{"id":2372,"date":"2013-11-23T11:32:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T11:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2013-11-23T11:34:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T11:34:39","slug":"premature-review-of-battle-troll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=2372","title":{"rendered":"Premature Review of Battle Troll"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I mentioned in my Fall In post that I had played Battle Troll<\/em> with Howard Whitehouse on Saturday evening. \u00a0At a friend’s urging, I wrote a short review. \u00a0I call it a premature review, because I haven’t played it enough yet to have a valid opinion.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I liked it.\u00a0 There are a number of interesting ideas for games involving small numbers of figures.\u00a0 I’m not sure how it would scale.\u00a0 I’ve only played it once, so I can’t provide a valid review, but here are my initial thoughts.\u00a0 I’ve provided a little more detail in case you wanted to include any of it in your blog.\u00a0 If you don’t want to use it, let me know, because I might use it on my blog then.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Discussion:<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0First, it was fun to play with Howard.\u00a0 He’s a funny guy, and we probably would have had fun reading insurance forms.\u00a0 The book, like all Howard’s books, is fun to read because of the humorous quips he throws in from time to time.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0We played with four figures on each side, two heroes and two huskarls.\u00a0 Mark Ryan and Howard were the bad guys.\u00a0 Lee Howard from Blue Moon and I were the good guys.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Activation is card based.\u00a0 Some folks have applied interesting twists to the original TSAF<\/em> method.\u00a0 A pitfall of card-based activation is that sometimes a lot of folks are standing around watching one person do stuff.\u00a0 In Battles by GASLIGHT<\/em> we use double random activation to address this.\u00a0 Muskets and Tomahawks<\/em> has modified the card system so that regulars go less frequently, but do more when they activate, while irregulars go more often, but do less when they activate.\u00a0 In Battle Troll<\/em>, there are two types of activation.\u00a0 One lets everyone on a side act.\u00a0 The other lets the player pick a hero, then that hero and anyone within two inches of him moves.\u00a0 In a larger game, I can imagine that the “everyone goes” card might take a long time to resolve and so would make the other side feel disconnected.\u00a0 In our first run through the deck, our side got a string of cards, so we approached, threw javelins, and then closed into melee while Howard and Mark stood there drooling on themselves.\u00a0 Most of the rest of the game, the card draws were pretty even, but this first turn really favored our side.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I didn’t really understand how the missile combat was working when I threw some javelins.\u00a0 Howard told us what to roll, and we did it.\u00a0 The results seemed reasonable.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Melee is where I think these rules really came into their own and had some nice features.\u00a0 I really liked the paper-scissors-rock feel of melee.\u00a0 I’ve seen this done for jousting games, but never general melee.\u00a0 The attacker chooses one of five attack cards, while the defender chooses one of five defense cards.\u00a0 Some attacks provide bonuses if you are using the correct weapon (e.g., axes get a bonus on “slice” attacks).\u00a0 The attack card and the defense card are then flipped over and cross referenced on a small table.\u00a0 This cross referencing tells you how many dice the attacker rolls and how many the defender rolls.\u00a0 The other interesting aspect of the melee is that these are sort of opposed die rolls.\u00a0 You compare the highest die rolled on each side.\u00a0 That means that someone with five dice who rolls all low numbers, can be defeated by someone who rolls a six on the one die he gets to roll.\u00a0 The probability is low, but it’s still possible.\u00a0 I liked that.\u00a0 I also liked the way that the difference between the high die and the low die was a modifier in computing damage.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The other nuance of this card-based melee system is that figures other than heroes don’t get to choose an attack or defense card.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, they draw one randomly from the deck.\u00a0 One of the five cards is an accident card, which you would never intentionally draw, but huskarls and karls may draw them randomly.\u00a0 These can cause the figure to drop his weapon,\u00a0cutting off his own toe, fall on his dagger, or other humorous events.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Finally the impact of\u00a0minor wounds was really interesting.\u00a0 Depending on how wounded you are, you “offer” your opponent the opportunity to make you perform some number of re-rolls.\u00a0 This\u00a0could be anything from 1 re-roll for a slight wound to more re-rolls for more serious wounds.\u00a0\u00a0 These re-rolls are cumulative.\u00a0 At one point, I was able to make Mark re-roll five times, which was great, because he kept rolling fives and sixes.\u00a0 This is a nice way to handle the impact of wounds.\u00a0\u00a0It also make you think a little about whether you wanted to have the player re-roll a die, because he might roll better!
\nFrom reading the book, it appears that karls can suffer morale failure from being pushed back several times or other things.\u00a0 As we had no karls, our game had no morale effects, so I can’t speak to how well that worked.<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I think for a one- to two-hour game in a pub or on the kitchen table, these are really nice rules.\u00a0 We only had eight figures on the table, but I’d bet it would be fine with as many as a couple dozen on a side if most of them were karls.\u00a0 From limited use of both these and Songs of Blades and Heroes<\/em>, I think I like Battle Troll<\/em> a little better.\u00a0 I haven’t played enough Saga<\/em> to form an opinion.\u00a0 I can see myself playing more Battle Troll in the future, but I’ll need to get a handful more figures to supplement the Vikings from a Tallahassee club project from eons ago.<\/div>\n