications. When the dust clears, decrement the opposing unit's health by the amount of damage it received (the cards can be written on with an erasable marker). Then it attacks back. Combat proceeds across all engaged units in this manner until all possible battles have been fought. Destroyed units are removed and your opponent takes their turn. Play continues until one side's units are defeated.
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| game in progress; image is mine |
I like this game; it is an economic alternative to miniatures wargaming. The rules seemed straightforward enough (though having an experienced friend both guide me through it and provide a helpful summary sheet made a world of difference). The company still produces decks for various factions, giving lots of options for all sorts of armies. The art is not the best, and the game takes a long time: set aside more than an hour for this one. That said, this is a solid offering overall.
Rating: B+
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