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I've been reading the battle reports for some time and have comtimplated starting to make my own.

Looking through and searching the threads I have not come across any that give tips or advice on how to make a good read battle report.

So I'd like to open the discussion by asking.

1) What do you think makes a good bat rep?
2) What do you like to see in bat reps?
3) Any tips for new bat rep creaters on what to track and what not to track.
4) Is descriptive text better then a load of pictures or do people prefer more pictures over text.
5)There are probably many other questions to come.

I'm sure there are others out there who would love the advice some of the regular Battle report posters could give.

1)A Good bat rep has some pictures with explainations
2)Pictures, explainations, army lists, possibly some fluff
3) track interesting things, take an overall shot and then a close up of action points
4)pictures with an explaination of what is happening, a balance between the 2

Try to take the overall shots from the same angles, it gets confusing otherwise(for me at least)

Painted armies are visually appealing.

Also, don't bombard your reports with too many pictures. I posted one with 145 and I got some negative feedback.

The best battlereports are the ones that keeps the reader's on the edge of their seats, close games where by turn 5, either side could potentially win.

I tried doing a battle report the other day and tried to track every shot hit wound etc.

it took forever and although the game was fun for my opponent and I, it was alot of work.

How does everyone track the detail without getting bogged down by the numbers?

Thanks for the tips so far.

Have plenty of pictures, but make sure to give them captions to explain.

At the end of each player turn, put a picture that covers most of the board, so that we can refer back to it.

I don't mind fluff (I don't actually read it myself), but it annoys me when the actual battle report is hidden in the fluff. Feel free to write a novel, but make sure it is distinct what is actually the gameplay, and what is fiction.

Also refer to your units by what they are. It's fantastic that you named you Ork warboss "farty-mcstinky-pants". But in the battle report, please just call him a "warboss". Makes it much easier for those who don't intricately know your army (namely me).

NidPrime wrote:I tried doing a battle report the other day and tried to track every shot hit wound etc.

it took forever and although the game was fun for my opponent and I, it was alot of work.

How does everyone track the detail without getting bogged down by the numbers?

Thanks for the tips so far.

Mark down who won the combat and only add detail if it was unexpected or particularly good or bad dice rolls.

As a reader too much detail will put me off whereas some interesting info will keep me reading.

Pictures are great for refreshing memory of what went on each turn. If you take a picture of the entire board during each movement phase, you can compare the two and figure out which unit moved where.

As for the details of who hit who and what wounded what, either write it down, use pictures, use video recording, or use audio recording.

I personally take pictures and use a cheap digital voice recorder.

When I read a battle report, I hope to learn something from it. This means I want to see why people do what they do, and how that got turned into specifics on the field. That way, I can learn about different armies and different ideas of how movement and deployment work from how the specifics of the battle and how the plan lined up.

Needless to say, this is rather difficult with most battle reports which are just a loose description of the battle with or without pictures. If I can't tell what's going on and why, I often revert to merely looking at the pretty pictures. If there aren't even any of those, I don't bother with it at all.

One of the reasons I enjoy Ailairos' batreps so much is because he includes pictures with diagrams drawn on to illustrate the action that happened in the previous turn. So, after I've read a few, if I just want to skim a battle report, I can look at one of his, check out a picture and see how the flow of battle is going. If a picture interests me, I may stop and see how that turn went. Generally speaking, I read the entire batrep, but sometimes, I just like to look at pretty pictures!

What I don't like in batreps:

1) No pictures
2) One-sided games. What fun is it to read about how X army trounced Y army without any recourse?
3) People who don't own up to their own defeat. There's too many batreps where people make an excuse about what happened rather than admitting they might have just gotten outplayed or their folly taken advantage of.
4) Too much info. Not just talking about a wall of text here, but every detail need not be shared. Sum it up clearly and concisely.
5) No strategic narrative. Why didn't you go after that unit? Why didn't you sit on that objective rather than moving off of it? Some batreps are people just reporting how the dice fell. It's much more interesting to hear why you did or didn't do something. It makes all of us better players when we share the point-of-view with others.

Personally I write fairly narrative battle reports.

I usually can't remember the exact balance of forces (especially the enemy) but I can remember the flow of battle and very (un)lucky results for either side.

Obviously I write reports that I myself would enjoy reading, but that doesn't mean it is the only style I enjoy.

If you put in a lot of detail you need to have photos or maps to show what is going on.

Nothing is worse than to be told at the beginning that the Stealth Suits started four inches inside the forest on the left flank, and have to track their movement along with everything else without visual aids, in order to understand some detailed piece of explanation three turns later.

Painted armies
Interesting terrain
A story
Good camera angles (Try angles that people normally don't take when playing....top down views are something gamers always see...break it up by taking model eye shots)

Check my b-report in my sig for examples of those style shots


Good luck!

BatReps are all about balance, for me. Pictures are fun to look at and give instant recognition, but text is needed for any real depth to the recap. The preferred level of fluff inclusion seems to vary quite a bit from reader to reader, but the way I see it, fluff or not, a good BatRep needs a sense of narrative - I don't want a novel's worth of fanfic, but it shouldn't read like a stock ticker of wounds and saves, either. For the pictures, I like a mix of functional and narrative shots. Give me an overview of the board at each turn (especially nice when movement is marked, even if they're just crude arrows done in MSpaint) with a smattering of dynamic closeups of CC or a model's eye view behind the lascannon that took down a key unit from across the board.

Insight into the player's decisions is great, as well, so see if you can't get your opponent to weigh in after the match with some general commentary. One of the best BatReps I've ever seen was broken down turn by turn with pics and text, like I've mentioned. The thing I really loved about this one, though, was that at the top of each turn, there was a comment from each player about what he was trying to achieve in that turn. This, coupled with their opening remarks on general strategies and their final thoughts on the match, allowed me to enjoy the report as a learning exercise, a sporting contest between two armchair generals, and an epic struggle bewteen warring alien factions in the grim darkness of the far future (where there is only war). Not to mention the pretty pictures.

Check my sig for some awesome batreps ;-) Seriously though, I write them like I do because that is the kind I like to read - I like there to be some narrative because these games are so awesome if there is something more than just plastic men being pushed around.

Pics are good - I wish I remembered to take them more often sometimes.

Why you tried something in particular is very cool also. I used to do turn by turn, but really, no one cares. They want the main flow of the game and anything that was particularly cool.

Again, just write reports you would like to read and you will be doing great.

Last weekend I finally made a battle report, I have had the urge to do one since the days I began lurking dakka. I read almost every report that is posted. It has taught a lot.

The first reply pretty much sums my opinion on making battle reports but when I made it I just followed my intuition. I was pretty happy with it but unfortunately I did not get that many comments on it. Can one of you advise me in some way?

Anyways, I recommend making a few guidelines before you even start to battle, like taking a picture always at the end of a player turn. An overall picture gives the idea of the battlefield and how the battle itself is going to unfold (it is also important to write about your plans and tactics). A player might not even think about this idea during the game as some of the information is given. This idea however has to be conveyed to the reader too to make things less confusing etc..

Comments are a bit odd, actually. Typically you will get the most responses if there is a rules dispute or if either of you do something wrong. Something about the internet brings out the nitpick in everyone.

Honestly it used to get me down, I was like "dude, why bother, nobody reads the damn things anyway" but every now and again you will get an awesome comment that makes it all worth while.

Also, the more you post them, the more you will get a reputation as an awesome batrep writer and you will see that even though you have fewer comments than some your number of views will be really high. Also, you will start to get more and more PMs, which is what a lot of people do instead of commenting.

Also, something to consider is that many people will only read batreps for the army they play.


edit: because of this I try and leave some kind of comment on most of the batreps I read just to basically say hey, your work is appreciated, thanks.

True, each of your words is true... thanks.

I'll make another one this week and see how it turns out. I try to keep the battles small, like to a maximum of 1000 points per side so it isn't so much of a nuisance to make the report. Hopefully I get one of our experienced dark angels player against me.

These are some great comments, I can't wait to have my next battle to try my hand at doing a bat rep again.

Thanks everyone

Check out the battle reports done by Ailaros.

His have a great balance between interesting shots, informative shots, balance of fluff, his thinking as the game progresses, and how the dice fall for him.

His are the bar I compare the rest to.

The kind of detail though will re quire a lot of notes and stopping of the game in between turns however.

Thanks, but actually, I don't have to stop the game for any longer than it takes to take a picture (and even the close-in shots I do on my opponent's turn so I don't have to break up the action). I mark up the pictures the night of while I still remember totally what happened and with said marked-up pictures, it's pretty easy to remember what happened for the purposes of writing the report the next day.

The bother isn't that it requires lots of notes or stopping the game, the bother is that, including the game itself, it probably takes roughly 10+ hours worth of work to create a single report.

Pictures of painted armies on nice looking tables will definitely keep my attention.

A little fluff doesn't hurt, either. I like there to be a little bit of personality behind the models.