I have only played one or two games with the optional rules and yes they do make some difference.

In terms of variety, just compare the two base games. That is a fairer comparison. Battlelore still has quite a bit more variety in its troops.

With the smaller sculpts in such bendy plastic, I find the detail in the BOW sculpts to be muddied. But this is a personal opinion of course.

I agree that the personal choice of the poster will dictate whether he wants fantasy or book-driven medieval and that the games do not fullfill the same purpose. Ultimately both are good choices. I suppose we both just know which one we'd choose already that's all.

Cheers,

Ben.

Boromir_and_kermit said:

Hey, some discussion on here! 

I think you both have made great points on both sides.  I'm a huge fan of both systems.  I have only played the core games of both, however.  And, in this sense I think Westeros wins out because of the greater variety of scenarios.  The Battlelore scenarios from the core game did a good job of teaching the game as you progress through the scenarios, but by the last scenario I thought, really, that's it?  I played the last few scenarios several more times.  Obviously, having the expansions with extra troops and creatures be more available would have fixed this problem.  And this was before Battlelore was sold to FFG and the Creatures were repackaged, etc.

I always enjoyed BL, but I felt like the core scenarios just didn't have enough variety to keep me interested, specifically because of the VP's being almost always purely unit elimination.  At the time, I went to BGG to find out more and was surprised that there was no expansion that added more of my favorite element, the lore cards.  I thought the spells were one of the most interesting parts of the game and the cards were a pleasure to admire and play. 

Eventually, I got turned off by the fact that all the "best" expansions, at least as declared by the fans on BGG, were the ones, like 100 Years War, that were out of print and being re-sold for insane prices.  I was borrowing the game from a friend and he only had the Epic Expansion, which also didn't seem all that exciting without new units and/or Lore.  So I returned the game and basically watched the prices of the out of print game skyrocket until Westeros came along. 

The first thing I noticed about Westeros was that I liked the gritty, realistic style slightly more than Battlelore's cartoony style, although I love both and will play either game anytime.  Also, I had recently read the Ice and Fire series, so I loved seeing the familiar names and cool abilities of the Commanders.  It was serendipitous, to say the least. 

For me, I'm glad that both games exist and I'm happy to see that Battlelore has had more fantasy elements added, as that was always my favorite part.  They really are different games.  Battlelore is a grand-scale medieval battle, so the sections and fog of war make sense, although they can be limiting in terms of scenario diversity.  On the other hand, Westeros represents skirmishes and the two hex command range is just shouting distance. 

Both games also have their drawbacks and Westeros in particular has suffered from an amazingly poor editing job in the Rules, Battle Plans and several of the cards.  I mean seriously, half the battle plans have errors and the rulebook has a huge list of errata.  Just how many screw-ups can one game have?  I'm ready for my replacement parts, FFG.

To be fair for any new comers who are thinking of buying into the game though, many of the mistakes are things like "instead of page 24 it should say page 25" which is more them not updating the reference when the page layout changed. Or things like a character having an improper title. Many of them only someone really combing through would even notice.

And the FAQ is updated now so that's nice for those few major things that did slip though. I think the numbers of those weren't that high.

The actual misprint section of the FAQ is only two pages long and the second page is only a little over half full.

I've been very pleased with how civil this thread is. I know sometimes the Westeros/BattleLore divide can become heated. It's silly we all like the same thing just in slightly different flavors.

Also KenToad... I've been trying to generate some more conversation on here since I arrived. I call on all of you Westeros Bannermen to help me out! :)