GAME - Heroscape
So my new addiction looks like this...
On the strength of a recommendation from an unassailable source, I researched and purchased Heroscape. Well, you don't exactly PURCHASE Heroscape, so much as you build it up over time and develop it to taste. Basically it's a war game between competing armies...from every dimension, era in time and level of imagination. Also, it's highly customizable, which is the word that gets me to drop my panties every time about anything. If I can manipulate something to taste, I'm going to become invested.
Regardless of how you decide to play, every game starts with these very unassuming pieces of plastic hexes. They represent various types of terrain, each affecting play in some way. Swamp, grass, sand, water, stone, and so on.
What you see here is NOT one set of Heroscape's worth of hexes. It's approximately two. Okay, it's not approximate: it IS two sets. The game is a few years old, the owner has discontinued it, and I'm late to the party. So I had to to catch-up. Blame Ebay.
Like I said: I get invested in stuff.
Here you can see the terrain being built up. I have some swamp connected to some grass, with a little spring of water in the middle.
GEEK ASIDE: During my research I discovered that the original master set - which gives you a bunch of tiles and some figurines to start playing with - had an earlier release version that included water tiles that sparkled a little. I thought, "nerds". Then I went on Ebay and cleaned some guy's sparkling tiles out.
You can see here that the hexes stack. Why? Because battlefields aren't level. And yes, different heights affect how characters interact. So if you see me standing over you, you're in trouble.
I have seen layouts and stacks of hexes that number in the dozens. Some of these layouts can get...extreme. But you don't need a lot to get going. As it turns out, I have a lot anyway. NERD.
So here's a figurine, which is what you use as an avatar to play the game. Actually, you play with a whole army, but it's guys like this that get the ball rolling. You can't see it, but he has a little card to the side that lists his attributes and points and etc. It's not that much information. In fact, I was surprised by how small the rule book was. Anyhow, this viking guy is on a base that let's him move around like a chess piece...a chess piece with a big fat spear.
Just so you can get some idea of the size of the game and the pieces, here's Erik the Viking (not real name) next to a USB drive. Kind of small, but about the size of most of the pieces used in this game. There are pieces that are smaller and some that are larger. Size matters, as it turns out. There are some that straddle two hexes when they move.
Here's a shot of Erik on what amounts to a hill, waiting for the game to start. What's he waiting on...?
His army! Erik's buddies, all spiffy and well-armed, are ready to get this party started. They're really hoping Jay-Z is going to show up like he said he would.
You can play the game with an army this size or larger, or I suppose smaller, but then you better have a really powerful character or your game will be real short. And THEN won't you feel like a heel for taking up the dinner table for a five minute game? Loser!
But the beauty of the game is in its armies. You can fight with vikings...
...or secret government agents!
What?! I know, right? Who invited them? Those guys shouldn't be on the same battlefield! But that's what's cool about Heroscape and, ultimately, what made me pick it up. I'm kind of past Dungeons & Dragons, son. I've done the medieval thing to death. I'm at a point that I want to play games that have more depth than that, more options, more possibilities...
...like an army of samurais!
Or an army of robots!
Or one big-ass dragon, whoopin' tail.
This samurai is about to get served, yo.
But wait! There's more!
One of the cool things about Heroscape is actually "illegal".
You can use miniatures from other games! It's not technically official, but since the owners of the game have decided to stop making the game anyway, who cares? Not that this stopped fans of the game when it came out. Somebody probably figured that you could import figures in the first five sales. People have always imported things into games to expand them and make them more fun. Heroscape was practically begging for it, with it's storyline spanning dimensions (which you don't need to care about to play but like everything else in life, adds flavor).
So there are actually a lot of possibilities for porting in different types of characters and worlds into the game and really having a battle royale! For instance, these figures are from at least two other games. I haven't re-based them to give them Heroscape bases, and I probably won't. Stuff like that doesn't really affect play. But if you like your pieces to look uniform, you're welcome to handle that. There is a great website loaded with customization tips (heroscapers.com).
This sexy band of dudes is a general warrior army I'll be porting in, assuming someone else hasn't already. If someone else has, even better: that's prep work I don't have to do! I can just go online (okay, heroscapers.com), see if anybody's made a card for these particular miniatures before, print it out and play with it. If no one has I can make a card for them or I can find a card similar enough and use it instead. Easy!
Here is an army of Amazons I'll be porting in. Sexy!
I'm calling them the "Anna Mae Brigade".
Here are a few members of a carnival creepshow I'll be bringing in as an army. If you hate clowns, then you'll hate this army, as you can see. Characters are originally from the game Horrorclix, but have already been ported into HS, I think. I just need to print out their respective cards to use them in the game.
The figure to the right carrying the pot of green goop is, in Horrorclix, called "Lab Assistant". I'm going to port her over as "Cookie" or "Lunch Lady". Every carnival needs a cook, but if I make her LL then I might use her in a future army of scary teachers or something. Hmmm!
This army was a real scoop for me.
I spent last night digging around the booger bin at The Soldiery.* I found a lot of abandoned figurines form other games that are either discontinued or no one around here plays in-store. I found enough stuff to build this awesome army - almost master set size! - of what I'm calling "The Cthulhu Wave". 15 pieces of creepy figurine madness, some of which have "official" ports already!
( * The Soldiery = eh. I prefer The Guard Tower these days on pretty much every level; it's just further out. Service at The Soldiery has always been bad, and as I get older, I spend too much money for bad service in a world when I can have this shit delivered to my house in two days. Plus, a lot of these pieces were just thrown in a bucket I had to sort through, some broken from other booger pickers. Guard Tower don't play that. )
Cthulhu close-up. Sexy Deep One!
When I'm done painting and porting this group of Sportsclix figures they'll be the Baseball Furies gang from the movie, "The Warriors". And guess what: someone made a port for them too, so I'll be playing with them sooner than I thought, if the port is legit.
Now if I could only find some figures to make The Warriors themselves...
Want some target practice? How about an army of zombies? All from Horroclix.
A piece-meal army I cobbled together that I'm referring to as my "Night Creatures" army. Gravedigger, Scarecrow, Headless Soldier, Goblin, Imp and Nosferatu himself as the team leader! Ports exist for at least one of these already that I've found.
How about a whole army of creatures of the night to fight? Zombies and Night Creatures combined!
Finally a mash-up of secret agents and robots, just for kicks.
Like I said, the possibilities are limitless! There are a number of official expansions that I don't have yet (ninjas, cowboys), and there are a lot of games out there whose miniatures are just the right size to incorporate into HS.
Did I mention the customization of terrain and so on? no? Next time. I spent a buttload of money on raw materials for things like WALLS, son. Walls.
This is my new obsession. Can you smell the Fritos, baby? NERD!
On the strength of a recommendation from an unassailable source, I researched and purchased Heroscape. Well, you don't exactly PURCHASE Heroscape, so much as you build it up over time and develop it to taste. Basically it's a war game between competing armies...from every dimension, era in time and level of imagination. Also, it's highly customizable, which is the word that gets me to drop my panties every time about anything. If I can manipulate something to taste, I'm going to become invested.
Regardless of how you decide to play, every game starts with these very unassuming pieces of plastic hexes. They represent various types of terrain, each affecting play in some way. Swamp, grass, sand, water, stone, and so on.
What you see here is NOT one set of Heroscape's worth of hexes. It's approximately two. Okay, it's not approximate: it IS two sets. The game is a few years old, the owner has discontinued it, and I'm late to the party. So I had to to catch-up. Blame Ebay.
Like I said: I get invested in stuff.
Here you can see the terrain being built up. I have some swamp connected to some grass, with a little spring of water in the middle.
GEEK ASIDE: During my research I discovered that the original master set - which gives you a bunch of tiles and some figurines to start playing with - had an earlier release version that included water tiles that sparkled a little. I thought, "nerds". Then I went on Ebay and cleaned some guy's sparkling tiles out.
You can see here that the hexes stack. Why? Because battlefields aren't level. And yes, different heights affect how characters interact. So if you see me standing over you, you're in trouble.
I have seen layouts and stacks of hexes that number in the dozens. Some of these layouts can get...extreme. But you don't need a lot to get going. As it turns out, I have a lot anyway. NERD.
So here's a figurine, which is what you use as an avatar to play the game. Actually, you play with a whole army, but it's guys like this that get the ball rolling. You can't see it, but he has a little card to the side that lists his attributes and points and etc. It's not that much information. In fact, I was surprised by how small the rule book was. Anyhow, this viking guy is on a base that let's him move around like a chess piece...a chess piece with a big fat spear.
Just so you can get some idea of the size of the game and the pieces, here's Erik the Viking (not real name) next to a USB drive. Kind of small, but about the size of most of the pieces used in this game. There are pieces that are smaller and some that are larger. Size matters, as it turns out. There are some that straddle two hexes when they move.
Here's a shot of Erik on what amounts to a hill, waiting for the game to start. What's he waiting on...?
His army! Erik's buddies, all spiffy and well-armed, are ready to get this party started. They're really hoping Jay-Z is going to show up like he said he would.
You can play the game with an army this size or larger, or I suppose smaller, but then you better have a really powerful character or your game will be real short. And THEN won't you feel like a heel for taking up the dinner table for a five minute game? Loser!
But the beauty of the game is in its armies. You can fight with vikings...
...or secret government agents!
What?! I know, right? Who invited them? Those guys shouldn't be on the same battlefield! But that's what's cool about Heroscape and, ultimately, what made me pick it up. I'm kind of past Dungeons & Dragons, son. I've done the medieval thing to death. I'm at a point that I want to play games that have more depth than that, more options, more possibilities...
...like an army of samurais!
Or an army of robots!
Or one big-ass dragon, whoopin' tail.
This samurai is about to get served, yo.
But wait! There's more!
One of the cool things about Heroscape is actually "illegal".
You can use miniatures from other games! It's not technically official, but since the owners of the game have decided to stop making the game anyway, who cares? Not that this stopped fans of the game when it came out. Somebody probably figured that you could import figures in the first five sales. People have always imported things into games to expand them and make them more fun. Heroscape was practically begging for it, with it's storyline spanning dimensions (which you don't need to care about to play but like everything else in life, adds flavor).
So there are actually a lot of possibilities for porting in different types of characters and worlds into the game and really having a battle royale! For instance, these figures are from at least two other games. I haven't re-based them to give them Heroscape bases, and I probably won't. Stuff like that doesn't really affect play. But if you like your pieces to look uniform, you're welcome to handle that. There is a great website loaded with customization tips (heroscapers.com).
This sexy band of dudes is a general warrior army I'll be porting in, assuming someone else hasn't already. If someone else has, even better: that's prep work I don't have to do! I can just go online (okay, heroscapers.com), see if anybody's made a card for these particular miniatures before, print it out and play with it. If no one has I can make a card for them or I can find a card similar enough and use it instead. Easy!
Here is an army of Amazons I'll be porting in. Sexy!
I'm calling them the "Anna Mae Brigade".
Here are a few members of a carnival creepshow I'll be bringing in as an army. If you hate clowns, then you'll hate this army, as you can see. Characters are originally from the game Horrorclix, but have already been ported into HS, I think. I just need to print out their respective cards to use them in the game.
The figure to the right carrying the pot of green goop is, in Horrorclix, called "Lab Assistant". I'm going to port her over as "Cookie" or "Lunch Lady". Every carnival needs a cook, but if I make her LL then I might use her in a future army of scary teachers or something. Hmmm!
This army was a real scoop for me.
I spent last night digging around the booger bin at The Soldiery.* I found a lot of abandoned figurines form other games that are either discontinued or no one around here plays in-store. I found enough stuff to build this awesome army - almost master set size! - of what I'm calling "The Cthulhu Wave". 15 pieces of creepy figurine madness, some of which have "official" ports already!
( * The Soldiery = eh. I prefer The Guard Tower these days on pretty much every level; it's just further out. Service at The Soldiery has always been bad, and as I get older, I spend too much money for bad service in a world when I can have this shit delivered to my house in two days. Plus, a lot of these pieces were just thrown in a bucket I had to sort through, some broken from other booger pickers. Guard Tower don't play that. )
Cthulhu close-up. Sexy Deep One!
When I'm done painting and porting this group of Sportsclix figures they'll be the Baseball Furies gang from the movie, "The Warriors". And guess what: someone made a port for them too, so I'll be playing with them sooner than I thought, if the port is legit.
Now if I could only find some figures to make The Warriors themselves...
Want some target practice? How about an army of zombies? All from Horroclix.
A piece-meal army I cobbled together that I'm referring to as my "Night Creatures" army. Gravedigger, Scarecrow, Headless Soldier, Goblin, Imp and Nosferatu himself as the team leader! Ports exist for at least one of these already that I've found.
How about a whole army of creatures of the night to fight? Zombies and Night Creatures combined!
Finally a mash-up of secret agents and robots, just for kicks.
Like I said, the possibilities are limitless! There are a number of official expansions that I don't have yet (ninjas, cowboys), and there are a lot of games out there whose miniatures are just the right size to incorporate into HS.
Did I mention the customization of terrain and so on? no? Next time. I spent a buttload of money on raw materials for things like WALLS, son. Walls.
This is my new obsession. Can you smell the Fritos, baby? NERD!