Incline Battle Brothers + Beasts & Exploration, Warriors of the North and Blazing Deserts DLC Thread

[Reinhardt]

Gents, is it stable enough or should i wait for a patch or two before diving in?

It's not Kangmaker thread.

 

[thesheeep]

Nomads are stronger than orcs.

Did not expect that (never really bothered to go south). Got rekt - but then I save scummed but then my game crashed and I had to restart from an earlier date, what luck.

 

[Tigranes]

Early game nomads are OK - just as ragtag as Northerners. But later on some of them can be deceptively stronk.

So I confess, I'm bad at making Poacher start work. On paper it should be easy, but I always struggle to get it up and running, because, you know, three bowmen are easy fodder if the conditions are wrong. Do people just recruit half a dozen meatsacks straight away?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Early game nomads are OK - just as ragtag as Northerners. But later on some of them can be deceptively stronk.

So I confess, I'm bad at making Poacher start work. On paper it should be easy, but I always struggle to get it up and running, because, you know, three bowmen are easy fodder if the conditions are wrong. Do people just recruit half a dozen meatsacks straight away?

Absolutely, you need at least 3 shieldbros with spears to protect them and 2 pikemen behind them.
Ranged bros take time to build but they're killing machines when they get to 90+ ranged + high ini/ dodge, anticipation, nimble, berserk and frenzy.
I also like cripple and execute but it's a matter of taste.

 

[Rieser]

Early game nomads are OK - just as ragtag as Northerners. But later on some of them can be deceptively stronk.

So I confess, I'm bad at making Poacher start work. On paper it should be easy, but I always struggle to get it up and running, because, you know, three bowmen are easy fodder if the conditions are wrong. Do people just recruit half a dozen meatsacks straight away?

Absolutely. It's always better getting cheap meat shields rather than leaving your important pieces unprotected. Like Darth Canoli says, the starting brothers can become pretty damn good (unless you roll them unusually badly) so they're worth protecting. If you're lucky you'll even get something worth keeping, like I did with this guy on my poacher save.

 

[Teut Busnet]

I think I found my nimble bro.

That's pretty low HP for a nimble Bro though.

With IL and weapon mastery he could still attack twice with a 1H weapon - so duelist and heavy armor is still an option.

 

[Infinitron]

https://turnbasedlovers.com/review/battle-brothers-blazing-deserts/

Battle Brothers: Blazing Deserts Review

Blazing Deserts is the newest DLC released for the popular tactical turn based role-playing game (RPG) Battle Brothers (BB). Like previous DLC, “Beasts & Exploration” and “Warriors of the North”, it adds a mixture of additional features and additional content. Not only is it the largest DLC yet, but it’s the first to expand the boundaries of the map. In this review, I will focus on the specific areas of expansion and the various pluses and minuses for each.

New Lands

The traditional BB map is pushed farther south with three large, rich city-states added. Each of these cities may be built in a manner similar to cities in the northern part of the map, but give access to a number of the features that are unique to the south. These new features include things such as weapons, buildings, armor, new backgrounds for hiring, and new quests. While these areas exist primarily for the purpose of tying the new features of the expansion together, they are flavorful and provide a region with Middle Eastern flavor that is integrated well within the overall Battle Brothers experience.

New Buildings

The Blazing Deserts DLC adds two new buildings to the game: the Alchemist and the Arena. The Alchemist is located in all three of the city-states and houses many useful items. Its stock includes a mixture of new equipment (bombs, guns, and gunpowder) and things that any experienced BB player will recognize, such as antidotes. Some of these new items also can be crafted at the Taxidermist if you have the Beasts & Exploration DLC. Considering the expense of these new items, I usually prefer crafting to outright purchases. The various bombs offer some effective damage, which are an especially potent tool on tougher battles in the hands of a brother with extra bag slots.

The Arena is one of the best new features of the DLC, since it allows for an alternate mode of combat. Rather than bringing your entire company, instead you field a group of 3 and fight a quick battle with a similarly-sized or slightly larger enemy group. Before combat, you’re told what you will be facing, which can be groups of beasts or humans. Winningthese challenges rewards you a reasonably-decent amount of money. Alongside money, every so often a bonus piece of (good) gladiator equipment is provided in the prizes. Rarely, the arena offers the opportunity to participate in a three-round tournament where you deploy five brothers and can obtain a piece of famed gladiator gear as a reward. It’s challenging, but worthwhile.

Bottom line? The Arena is fun. It provides an alternative to traditional quests where you trade your ability to level up your entire squad with having a consistent and repeatable source of gold from one location. It also creates an entirely-different battle experience by focusing on smaller-scale encounters even as you get later into the game. The Arena is also tied with one of the new BB starts: Gladiators, which allows you to start with three experienced gladiators at the city with the arena. If you desire, you’re allowed to just hang out in this city and do arena fights for awhile before reaching the point of feeling like moving on or interweaving other kinds of fights into your days.

Spoiler

Retinues

Retinues are another new feature of this DLC and represent the non-combat followers that join your company. These people are essentially purchasable special abilities with a thematic tie to your mercenary company. The scope of bonuses which members of your retinue bring cover almost every aspect of the game, and serve as a good way to specialize your company to whatever aspect of the game you want to focus on. For example, if you plan on tackling many mercenary contracts and building alliances with noble houses, there are ways of building up your retinue to enhance your ability to do just that. If you want to explore the wilds and find enemy locations to plunder, there are followers who will help you there as well. I’d say this feature is an effective and flavorful option that is not too overwhelming to understand and manage while still providing real choices and opportunities to individualize your company.

New Opponents

Like the other DLC features, these new enemies are only featured in the new portions of the map and consist of a new enemy human faction (nomads) and three new varieties of beasts. I quite enjoyed my bouts with Nomads. At their core, Nomads are basically variants of the bandits common on the rest of the map, but have a larger focus on dodge and take advantage of whips alongside some of the new weapons introduced in this expansion. They serve as a welcome change of pace from other enemies as well as a good source for obtaining the new DLC weapons.

The other new enemies are hyenas, ifrits, and serpents. Hyenas are essentially reskinned direwolves. This is not to say they are bad per se, but it feels like somewhat of a wasted opportunity. Ifrits are earth elementals, which are immune to status effects and capable of merging with adjacent ifrits to form larger versions of the creature. Their other capabilities include launching a ranged attack that splits them into their smaller ifrit parts which potentially can throw some into your back line. I find ifrit to be an enjoyable challenge, since they force you to break out of the monotony of a frontline/backline split and think about how to defend against potential mini-ifrits showing up by your archers. The last new enemy is the serpent, which boasts the unique ability of grabbing a target and pulling it over into the swarm of enemy serpents or even behind the serpent lines. Similar to the ifrit, this enemy forces you to rethink how you’re going to handle the disruption to your battle liens. Thankfully, while these enemies may force you to switch up tactics compared to previous content, it’s not so strange or different that it’s not related to the rest of the game. On the whole, I find the beasts to be a good addition. At worst, the hyenas are a missed opportunity, but the other two are a nice alternative option, which I’m quite happy to include with the best of the beasts from Beasts & Explorations.

Origins and Backgrounds

If you have the Warriors of the North DLC, then there are three new Origins: Southern Mercenaries, Manhunters, and Gladiators.

Southern Mercenaries is essentially just the normal start except you start in the south with one of your brothers having one of the new weapons.

Manhunters increases your starting squad size and your maximum squad size, while imposing the restriction of making it so over half your members have to be Indentured, one of the new backgrounds from Blazing Desert. Non-indebted are able to use a whip to buff indebted, but indebted are nerfed to make them into true fodder. They are unable to go above level 7 and are much more likely to die than other characters.

Gladiators, the last of the new origins, is equivalent to Warrior of the North’s Lone Wolf background. Unlike Lone Wolf you start with three characters, rather than one, but like it you start with a higher tier background, if all of your starting characters die you lose, and you can have no more than twelve individuals in your squad at a time. Though this is considered an advanced background it seems to mostly make things easier. These gladiators are quite strong with enough power to give you an edge in early encounters. Their maximum group size of 12 downside only becomes relevant if you try to complete multiple crises. It is more difficult without having flex/backline slots for characters that are not good for one or more crises or post-endgame content. If you are going for some smaller subset of content the drawback will be overtaken by the advantage of having such strong brothers early on.

In addition to the Manhunter, Indentured, and Gladiator backgrounds, there are two other new backgrounds to choose from; both of which are high-tier and worthy of facing end game content. The first of these is the Nomad, which generally have high stats and medium gear. They tend to be relatively inexpensive, but have good enough attribute star ratings to potentially be worth turning into endgame characters. Assassins are rare and have stats which push them toward nimble roles relying on dodge for survival. Indentured, outside of the Manhunter campaign, are low tier recruits who start with no gear but have an added bonus of having no maintenance cost. Manhunters are on the upper end of inexpensive hires. They have pretty good stats for their price, and while they aren’t going to be the best of your end game units, they have a chance to make it that far without being optimal. Gladiators have the stats to compete with other end game backgrounds, but are also very, very expensive. You have to have quite a bit of money to justify hiring one, but if you can afford their cost and maintenance, they are likely to be worth it.

Gear

Blazing Deserts has plenty of new gear. Some pieces are simply additional options for specific categories of gear, but a few weapons enable you to take advantage of their characteristics for completely new builds. The first of these is the swordlance, which has good but not amazing damage, but provides the ability to do area of effect attacks at range two. This property can allow your character to become a killing machine which can cut through numerous weakened enemies and then attack again; either hitting the same group of enemies again, or even hitting other targets somewhere else in range.

The second significant weapon is the handgonne, an aoe ranged weapon that has a wide damage variance and the potential for hitting up to 4 enemies with a single shot. Early builds appear to be focusing on using it to trigger morale checks, however, it will be interesting to see if player are able to make a build with it that is competitive with the top-tier weapons.

There are also a number of new consumables with Fire Pots, Flash Pots, Smoke Pots, and Acid Flasks being the most-prominent of these. Each of the pots creates an area effect that hits everyone inside of it. Fire Pot is straightforward as it provides a couple of rounds of damage. Flash Pots provide a dazed debuff. Smoke Pots are the most interesting of these bombs, giving everyone in the area of effect the ability to ignore attacks of opportunity when moving through a space next to a melee opponent. The Acid Flask is a single-target effect that eats through a target’s armor over the course of a few rounds with a small chance to splash and hit other units adjacent to it as well. Considering the lengths that people will go to avoid destroying an enemy’s armor so that they can capture it for their own, this seems like the least useful of the new consumables.

New Crisis

This is the first expansion to add a new late-game crisis of Holy War to the three existing ones: Nobles at War, Greenskin Invasion, and Undead Scourge. In effect, this crisis is most like the Nobles At War. It will not ultimately result in attempts at the destruction of civilization, but instead a clash between human factions, specifically the southern city states vs. the rest of the map with the goal being control of three different holy sites that mean different things to the different cultures. This crisis is a great showcase of the new units and weapons available to the southern city-states even in games with a more northern focus or start. It also has the added benefit of lengthening the game for people who enjoy Battle Brothers so much that they like to go through a “full crisis” game, then tackle legendary sites and additional post-endgame content.

Other Stuff

There are a lot of other bells and whistles added too:

• New music for the southern locations
• A free update that comes with the DLC provides additional thematic battlefield obstacles
• Existing contracts and events are reskinned for the south and an additional type of contract focused on fighting against rebelling indentured servants has been introduced, including an option to switch sides if the revolt has a particularly persuasive leader
• There are some new banners to represent southern mercenary companies. They are just as attractive and thematic as the previous banners and are a nice touch
• There is a new legendary location, but I admit in the time I had to review the DLC I did not get a chance to find and conquer the location.

Conclusion

I consider Battle Brothers to be a great game, but one I was no longer actively enthusiastic about. I would play for a bit whenever a new DLC was released, but would eventually grow bored and move on to something else. I was competent with the game but it was never something I was driven to master like I’ve done with some other turn based tactical RPGs. I expected this would be the same with Blazing Deserts, but I was wrong. I am actually not quite sure what it is about this expansion that changed things. Perhaps it was the retinue’s customization options. Maybe it was the fact that they expanded dimensions of content that they had not touched since the game was originally released. Perhaps just the total sum of options available with the expansion was enough to make me fall in love with the game all over again. Whatever it is, this DLC has reinvigorated my passion for the game and my intention is to finally master the game, to really understand what makes it tick, and to understand it at a level that indicates expertise. I consider Blazing Deserts a must-have for any Battle Brothers player, and suggest each and every one gets it as their time and finances allow.


REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall Rating
10

SUMMARY
Pros

• Expands on content that had not been touched since the game was first released
• Almost all additional content is new and interesting in a way that jives with what makes Battle Brothers great in the first place
• The new mechanic of Retinues is a flavorful way to customize your mercenary band

Cons

• Hyenas appear to mostly be a reskin of direwolves

 

[razvedchiki]

good seed for peasant militia?

 

[hivemind]

???

 

[hivemind]

its like the least seed dependant run what the heck

 

[Tigranes]

Maybe he wants 16 iron lung peasants, forged in the coal mines

 

[AgentFransis]

Gladiator origin events are gym bro events:

~aye aye aye ayeeee~

 

[Riel]

I like peasant militia it is a a very hard trip in the early game but if properly managed it becomes very powerful by mid game, unfortunately those poor bastards do not fare that well in the late game, you need more high end equipment and the guys using it have mediocre stats. That out of the way peasant militia won't be a fabulous end game party but it is a fun ride, that cripple crossbow specialist is priceless, lol.

 

[Dillrodimus Prime]

Found this last night, haven't tried it yet but I probably will tonight.

Seed: MLVRigViiI

Map Pros / Cons:

Pros:

* 6 ports nicely spread across the map. NW, W, W, MID, S, SE.

* ARENA PORT! I cannot begin to stress the VALUE in an Arena Port! The potential is particularly strong on a 6 port map with this kind of spread.

* Strong trade trade goods, with a couple cities being STACKED: Al Anwar has Silk, incense, dyes and Kahlengrube has uncut gems and salt. This five cities have quality wood, four of which are located close to each other.

...I've found stockpiling lumber and checking all the ports for cities reconstucting is a great way to make insane amounts of money. -slyr55

* 6 Hunter Cabins, and 2 Citadels, 7 Armorers, 8 Weaponsmiths, 3 Fletchers

Cons:

* So many mountains...

There's maps and shit on the reddit post too. Found it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleBrot...attle_brothers_blazing_deserts_amazing_trade/

 

[hivemind]

I like peasant militia it is a a very hard trip in the early game but if properly managed it becomes very powerful by mid game, unfortunately those poor bastards do not fare that well in the late game, you need more high end equipment and the guys using it have mediocre stats. That out of the way peasant militia won't be a fabulous end game party but it is a fun ride, that cripple crossbow specialist is priceless, lol.

no
actually peasant militia is the strongest origin in the game for the purposes of theoretical maximum power by a long shot
some lowborn origins are very viable in late game comps and having such a large number of potential units on the field + in the reserve allows for unmatched tactical flexibility which can trivialise even the hardest encounters

 

[Riel]

I like peasant militia it is a a very hard trip in the early game but if properly managed it becomes very powerful by mid game, unfortunately those poor bastards do not fare that well in the late game, you need more high end equipment and the guys using it have mediocre stats. That out of the way peasant militia won't be a fabulous end game party but it is a fun ride, that cripple crossbow specialist is priceless, lol.

no
actually peasant militia is the strongest origin in the game for the purposes of theoretical maximum power by a long shot
some lowborn origins are very viable in late game comps and having such a large number of potential units on the field + in the reserve allows for unmatched tactical flexibility which can trivialise even the hardest encounters

I disagree, on the tactical flexibility and the faith you put in larger numbers.

Fielding 16 guys is going to leave you both without space to manoeuvre and the fact that they are mediocre compared to a better background brother of the same level means most of your guys will shoe-horned into non demanding roles -> tanks, ranged, two handers and 2nd line two handers. Actually you will have trouble finding good archers and melee two handers, those roles and the lack of space will have you playing basically as an undead phalanx with some ranged attack added in. Once brothers start specializing in a weapon type you will have the option to use ones or the others but the basic tactic won't change, you will form a line and exchange attacks with the enemy using your superior numbers and two lines of effective brothers to weather them down until they are no more, you will roll over the enemy line but be unable to breach it and go through to attack back-liners such as enemy archer, necros... This tactic is all well, but once you find yourself against end game, with heavy spike damage and/or aoe damage this tactic is going to become less and less useful:
Against Schrats your second liners will be the perfect target for their aoe
Against Lindwurms your superior numbers won't be applicable unless you put many brothers in the aoe
Against southerners your packed lines are the perfect target for bombs and handgoons
Against legendary locations where you usually have a singular enemy you need to take out asap you brother will have trouble opening a gap to reach him.

For all those things you need the best brothers who can tank and aoe mob alone or when it is the moment surround the monster and destroy it before it can attack back, bad luck with peasant militia.
But it is worse if you need to push forward to create a hole in the enemy line and push into it to reach strategic targets in the back of the enemy formation, the poor ranged brothers don't help at this either.

TLDR: Superior numbers are great mid game but by end game it's a liability in the form of more AOE damage received, also your line will be less manoeuvrable and tactically unflexible.

 

[Teut Busnet]

I like peasant militia it is a a very hard trip in the early game but if properly managed it becomes very powerful by mid game, unfortunately those poor bastards do not fare that well in the late game, you need more high end equipment and the guys using it have mediocre stats. That out of the way peasant militia won't be a fabulous end game party but it is a fun ride, that cripple crossbow specialist is priceless, lol.

no
actually peasant militia is the strongest origin in the game for the purposes of theoretical maximum power by a long shot
some lowborn origins are very viable in late game comps and having such a large number of potential units on the field + in the reserve allows for unmatched tactical flexibility which can trivialise even the hardest encounters

I disagree, on the tactical flexibility and the faith you put in larger numbers.

Fielding 16 guys is going to leave you both without space to manoeuvre and the fact that they are mediocre compared to a better background brother of the same level means most of your guys will shoe-horned into non demanding roles -> tanks, ranged, two handers and 2nd line two handers. Actually you will have trouble finding good archers and melee two handers, those roles and the lack of space will have you playing basically as an undead phalanx with some ranged attack added in. Once brothers start specializing in a weapon type you will have the option to use ones or the others but the basic tactic won't change, you will form a line and exchange attacks with the enemy using your superior numbers and two lines of effective brothers to weather them down until they are no more, you will roll over the enemy line but be unable to breach it and go through to attack back-liners such as enemy archer, necros... This tactic is all well, but once you find yourself against end game, with heavy spike damage and/or aoe damage this tactic is going to become less and less useful:
Against Schrats your second liners will be the perfect target for their aoe
Against Lindwurms your superior numbers won't be applicable unless you put many brothers in the aoe
Against southerners your packed lines are the perfect target for bombs and handgoons
Against legendary locations where you usually have a singular enemy you need to take out asap you brother will have trouble opening a gap to reach him.

For all those things you need the best brothers who can tank and aoe mob alone or when it is the moment surround the monster and destroy it before it can attack back, bad luck with peasant militia.
But it is worse if you need to push forward to create a hole in the enemy line and push into it to reach strategic targets in the back of the enemy formation, the poor ranged brothers don't help at this either.

TLDR: Superior numbers are great mid game but by end game it's a liability in the form of more AOE damage received, also your line will be less manoeuvrable and tactically unflexible.

Wtf?

'your guys will shoe-horned into non demanding roles -> tanks, ranged, two handers and 2nd line two handers' - What more do you need? (I use some X-Bow / Whip sergeants, but you'll find them for Militia as well.)

'unable to breach it and go through to attack back-liners such as enemy archer, necros' - Most times, it's best to not split the party and smash undead to pieces before some go for the necro or priest. Sometimes you can use tanks to get to enemies' soft spots - with 16 or 12 Bros.

You don't need to fight Schrats and Lindwurm anyway, and even if you want to, having an additional tank - or three - against Lindwurms is fantastic. They still hit like trucks and have 20-25% chances to do so, even against 70+ MDef tanks. And what's wrong with more Bros against Schrats? Don't line them up for the Schrats to attack. Surround them.

You worry about legendary locations? They stay the same, regardless of difficulty or company size. Gobbo City is not that hard, when you can bring 6-7 Archers AND(!) are able to properly protect them with more Bros. Black Monolith is a lot easier when you can send two tanks up north and one in front of you AND still have two more man you can use to smash or maybe protect a thrower you wouldn't bring otherwise.

'your line will be less manoeuvrable and tactically unflexible' - there is no penalty to movement for the Militia origin. Do you run out of hexes or something?

A thing to say against 16 Bros is, that it becomes less personal and mopping up can get quite tedious. I think 12 Bros with 3-4 in reserve really is the sweet spot.

 

[hivemind]

You can have militia's, lumberjacks and shepherds what the fuck are you talking about. You can literally build an elite team for any fight and just rotate people in based on the encounter.

Like sorry I don't want to be mean but you obviously have no idea how to play this game if you ever think that having more men on the field and in reserve is bad.

 

[hivemind]

btw gladiators really show the worst sort of "difficulty" in the late game

just the utterly absolute tedium of paying 1K a day for a company

I upped the spawn of champions to like between 10 to 95 percent(goblins to hedge knights) so that I can actually afford to go exploring into the wilderness thanks to bounties lol

 

[Sarissofoi]

Militia also don't have access to monks and apprentices.

 

[Barbarian]

You can have militia's, lumberjacks and shepherds what the fuck are you talking about. You can literally build an elite team for any fight and just rotate people in based on the encounter.

Like sorry I don't want to be mean but you obviously have no idea how to play this game if you ever think that having more men on the field and in reserve is bad.

Not to mention you can get some backgrounds via events: barbarian, retired soldier, king's guard and others. Militia is one of the better origins and fielding 4 extra bros is a huge boost late game.

 

[Reinhardt]

Militia have big problems with finding good archers and sergeant.

 

[Riel]

You can have militia's, lumberjacks and shepherds what the fuck are you talking about. You can literally build an elite team for any fight and just rotate people in based on the encounter.

Like sorry I don't want to be mean but you obviously have no idea how to play this game if you ever think that having more men on the field and in reserve is bad.

I don't want to be mean but I never said what you claim I did but pointed out large numbers also have some drawbacks that in some circumstances can back-fire at you so maybe you should read more carefully.

 

[hivemind]

just take the L and shut the fuck up buddy

 

[hivemind]

sorry that was rude