First Blood (FB2) fans, our prayer has been answered by Parabellum!
This update marks the first of many promises from the game developers, which means that the devs are actively working on this game and are paying close attention to what the gamers are saying.
As an additional cherry on top, Leandros also stated that FB2 will receive their very own ‘Road to Chios’ style championship like they did for Last Argument of Kings (LAOK) – meaning players will be rewarded for playing this game competitively.
So let’s take a look at what changed and whether this A Realm Reborn Update promises the Reborn part of the name.
The Previous Update in a Nutshell
The common complaint from the previous version was that the game played too fast. While this is good for casual players, this created a problem for the more competitive players. List building was less trying to build a balanced list to handle the different scenarios that the game throws at you, and more about how could you bring the fastest and strongest unit on the battlefield.
This gave rise to a meta populated by cavalry and brute units. These two types of units offer faster movement compared to their infantry compatriots, and they offer an additional form of attack in the form of impact hits when they declare a charge. Ranged units are non-existent in any competitive list because of how fast everything moves. Objective plays became mostly ignored because players would prefer to just engage as fast as possible with as many units as possible.
General Rules Updates
There is a lot to unpack here. Movement has been reworked, the second march action will lower the movement by half, and charge range is fixed instead of rolling a D6. This is a huge update to the game and looks like a conscious effort from PB to slow down the game and bring more tactical movement to the game.
Monsters can now be shot! Ranged combat has always been a topic of contention in FB2 because of how fast everything is. Ranged units can at most shoot once in the game before all units are engaged, leaving them to be a backline objective holder and nothing else. Ranged combat now takes a new lease on life because they can interact with monsters.
Cavalry and brutes also received a slight adjustment with lower power to seize objectives. Previously, not only can they move fast and hit hard, but they also represent a larger amount of ‘points’ when contesting an objective. Now, they are more well balanced in their capabilities to play for objectives.
All infantry now receive a point reduction. This amounts to a reduction of around 10–15 points per infantry regiment, ensuring that you can bring an additional three or four models on the field. This means that infantry trades away the raw speed and strength of cavalry with simply more wounds on the battlefield. You can also use this point now to purchase an officer model in the unit. Allowing the infantry unit to receive various abilities from the model.
PB now ‘recommends’ that the game be played at 1,000 points. While previously they always hover between 800-1000 this marks the first time that they say that 1,000 will be the recommended points range for tournaments.
Spires
In the previous update, Spires’ gameplay always focused on a large amount of expendable units in the form of force-grown drones while relying on the bigger units, like the incarnate sentinels or avatara, to dish out the damage. The drones are cheap, plentiful, and can be healed.
This update does not bring a lot of changes to Spires gameplay. They now receive a buff to their faction abilities that allows them to ‘chain activate’ a unit targeted by any of the Creation abilities. This is a great ability because it allows a unit that was buffed by any of the commanders to immediately activate, giving them full usage of their buffs without worrying of the enemy activating before your buffed unit could do work.
There has been a slight nerf to lineage highborne and lineage prideborne to increase their points by 50; this is mostly in line with the overall rebalance of cavalry and brute commanders. Siegebreaker Behemoth now has the superior creation tag, allowing for double movement from the highborne to get in position as quickly as possible.
100 Kingdoms
The kingdoms have always been dominated by the presence of powerful knights, such as the Order of the Crimson Tower and the Priory Commander. The combination of these two units on the battlefield gave the crimson tower additional attack while also making them able to contest objectives easily with the command: secure, making them count as five models instead of the normal two.
Considering that the two were running rampant, there has been a rebalance to both the Priory Commanders and their Knights. Priory now has a point cost of 75 points, moreover they no longer have access to the previous combination of priory plus the magical item ‘last resort’, allowing the model a once per-game ability to gain an additional 3 attacks and ignoring any defense rolls. Other than that, slight points increase to 180 points for Crimson Tower.
Valkyries. Credit: KayMinis
Nords
Nords in the previous update suffered from a very weak faction ability. Reckless attack sacrifices model to give additional buffs to the unit, the ability is more powerful the amount of model sacrificed. While this is a price that players need to consider, the other half of the Nord army is unable to take advantage of this ability due to them affecting only infantry.
Brutes and monsters can now use reckless attack by suffering wounds. While once again players have to carefully judge whether it is appropriate to gain wounds to receive additional buffs to their unit, at least the option is there instead of it being locked to an infantry unit.
Mountain Jotnars became cheaper and more resilient, in line with some of the other defensive monsters in the game. Trolls gain oblivious, an ability to halve their amount of failed resolve tests which makes them more resistant to damage. The other two Jotnars also came down in price by 20 points.
Dweghom
Considered to be one of the strongest factions in FB2 during the previous update, these dragon-killing not-dwarves have strong armor, strong resolve stats and the ability to effectively double their attack whenever a unit dies in combat. Having access to some of the strongest monsters in the game, such as the hellbringer drake have made the dweghom the prime candidate for a rebalance.
The first to go was their faction ability. Now, instead of doubling the attack of the remaining unit, it increases by one for each casualty. The design is to ensure that the Dweghom can still take casualties and fight as ferociously in that first bout of fighting, but then drop off like everyone else.
The hellbringer drake has received a reduction in their barrage stats from 10 to 8. Their brethren, the ironclad drake, have also received a point bump from 410 to 430.
W’adrhun
Large monsters and powerful cavalry are the two signatures of a First Blood W’adrhun army. The apex predator has the ability to immediately win any contesting the objective simply by its presence.
Both the thunder riders and thunder rider chieftain receive a rebalance on their stampede ability. Stampede is an ability that gives four auto-hits to the enemy regiment at the end of the activation. Now it has been cut down by half to only two auto-hits. Apex Predator ability is reworked, now counting as 12 models instead of being auto-win on objective zone.
Old Dominion
The key strength of Old Dominion is that their units are more resilient because of the no-resolve stats, allowing them to suffer additional damage. We have yet to see this change; however, Old Dominion did receive some point adjustments.
The major ones are the nerf to kataprakthoi and mounted strategos, each costing more points than their previous incarnation. Strategos is now 50 points, and kataprakthoi is up 10 points to 140.
Dark cenotaph, a unit attachment that you bring in one of the units, used to be the cornerstone of Old Dominion strategy because it gave you additional victory points. Now that attachment has been reworked into something entirely, giving the unit the ability to have their memory of old as always active.
Not all doom and gloom to Old Dominion players, since they mentioned that the Fallen divinity is due to be released in First Blood very soon!
City States
As one of the latest factions, City States got nothing but overall improvements to their army. Phalanx tactics have been improved, making the enemy lose their inspire bonus if they are charging a unit with phalanx. Time to dust out those phalangites and agema!
Thorakites have gained the vanguard ability, which gives them a role as fast moving objective holders because they can get a free movement at the start of the game. Satyroi now has a role in being the opportunistic fighter that they are by having access to flank ability. Flank enables a unit to be deployed in the table edge during a later round.
Both of the giants (minus Talos) received a buff in terms of point reduction and a larger wound count. Going from 440 points to 420, as well as having an increased wound count from 16 to 18.
Sorcerer Kings
Overall, good news if you have a Sorcerer King warband, as it’s nothing but improvements all around. An increase in speed from the djinn from speed 6 to 7 will give them more role in engaging the enemy faster and getting into position.
The ghols receives a double buff: now having access to a free movement at the start of the first round as well as additional clash stats from 1 to 2. These changes will ensure that these expendable units move much faster and can take down as many opponents as they can.
Both rakshashas’ resolve stats have been improved from 3 to 4, making them that much more resilient in their job to hunt down characters and enemy monsters. And lastly, the Sardar gains an ability hardened by 1, which negates the opponent’s cleave ability by one.
Four New Game Modes
Alongside the update, PB has also released four new game modes. With a smaller victory requirement of 12 points to win the scenario and lowering the number of game rounds to eight, these scenarios are designed to be more tactical. Each victory point earned will be that much more crucial and promote more strategic play instead of the grand melee of the previous update.
Relic Retrieval
A new ‘keepaway’ game mode features an objective that can be picked up and carried around. This one will heavily incentivize fast-moving units because being able to get an objective early and carrying it back behind your lines can force the enemy to kill your entire army before they get a chance to score points.
Fog of War
A nod to LAOK by making sure that different classes of units enter at different intervals. Would you risk bringing more light units to score early or bring a more balanced list and probably concede the earlier points? This creates an interesting question to the players during list building and can potentially reward a player that brings more light units.
Quadrant Control
As the name implies, this classic mode splits the battlefield into four quadrants. What is interesting is that it turns those quadrants into active objective zones, which means that a lot of abilities that turn on when seizing or contesting objective zones will always be active.
Scout Ahead
With five objective zones and the ones closer to the enemy deployment zone worth more victory points, this game mode asks the interesting question of whether you would like to play a defensive game to hold the objective zone closer to your side. Or perhaps you would like to invade the opponent one to score more victory points.
Another change is that the destroyable marker is now 3 wounds instead of 5. This is a huge quality of life that is in line with LAOK. Previously, it was not worth it to even try to destroy them since you could only deal a maximum of 2 damage per unit activation. Now destroying the objective marker is an investment of ideally two activations, as opposed to the high-variance three, which makes them much more tempting.
Conclusion
By slowing down the game, rewarding a more balanced spread of units, and trimming down the most powerful units, PB has steered the focus of FB2 from a semi-casual game into that of a more competitive and balanced state.
With the promise of more constant updates and a competitive series of tournaments, this seemed like the perfect time to dabble in FB2. We might just see you all in the Greek island of Chios next year!
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