Retro Rerun Roots: Battle Masters

For those that don't know me, every Monday night, my friends and I get together for dinner and board games.  This week, I brought out my old copy of Battle Masters to bask in the deliciously over-sized glory of this ancient game.

We had to clear a lot of floor space to play this game.

For those that don't know, Battle Masters is a game that followed in the footsteps of Heroquest and Warhammer.  It was released jointly by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley, and features characters and combat systems similar to Hero Quest.  In terms of modern comparisons, I would deem it very similar in play style to Heroscape.  The key component of it is the needlessly huge battle map and oversized game pieces.  There was actually no reason to make the pieces this large, but it certainly gives the player a sense of scale and delight when playing the game.

Game Overview:

This is a 2 player strategy war game between the armies of chaos and presumably the armies of order or light or something.  You know the drill...  Humans on one side, orcs, goblins, beast men, etc. on the other side.  Also dark paladins or some such thing.

This is how and where I store my copy of Battle Masters.
The box doesn't close, so OMG DUST.

The gameplay is controlled by a set of cards that enables different groups of units to move.  Each unit moves and attacks on its turn.  Ranged units can either move or attack, and are great choices to put on top of the tower, that giant piece in the middle of the board.  Whoever is up there gets a +1 bonus on all attack and defense rolls, so it's really advantageous for ranged units.  Once a piece decides to attack another, the player rolls the unit's strength against the other unit's strength.  Skulls are hits and shields block those hits, similar to Heroquest, or games like Descent, Heroscape, X-wing Miniatures, etc.  Each unit has 3 hit points.  Once you've taken all 3 hits, that piece is removed.

Much like in modern games that are similar to this, you can choose to do all out battle where both players simply try to eliminate every piece of their opponent's army, or you can do various scenarios where start positions, capabilities, and objectives vary.  In general, I've always just done the all out combat.

Despite the fact that the game is extremely dependent on luck, there's something really thrilling about moving giant pieces over such a vast board and attacking.  The simple combat rules make it very accessible, and its easy to quickly explain the game to someone that is new to the game.  Relatively few loose tokens or pieces makes setup and cleanup surprisingly quick for such a big game.  Players looking for a challenge or a game that uses a lot of tactics should look elsewhere, but folks just looking to have a quick bit of fun will find this a quick pleasant diversion.

Strategy seems to involve running up to your enemies as quickly as possible and hitting them hard.  When your pieces get to go, and how well you hit your enemy, is completely dependent on luck, so even the best tactics will probably not get you much advantage.  Tactics that do exist involve positioning yourself so that your pieces are all mobile and can get to where they need to be.

Strategic Dorkability: Low
Fun Factor: Moderately High

Detailed Description:

There are 4 classes of units in the game:

• Foot soldiers
• Mounted units
• Ranged units
• Special units

Foot soldiers are basic grunts.  They are slow, and don't get as many opportunities to move or do anything special, but they're good in a fight.  The Chaos army has a huge number of Foot soldiers: 2 goblins, 2 orcs, 2 beast men, and 2 chaos warriors.  On the light side, there are only 3 Men-at-Arms.  So that's 8 foot soldiers on the chaos side to 3 on the light side.  The Men at arms are strength 3, but so are the orcs and beast men.  The chaos warriors fight at 4, while the goblins fight at 2, so it roughly balances out.

Ranged units fire 2 or 3 spaces away depending on the unit, and thus are great for helping another unit fight.  The chaos army is at a deficit here and has only 2 archer units at strength 2 while the light army has 2 archer units at strength 3 AND a crossbow unit at strength 3, with a range of 3, 1 more than the archers.

Mounted units typically move quickly and often, get many opportunities to fight, and can get special bonuses, like double moves and charges, that boost movement or attack power for that turn.  This is another area where the light side excels over the chaos side.  The chaos side has their Champions of Chaos, horseback mounted soldiers at strength 5, and 2 Wolf Riders at strength 2, but these are bested by the light side's Lord Knights, a single unit equivalent to the Champions of Chaos, and 3 Imperial Knight units, attacking at strength 4.

Ignoring the special units for a moment, in my experience, this creates a generally balanced game.  The Chaos army has slightly more units and moves than the light side, but the light side has superior units with better odds on the dice.  Typically, the light side has an advantage in the game, in my experience, but luck still drives most of the game.

One of my favorite things about the game, though, are the special units.  In the flow of the game, simply marching the other units up to each other and hitting each other is fun, but could easily become a bit samey-samey since they all fight the same way.  The special units add a bit of variety into the mix and add special moments of excitement, as you wait to see what will happen.

On the chaos side, you have the Ogre.  At first glance, he just seems to be another 4 strength foot soldier.  But then you notice that he has special combat cards.  Every time he takes a turn, instead of moving once and attacking once like every other unit, he instead moves 3 times and attacks 3 times!  However, the order in which you can do this is determined by a set of 6 cards: 3 move cards and 3 attack cards.  Every time the Ogre's turn comes up, you shuffle those cards and deal them out one by one.  This creates some exciting moments where the Ogre is a space or two away and you are hoping that the attack cards come up before the move cards get the Ogre to your Imperial Knights.  In addition to this powerful ability, there's also the fact that the Ogre has 6 hit points, unlike every other unit.  However, each point of damage reduces the number of cards you draw for him by 1, making him less and less effective at fighting as he soaks damage.

On the light side, you have the cannon.  This unit is a special ranged unit that can fire long distances.  You pick your target, then shuffle several circular disks that represent the path the cannon ball follows.  Each disk is flipped over to reveal the cannonball flying through the space, bouncing at that spot, or exploding at that spot.  A bounce does a point of damage to any unit at that location, while an explosion destroys anything at that spot and stops the cannonball from continuing.  But if the cannonball reaches its destination, the enemy target is completely destroyed.  You can even use the cannon to destroy the tower.  3 hits to the tower obliterates it into a pile of rubble.  To compensate for the power of the cannon, you might also misfire.  If the first piece you flip over is an explosion, you might hurt your cannon.

Conclusion:

There's not a lot of strategy or tactics to this game, but for being a fun game with moments of excitement and tension, it's a blast.  The huge pieces and game board make it a delight to experience and/or watch.  Frankly, the size is mostly a gimmick, intended to attract young boys of the 1990s to beg their parents for this game at Christmas.  It came out around the same time as other giant games like Fireball Island and Crash Canyon, so I imagine it was all about increasing the desirability with little regard for creating a quality game experience.  Nonetheless, it does what it meant to do quite well.  It's an exciting, simplistic dice fest with enough tactics and strategy to keep you from being completely bored.

This picture was taken moments before my utter demise.