Jim Long
Red Juggernaut, Inc.
2 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 60 - 90 mins
Suggested Ages: 12 and up (I think you can get away with younger)
I like game expansions. Some games desperately need them. Try playing Warcraft: The Board Game without the expansion I dare you. Others play better without them. Alhambra comes to mind as a great self contained game that plays perfectly well without the need for any of the multiple expansions that were released for it. Many games that I enjoy seem to lend themselves well to being expanded. I find these are often text based card games. Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords heavily dependent on text based card, it also used variable valued tiles and was prime for more. Simply a pile of new tiles would have made a fine expansion to Battue but there are many changes and additions to game play added in the slip cover box of Walls of Tarsos aimed at changing the gameplay. The purpose of the expansion seems clear. The 13 new loot cards 8 new event cards and 29 new tiles all nudge players to play a more defensive strategy to hold on to the tiles that they control. To go along with this many of the Loot and Event cards are geared toward taking control of tiles away from other players. All of this is gives the game a resource management aspect that was not really there in Storm of the Horse Lords.
Tiles
Let’s start with most noticeable addition to the game, the 16 new wall tiles. The border of Tarsos was previously protected by a printed on wall that players would first need to assault. All sides side were fortified by 2 Walls surrounding a gate and a tower on each corner. The defense and reward for conquering the printed wall sections were the same on all sides. Wall tiles in this expansion replace the printed on outer wall. For the most part all the walls and gates are still similar to each other except for the occasional unguarded secret entrance to a wall section that has no defense. The major addition added by the wall tiles is in the towers. The towers are very well fortified, having a defense of seven, but with this risk comes a new reward of special abilities given by the towers. Icons depicting one of four different abilities granted to the controlling player of the tower. These special abilities can be very strong and can easily lead to PVP confrontation especially the Signal Fire which adds one extra recruit when a player rolls for reinforcements.
The 13 additional city tiles in Walls of Tarsos are not without their own new surprises. The city, which comes in the shapes of the smaller common tiles from Storm of the Horse Lords, adds several new elements to the game. The only dangerous one is an automatic lose of troop icon. This picture of a crossed out horseman will cause a player to lose one troop right away when they explore a tile. This adds an element of danger to the game that I really did not feel was in the base game. It also may make taking over an enemy controlled tile more inviting then risking exploring an unknown section of the city. My favorite added ability is Adjunct ability. Two tiles in the game now have a special ability of being worth 5 extra victory points at the end of the game if you control this tile and its corresponding tile. For example if you control the adjunct of Jupiter and the temple of Jupiter you will get five victory points at the end of the game in addition to the victory points already provided by these tiles. The rules also show that there are tiles that will allow a player to draw an extra loot card at the beginning of their turn or skip their turn in order to draw three event cards. I don’t remember seeing either of these come up in game play and I cannot find either such tile as I am going through the components now even though I counted and all the tiles are here. ??? Either way all of these add a welcome variation to the game that make exploration more interesting and also add to the worth of tiles making players want to leave troop behind to defend them and possible reach out and take tiles controlled by other players. An unfortunately aspect of the new interior tiles however is that Red Juggernaut decided to shade them a slightly lighter shade of tan then the original tiles. This makes them identifiable during game play and was done in an effort to reduce randomness. I don’t care for this because I really liked the randomness of exploring the tiles, especially with the added danger in the expansion. It is not really as noticeable or as much of a detractor from the exploration experience as it sounds. I had felt that the overly random aspect of Storm of the Horse Lords had come from the powerful dice and highly variable event cards.
Cards
Speaking of the cards there are several new Loot and Event cards added to the game. Of the thirteen loot cards eight of them fall right in line with the cards from Storm of the Horse Lords doing such things as canceling event cards, and preventing your opponent form retreating. The Loot cards that really stick out are the Enchanted Items. The Enchanted items are five loot cards in the expansion that have a city section written on it. After drawing one of these cards a player may play this card into their war chest at the end of a turn in which they control this city section. This leads to objective based game play that will cause players to begin searching for certain size tiles and once again encourage player vs player combat. I really like what these cards added to the game and wish there were more of them.
In Storm of the Horse Lords I thought there was a problem with the event cards swinging heavily between very good for the person drawing to kind of bad for the person drawing. Well the eight event cards in the expansion five of them are pretty tame. Things like everyone pass your hand of loot card to the left and the exploring player rolling to see if he loses or gains a few troops/loot cards. The other three however are devastating to the lead player. Two of the card allow the exploring player to gain control of an army of 6 neutral warriors, new figures included in the expansion, started them in an opponent’s controlled section then fight for control. If the player controlling the neutral party wins then the tile becomes uncontrolled and they may move the army to an adjacent controlled hex and continue battling. This obviously can be very bad for the controlling player but the focus of this expansion does seem to be area control so it makes sense. A player in Walls of Tarsos is going to need to leave troops on their more valuable tiles and tiles with abilities to prevent offensives such as this instead of forming two massive hordes and grabbing as many city sections as they can that seemed to work well in the base game.
Points of Interest:
- Lots of extra tiles. In a game where you are creating a different board each time with tiles being left over there really is no such thing as too many tiles.
- Shift of Strategy: Gather a couple large hordes and ransacking the city of Tarsos was great fun in the base game. There were not many different strategies that could be pursued however. With the addition of the enchanted Items and tile abilities there seems to be more strategy in trying to hold on to the tiles that you explore instead of just grabbing the loot cards and moving on.
- New Abilities: Part to the point above but still deserving their own spot are the new abilities of the tiles. Particularly the towers. Even though there is no rule stating that a player must start their horde on the side of the board closest to them this is almost certainly going to happen anyway. So the towers kind of give each player unique ability toward the beginning of the game, but carful if you get a good one because you are going to have to hold on to it.
Points of Caution:
- Marked cards and tiles: As I said above the tiles in the expansion were colored slightly different from the original game to reduce randomness. I really didn’t care for this. Now there are way too many tiles in the game for me to remember exactly what may still be left unrevealed or exactly what tiles are left to be revealed but I still didn’t like them being recognizable. The cards are also slightly off color from the original and cut slightly different but this was not nearly as noticeable as the city tiles as I had to look pretty closely to tell the difference.
- Large amount of Randomness: The card draws and die rolls in the game still seem very dependent on luck. I was hoping for more basic loot cards that would give bonus to attack and more so to defense to offset some of the luck of the die rolls. The card draws still swing wildly between good and bad. I hopefully someone on BGG will come up with “themed” decks for the event and loot deck to customize gameplay before hand.
Overall:
Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords is a game that I very much enjoy and was still being pulled off the shelf before I got this expansion. I think the base game is an excellent gateway game because of its great looking component, easy rules, and interesting game play. This expansion takes game play a step further without adding much complexity. All of the additions offered in Battue: Walls of Tarsos are sure to extend my interest in the game and I look forward to changes that may come in the future. I particular liked the added emphasis put on controlling certain tiles for either their ability or for scoring bonus victory points. This really added a nice depth to the game. If you enjoyed the base game then picking up this expansion is almost no brainer. I’m not sure that enough changes are added to make this a mandatory expansion but it is certainly a very good expansion. The amount of components and addition to game play is great for the price. However, If you did not enjoy Storm of the Horse Lords then this expansion is not going to do much for you. There is still a very high level of randomness that may scare off many gamers.
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