Burning Banners

Burning Banners is not a game to buy on blind faith. Its Compass rules demand close reading, errata, a look at the rules forum, and careful attention to timing, particularly around non-cantrip battle magic. The rulebook is not quite the friend who calmly tells you what happens next; mistakes in a first advanced game are close to inevitable. In a few places, house rules feel less like garnish than table maintenance, such as allowing siege engines to lift the restriction against strikes as well as cancelling the -1 defence bonus.

Do not mistake it for a conventional hex-and-counter wargame: beneath the hexes is a light asymmetric roll-and-hit game, somewhere between Memoir '44 and Black Rose Wars. Combat has the directness of C&C, but it throws dice by the bucketful, and it has no shame about that. Those buckets produce the moments when everyone leans over the map and one roll suddenly rewrites the story.

The real work lies in spell management and solving the scenario in front of you, rather than in a grand-strategy plan that will reliably carry the day. The factions are deeply thematic: Orks & Goblins have one of the most interesting horde mechanisms I have encountered, although some scenarios may need the forum's one-lair-per-turn brake to stop a strong opening from ending the affair too early; Kingdom of the Night may look like silk underwear, but a capable dark lord can make it sing. Everything is scenario- and campaign-based, with scenarios for every player count rather than free-for-all matched play, and player involvement is not always evenly shared. In four-player Fire in the East, Dwarves and Orks are plainly the leads while Vampires and Empire play supporting parts; a larger all-factions scenario, meanwhile, can become a proper bloodbath of reversals and tears.

It requires patience and a willingness to stop, check a timing point, and carry on without pretending the snag was not there. Do that, though, and it delivers strong thematic tension, with plenty for players to do to one another.

It is a diamond in the rough, and I am very glad it exists: approach it as spell management and scenario solving in martial fantasy, and it will reward you quietly but substantially.