"Battle Masters Imperial vs Chaos" Topic

For an AAR of our Battle Masters game, part of our Reindeer Wars 2024 Festival of gaming check
link

Those look great! Do you use any rule variants in your Battlemasters games?

Wow, those are impressive.

I was wondering about rule variants as well, since the core game is very luck-based, with random activations. I've worked out some alternatives of my own to allow some better tactical/strategic thinking opportunities for the game, by dealing the activation cards out as a hand and letting the player choose which one to play and in what order. So you can get a bit of planning in the mix, while still being dependent on some card luck (sort of like Command & Colors type games).

Wow! Beautiful brush work. It's really fun to see this old miniatures boardgames still being played, still being enjoyed, decades after it went OOP. Thanks for sharing. Cheers!

Thanks to Fitz on his fine reporting and for the excellent pics he took during our gaming yesterday, as it was a bit darker at the Nerd Bar than at our usual haunts – his photos turned out great!

BigfootLover and Parzival, thank you for your comments, and we just played with the standard rules, though I've gone back and forth using various/different activation tweaks also.

Thank you too Sarge, and you and the others might be interested to see some really sharp brushwork displayed on a Reddit site I just ran across last week -

reddit.com/r/Battlemasters

There's some great pics on this site above of Battle Masters still being played, and with super-painted units, awesome terrain, and some on bigger battlefield boards. Seeing some of the great stuff there, got me to start enhancing my bases again……

What I saw on the Reddit site was a lot of the guys have added more figs to each standard base, and in comparison mine looked…..'lonely'. What I've started to do is add rocks to my bases now, and it's helped to give them more visual contrast, and to help fill in the blank spaces with more scatter – and they look more populated I think now.

Do check out this Reddit website when you can, it's pretty inspiring!

My next Battle Masters goal is to get a larger mat made to fight out bigger battles on, with twice the units (from two sets) – might think of also trying the Reforged rules you'll find within the postings on the Reddit site too.

I've used two approaches.

The first was to separate the cards for both sides. The Empire player gets a hand of 5 of his own cards, the Chaos a hand of 7. Each turn choose one card from your hand. After the last card is played, draw a new hand.
However, this method means that there is always a UGOIGO status going on, so I'm less wild about it; especially as that really boosts the Empire (IRCC, they have fewer cards in the deck, so aren't meant to activate as often as the weaker Chaos troops can).

The other is slightly more complicated. Shuffle the deck as usual, then deal a hand to each player (5 to Empire, 7 to Chaos). On your turn you can play one of your own cards, and move and attack accordingly as per the standard rules, then draw a new card, OR you may play a card for the opponent, which gives you the choice of forcing the units shown to move and attack and then getting to play two cards of your own (after a redraw of one card) OR forcing the enemy units depicted to each roll a die— Blank: Unit does nothing. Skull: Unit moves and attacks as normal. Shield: Unit must retreat backwards one hex (which could force impeding allies to move aside, too). The latter enemy card play option does not grant the ability to play two cards afterwards.
When done, draw a card to replace any played so that your hand is full.
The "all forces" cards still force a reshuffle of the deck.
All other rules remain the same.

Where did you get the map printed?

I've finished up adding the rocks to all the Battle Massters bases, and think you might enjoy seeing some of the results here -

Augustus, I got the fleece mat printed at Contrado, out of the UK.