In conjunction with the new release of Lizardmen, Games Workshop has released 2 new digital only supplements called Warhammer Battlefields. One is called Border Wars and one Lustria. These are mini-campaigns for 2 players. I thought we could use this space to talk about the Lustria product. Have any of you got it? What do you think? I myself bought it and have read it through, it's a very fun little campaign with some nifty ideas. The backstory as such is that an opposing force is mustering an exploration into Lustria to steal treasures and the Lizardmen is trying to repel the invasion. The app/book includes an interactive campaign tracker where you keep track of things in the campaign. You start with each player entering his race and give his General 10 points distributed over 3 skills: Guile, Planning, persuasion. No skill can have more than 5 pts and no less than 1. Each race has a 1+ bonus to one of the skills. These skills will be called for at different points in the campaign. The campaign takes place over 3 different engagements, I have only read the first one as I don't want to spoil the surprise of what's happening further down the line of the campaign. In each engagement you are given a scenario told to you of what's happening. Then each player can secretly chose 1 of several listed strategies. You then compare the chosen strategies on a matrix and the result will tell you what scenario to play and what special rules takes place. It also tells you what will happen after the battle is fought. I'll give you a quick rundown of the first scenario as I started playing the campaign yesterday against Beastmen. The first engagement takes place as the Beastmen is landing on the coastline of Lustria and a Lizardmen scouting party is spotting them. We then got to chose our strategy. My options included, try an ambush, wait for reinforcements, wait for nightfall, full on charge, etc. I chose to try to make an ambush as the beastmen wandered into the jungle. My opponent chose to flank me. We compared our result on the matrix and got this result. We were to roll off against each others planning skill. 1D6 + planning. And the outcome decided the scenario. The beastmen player won as he had 6 in in planning (5 +1 race bonus), the resulting scenario was standard battleline with the following exceptions: -The beastmen player had to divide his army in two parts. 1 to be deployed as normal and one to act as a flanking force. They would arrive on a pre-chosen flank at the start of the beastman players turn on a roll of his planning value or less. -We had to roll a D6 for all unit on 1-3 they would not be deployed but arrive as reserves -The lizardmen only got 75% of the total points value (we played at 2400) -The Lizardmen got to chose one perk from a long list. This list includes a lot of exciting stuff. Like trying to assassinate the enemy warlord before game starts. Or spreading propaganda lowering the enemys LD, or as I choose: drinking a magic potion which gave a D3 units +1 on random characteristic. The battle that followed was great fun and very different. I loved the narrative it told. The Lizardmen managed despite the odds to drive back the beastmen to their boats. Now when we continue the campaign the beastmen must try to storm the beach again (we play the first engagement again) but this time I'm sure we will try different strategies and get a completely different battle! I frankly love this product, it's a great value for its asking price (55 SEK, roughly 5€ ), and it adds great narrative and variety to your games. Perfect if you have a buddy you play with regularly. It has gotten me worked up to build some lustrian jungle terrain. Only real downside I can see to it, is that it's IOs only. It's made with the iBooks tool and have a lot of interactivity built into it (which is great) but it probably makes it hard to adapt to different platforms. Also this is the kind of stuff I would love to see in the WD. All those things that used to be in WD have now moved to the digital store it seem. All in all I think this is a great step for GW and I hope they make for more supplements like this. I will surely buy the Border Wars version as well.
This sounds really cool, shame I don't really have iOS (or anything that appears to be able to support e-books). It reminds me somewhat of the Lustria campaign book from a few years back. Are there any similarities? I really enjoyed the new environmental rules it introduced, as well as the 'events' chart.
I have the old Lustria book as well and there are some similarities. Not anything major as the loose formations of the lustria book. But there are rules for jungle terrain: -Jungle forests are impassible terrain all units except skirmishers who treats it as dangerous terrain. -Jungle Rivers are dangerous terrain. If Jungle rules applies, at start of each turn you have to roll on an event table (3D6) to see what happens. Soem examples: -Stifling Humidity: Units with heavy armour cannot run this turn and get -1 to charge range. -Jungle Haze: The range of all spells and missile weapons is halved this turn -Native Guide: One Unit can treat Jungle Terrain and Jungle Rivers as clear terrain this turn EDIT: Heres a semi battle report I made of the game. Click on the first pic to read the comments. http://www.flickr.com/photos/71779159@N05/sets/72157634929348229/
I'd buy this in a heartbeat... If it was on Android. But apparently GW doesn't want my money by continuing to publish apple only digital products.
It is a real shame that GW won't relase this cross platform. I would buy it in a heartbeat as well if it were. Is it also limited to the iPad like the other digital items or is this one compatible with the iPhone? On a slightly different note, I find it interesting that one company who highly over values it's products is so tighly binding its self to another company that highly over values it's products.
I'd love to pick this up but the only ios device I have is my phone, we really need an equivalent to ibooks on Android which allows all the interactive elements. (If there is one please let me know as I am not aware of it).