Birthday Shopping: Battles of Westeros

Having a day off today, I hit Milsims to exchange some of my birthday money for games. I had two things on my shopping list - Battles of Westeros and Ex Illis. I decided that I wouldn't bother with Ex Illis just yet, mostly because with the Island of Blood box I've got more than enough little plastic men to make fight for the moment.

So that just left Battle of Westeros. The combination of BattleLore and A Game of Thrones made this one game that I simply had to possess. So I very quickly tracked down the box. I also grabbed a copy of the Wardens of the West, which is the first expansion pack. I wasn't going to get the expansion pack until I decided if I liked the core game or not, but it was such a reasonable deal that I figured what the hell.

Cracking open the box revealed a stack of tokens to punch and models to base. It's like the perfect christmas present - something that you open and get to spend the rest of the day putting together and getting ready.

I'm assuming that one of the ways Fantasy Flight has tried to save some money on the production of the game is to not pre-base the models. I had to push each figure onto it's appropriate base which took me most of the evening. I was happy to do that sort of work, especially if it meant they could produce the figures with the detail they have. But I'm sure it would turn some people off.

I also ended up with one extra Lannister heavy infantry figure, and two spare bases. So that was nice to discover.

One of the very nice things about the BattleLore base set was that the box had dividers to store all of the components. Unfortunately, Battles of Westeros just divided the box into three sections. I sorted all the tokens into snap lock bags to make setup easier, but I'm not quite sure how to store the cards without damaging them.

There was so much going on with the base set that I haven't even had a chance to open the Wardens of the West yet, so I've still got that to look forward to!