I know just what you were doing. Just now. You were looking at that section of your Amazon cards thinking, "What the heck am I gonna do with all these Battlegrounds? I mean, all my table legs are already balanced out..." Don't worry, I was too.

One of the most frustrating things to those of us who did get our paws on Amazon (alongside getting only enough Bastet and Mokole cards to not quite make them playable, or getting that dangblasted Conquistador's Sword as your only foil, or...) are Battlegrounds. The mechanics were a bit confusing, they didn't appear to play quite the way the designers had in mind, and by the time Legacy rolled around, White Wolf was hoping you had forgotten about them.

Fortunately, the wise Silent Strider Nuit Shu Heru relates the following house rules that the Sept of Gaia's Open Hand have developed and played with for two years.

As far as I know Battlefields have always been a point of great discussion, because no solution ever made for them satisfied anyone completely. I think that most people agree that the current status is quite sad. Having battlefields banned makes almost half of the Amazon cards unplayable, this sucks . . . Otherwise most people I know will agree that battlefields under the original rules will screw up gameplay (The bonus VP together with with the VP from kills in those forced big battles almost always end the game in the first round the battlefield is on table).

It's a kind of a mix of the original rules and some of the new victory options stated on the Amazon rule card. The ruling itself just consists of three small points but their effect is quite satisfying. Before I start explaining it one last thing: This optional rule has been playtested and used for about 2 years by our local Rage sept consisting of 40 players. So it's not just a theory.

Ok now the three points:
(All other rules for battlefields written in the Amazon rules stay as they are)

1. Whenever a battlefield is played its VP score adds to the needed VP score for winning the game.
(For example, in a 20 renown game when a battlefield for 6 VPs is played the winning score rises to 26.)

2. No player may have more than one battlefield in play at any time.
(If you already played a battlefield, you are not allowed to bring into play another one unless your first one ended up in any players victory pile.)

3. No player is allowed to play a battlefield with requirements he or she cannot match or one that has already been played.
(You cannot match the requirements for engaging the battlefield, so it's not your turf.)

Ok now the explanation for the three points.

The first one is quite simple:
With battlefields, you have access to more VP's without changing your way to gather them (you don't have more enemies to slay, just a slight change in the way you slay them) So a change in needed VP's just seems logical. And that increase in VP's almost eliminates the first round wins.

The second point has two reasons:
The first is for game balance. If you do not limit the number of battlefields in play it would end up in an eternal struggle (because of the increasing VP's needed the game would more usually end because of players losing their pack, rather than anyone scoring the needed VP's).

The second is more background reasoning. Battlefields represent important places to fight about in a war. And despite umbral traveling and such stuff, a pack can hardly be at two places at once. You cannot setup an ambush in some temple ruins and raid a ranch at the same time. So the battle field represents a special location in the war your pack is concentrating on. Of course you can shift your concentration for a while if the battle is important (you could give up your carefully set ambush in the temple ruins if your headquarters are attacked). Which would explain your pack acting on a battlefield which your opponent has set up. Of course there can be some strange situations where such an explanation would fail horribly, but after all it's a CCG mechanism and not a real world situation to explain. And for including and on the other hand restricting the battlefields it just works fine.

The third point is just an add on for the second to evade such eternal struggle games by just increasing the number of needed VP's.

So basically that's it. As mentioned before this mechanism has been tested in our group and beeen played for almost 2 years. And as far as I can say it works just fine. But anyways if you have any further ideas on this one, or other ways to use battlefields again just let me know.

Until then I'll take my task and spread the news about the game as far as owl takes my feet . . .

Enjoy yourself,

Nuit Shu Heru (Silent Strider Lupus Theurge)