Steve,
good question... the answer may be to your liking (I hope so!)
The biggest criticisms of BLB were about the lack of examples and explanations. This I took on board with Republic to Empire and guess what? We got some crit because there is too much .. yes you guessed it.. examples and explanations!!
BLB 2nd Edition introduces refined mechanisms for some 'clunky' things that needed modification and my thought was to strip it back to just a rule set without the associated frippery. I wanted this to be comprehensive and detailed which means it will probably extend to 50-60 pages. BLB 1 was only 56 pages including the scenarios and events.
So, on to the next part of the project:
We are currently working on several new books to accompany BLB. These include scenario books (each should contain at least 10 but probably 15 scenarios). Each scenario will have historical context and background, orbats, special scenario conditions, a map and photos.
At the moment the first book looks like:
Jacobite Wars 1689-1719.
We will I hope follow with:
Great Northern War (possibly incorporating Skane War)
Flanders 1689-1698
The War of the Spanish Succession
In addition we are looking at a particular piece of weighty source material for the period but more of that later.
How, you might say are you and Clarence going to achieve all this if your day jobs keep getting in the way
??
Easy. The scenario books will be written by us AND other BLB players / period specialists. I will edit, and get everything into our 'style' whilst Clarence will work his usual magic in the visuals department.
We will use the technique applied with Republicto Empire... work with great painters and collectors and photograph some of their collections as part of the eye candy fest. That way we can honour the work of some really talented people and not have the burden of having to paint 1,000s of models.
Rather than have to wait 10 years for all of this stuff coming out it can smoothly roll out over a relatively short period of time.
The work is well underway.
BLB2 is not going to be BLB with new lipstick. It will preserve the strongest principles from the core rules, reinforce this with better explanations whilst introducing some new mechanisms. It will have a new cover, all new photos and a look more in line with R2E.
Hopefully there is enough here to reassure you Steve that Mr H & Mr H are hard at work!!