...and Tide of Iron is the Baby Daddy

For background information, check out my post from a couple of days ago, Battlelore is Pregnant.

Jormi Borced posted a lot of information about playing a beta copy of Battles of Westeros over on Heroscapers.com yesterday - which gives us some clues about BoW/Battlelore compatibility:

• 8 sided dice (Westeros) vs 6 sided dice (Battlelore)
• morale track/objective-based win conditions (Westeros) vs first to X flags win condition (Battlelore)
• individual order decks customized pre-game (Westeros) vs common order deck (Battlelore)
• command tokens/cards/back'n'forth impulse orders (Westeros) vs order cards & simple turn order (Battlelore)
• light on magic/creatures (Westeros) vs Lore/War Council/creatures (Battlelore)
• flanking/engagement rules (Westeros) vs... well, there isn't anything like that in Battlelore

In other words, Battles of Westeros is to Battlelore as Tide of Iron is to Memoir '44. (Comparison is NOT original to me - folks on the Geek said it first.)

Allow me to elucidate (and pat myself on the back for using a SAT-quality word!): Battles of Westeros is Battlelore infected by the FFG virus. The operative elements of the FFG virus are:

• oodles of theme
• scads of plastic minis
• the "let's add some more cool stuff" design ethic skating across the the line into "we've added so much that the game is bloated, difficult to play cleanly & requires a FAQ roughly the size of a phone book"

My speculation, BTW, proved correct. This will not be compatible with Battlelore & may well spell the end of continuing official support of the original system. My plea is that FFG finish out the Call to Arms decks to include the expansions & publish a Campaign Book like the wonderful creation put out for Memoir '44 last year by DOW.