As you lean back in your chair with a sigh and count the hours left in the working day, a hideously hairy stranger appears in the door. His eyes are yellow and bulging, his beard rank with ale and bogwater, his helm battered and hung with viscera. He opens his stinking mug and bellows at you like an elephant seal with its whiskers trapped in a lawnmower. Then he drops a huge pile of crude, rusty weapons at your feet. That’s right, it’s finally time for a proper update for Battle Brothers, the mercenary tactics management sim beloved of the Nics we used to know.
The update – the first proper patch in a year – adds three new weapons: the Pollaxe, Executioner’s Sword, and Estoc. Developers Overhype have indulged in some weaponsplaining on Steam. Did you know that the “poll” in Pollaxe actually means “head,” not pole? Something to chuckle over, while you’re staggering people with the blunt part or splitting their shields with a single blow.
As for the Executioner’s Sword, the devs acknowledge that this “is not commonly a weapon seen on the battlefield,” but look here, there’s no rule that says you’re only allowed to “behead a delinquent in one swift strike” when you have a standing audience and some guy in velvet reading crimes from a scroll. “It is heavier than the other two-handed swords and comes with a hefty fatigue malus,” the changelog cautions, “but is versatile and powerful in the right hands.”
Finally, the Estoc is basically good at two things: stabbing people, and stabbing them through their armour. It doesn’t have high damage, but it’s great at disregarding the existence of plate mail.
In addition to encumbering us with some dirty new blades, Overhype has introduced some new foes to test them out on. Specifically, better bandits. “The enemy faction players engage with the most in the early game, the Bandits, fall off pretty steeply in the mid and late game,” the changelog notes. “The Brigand Raiders are formidable enemies in the beginning but offer no real challenge to better-experienced and equipped mercenaries. To keep the faction more viable through the mid-game, we added a new tier of Bandits, the so-called Brigand Marauders.”
“These are well-experienced bandits that not only come with better stats and more perks than raiders, but they also bring a whole new set of worn-down but still powerful armor,” they go on. “The Marauders will start showing up as sort of leaders of brigand parties and will eventually roam the wilds in full groups, posing a new challenge to players.”
Adding more bandits naturally requires the addition of more toffs, to properly flavour the game’s social melting pot. So here you go, have some extra nobles. “To get the northern noble house troops more in line with their southern counterparts, we are adding Men at Arms to their unit lists,” the devs explain. “The Men at Arms come with much better armor than the classical footmen and also have a two-handed and a shield loadout.”
Having delivered his consignment of hacking implements, the smelly and delirious barbarian turns for the door, then pauses on the lintel. He glances back at you, perched on your chair with your “Friday is my Favourite F-Word” coffee mug, and grows incensed. He treats you to a parting geyser of malodorous gibberish. It sounds a bit like a list of smaller changes, revisions and fixes. Fortunately, there is a proper transcript on Steam.
