Waiqar the Undying arrives in Battlelore, 2nd Ed.

I have 1st edition BL and played it enough that I feel I got enough value from it. But alas, between 2nd edition BL and the redo(s) on Puzzle Strike... it's taken all the wind out of my sails wanting to play my inferior copies of games that have been fixed.

I MUST ask this question: has anyone heard of a where I can find directions on how to make 1st ed. BL convert to 2nd edition????? I am not even sure what the differences are. I know some of the spells in 1st edition were BS. They penalized you for using forests for cover and whatnot.

Just to follow on what D&T said:
In BL2, each player draws 3 scenario cards and picks one. Putting the two cards together gives you your full map with deployment areas for both sides. Each scenario is going to have hexes where holding that point gets you a victory point and will also have a condition that earns you victory points (destroy an enemy unit next to forest terrain or occupy both hill spaces on your side of the map, etc.) Each scenario also has a conditional advantage that's in theme. Valley of the Stone Men, for example, gives Rune Golems a ranged attack if they occupy one of the two hill spaces on the Daqan side. The first player to 16 VPs wins the game. Alternatively, you can wipe out your opponent to win.

The best part about the system is the tension between achieving your goals or preventing your opponent from achieving his; between going for points or crushing that enemy unit to keep it from interfering with you gaining points next turn (or killing your unit so you can't gain points or taking the hex where you're gaining points or...) When you combine the variability of the scenarios with the decent variation in army builds (everyone constructs an army to 50 points) and then the RNG of both dice and Command cards, there's a great deal of complexity in the game but not so much that it takes an hour to set up like your average 3000 point Warhammer battle. You can be up and running in a few minutes in BL2. In addition to that depth, I love the fact that you have to keep adapting to changing circumstances dictated by both Command and Lore decks (and, occasionally, the dice.)

I can only speak to ancients, but it was straight how many units did you kill before and it sucked. So first to 7 units or whatever. It was kind of the worst because you could play C+C ancients and not have killed a single enemy heavy, elephant, or medium infantry unit and win the game. As if Alexander was going to get out there, rout a huge unit of peltasts without confronting their capharacts and be like... "JOB DONE."

Yeah, it seemed like every game my opponent would have 72% forces remaining vs. my 70% unit strength and uh... good game, I win! It never felt decisive and seemed random or gamey. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit but that's how it felt to me. I'm not saying there wasn't any strategy to it but it wasn't satisfying.

Sounds like they did make some great improvements for this. Additionally, I think a fantasy setting has a bit of an advantage, mechanically, because it's not bound to historicity (I think that's the right word?). A trebuchet might be great but a giant with a sack of huge boulders has mobility, defensive capabilities, and melee strength as well. Just a simple example of wild unit diversity that can be achieved with a simple archetype. Nothing wrong with historical gaming or anything though.

And this has been said many times before but is worth repeating. The original Battlelore was suffering from an identity crisis of sorts where it struggled to find a comfortable balance between history and high fantasy and it never really embraced the high fantasy part well. There's no ambiguity in Battlelore 2ed - by recasting the game in Terrinoth, FFG went 100% high fantasy and this is my preference because of the escapism factor.

Right. There's a diversity of unit capability that you just wouldn't have in historical wargames (although I LOVE historical wargames and would never part with my copies of Birttannia, Shogun, Siege of Jerusalem, Here I Stand, etc., etc.) In most historical games you couldn't have a unit that regenerated by feeding on the enemy, like Obscenes, or was able to shield another unit from damage, like Greyhaven Battlemages. It more easily incorporates the whole "Lore" aspect, too, since things like Portal and Bone Spurs just wouldn't be feasible in most historical terms. The fact that it's paralleled by Runewars and Rune Age just makes the setting that much more of a draw to me. When we were big into GW, we played associated games a couple times, linking Battlefleet Gothic down to Epic Armageddon do to 40K. It might be cool to do that with Runewars and Battlelore once the Latari are released for the latter.