Heroscape an excellent miniatures game

By MICHAEL ERB
Staff Writer
The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
www.newsandsentinel.com

PARKERSBURG - A war is being waged in the realm of Valhalla, and warriors from around throughout time and space are being drawn into the fray.

Heroscape is a 3-D miniatures skirmish game for 2-4 players ages 8 and up that blurs the line between toy and wargame. Featuring constructable 3-D terrain that can be built into nearly limitless combinations and pre-painted plastic miniatures, Heroscape at first glance has a lot of flash and visual appeal.

But Heroscape also is an excellent miniatures skirmish game that is easily expanded and customized. The base sets contain terrain and a selection of characters featuring multiple factions waging war within the realm of Valhalla. Characters represent individuals or small squads of 3-5 figures, and encompass different time periods and genres.

The gameplay on its face is simple. Each character or squad member has a set of stats, which are numbers representing movement, attack, defense and range. Not all characters have ranged attacks, and range is counted as the number of hexes between characters, so a base range of 1 means a character can only attack an adjacent figure. Movement is likewise based on the number of hexes a figure can traverse.

Attack and defense represents the number of dice rolled by each character. The special dice included in the game each feature two sides with a red alien face (indicating a hit), two sides with a blue heraldic shield (indicating a defense) and two blank sides (a miss). An attacker tries to roll as many red sides as possible, while a defender rolls for blue, with each shield countering a strike, and each successful (unblocked) strike causing a point of damage.

Most unique heroes will have from 3-8 life points, indicating how many hits they can take before they are destroyed. Most characters in units - those groups of characters that use the same stats - have only 1 life each, and can be destroyed with a single successful strike.

So for example, a hero with a 5 attack rolls five dice and gets three strikes. A defending member of a unit with only 1 life rolls and a 3 defense rolls three dice and gets only two shields and one miss (or a red side, which would count as a miss). They would take 1 damage and be destroyed.

Characters or units are given a point value, so you can set the size and difficulty of the game by choosing a specific point-limit for your army and building accordingly. There is a basic game that uses just the main stats of each character, and then an advanced game that brings in all sorts of special abilities for characters and terrain modifiers. The advanced game is where Heroscape really shines, with tons of strategy, but the basic game is simple enough that Iáve played it with my 6-year-old son and still had a lot of fun.

One thing I do like is a character's ability to both move and attack in the same round, which keeps the gameplay moving fairly quickly. Since both sides are rolling dice for attack and defense, there isn't much down-time for any player, and the rounds progress at a good pace.
You can purchase additional forces in pre-packaged boosters. Many feature one or two new units or several unique heroes. The nice thing about this is you know exactly which pieces you are getting, so if you are into samurai or cyborgs or Wild West figures, you can buy just those pieces. Newer sets are coming out all the time with interesting characters and units that add new twists to the game. Most boosters are about $10-$12 each.

There also are supplemental terrain sets, which usually run around $20 and feature a theme, like a forest bridge or lava or ice. They usually contain new characters and some scenarios or additional rules. There also is a very nice castle set, and as always the pieces are modular, so you can combine multiple basic and expansion sets to create new terrain and scenarios. I've seen pictures online of some incredible battlefields and models created by fans using multiple sets and their imaginations.

A really nice aspect of Heroscape is its accessibility. You can find basic sets and even boosters and expansions in almost any toy store and places like Wal-Mart and Target in the board game section. The cost for getting into the game is relatively cheap, starting at about $40 for a base set (and there are different kinds of base sets, some of which you can find for much cheaper), as well as a spin-off game called Marvel Heroscape, which features much-more powerful heroes based of Marvel Comics, such as Spider-Man and the Hulk.

The games publisher Hasbro recently transferred control over the Heroscape line to its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the group that creates the âDungeons & Dragonsã miniatures and role-playing games and the highly successful trading card game Magic: The Gathering. I am excited to see what kinds of new units, heroes and terrain will be coming under the WotC banner, which has a long history with fantasy games and miniatures. The quality of Heroscape materials already is top-notch, and I am expecting that to continue and perhaps expand under WotC.

If you are looking for a cool miniatures game with a lot of possibilities and fun, Heroscape is a great place to start.
For more information on Heroscape, visit www.heroscape.com, and for more game discussion and reviews, visit my blog at http://merb101.livejournal.com.

Heroscape is a wonderful game. It is quite pricey if you want to collect all the miniatures or play with at least 2 common squads (which is necessary to use the whole potential of those units) in your army, but offers great replayability. Over the course of the last 4 months, I have played over 100 games with my sons and we still have lots of figures to add. What I love most is customization: you can do almost anything you want with this game. You have control over the length of the game. If you want a shorter game, build a smaller map or limit your armies to low-point cost. You can introduce special house rules to make each game a different experience, e.g. special objectives, time limits, reinforcements, asymmetrical gameplay, etc.

I also whole-heartedly recommend Heroscape. In our case, it was love at first sight.

Good review, just one correction. The dice have 3 skulls and only one blank spot, making attacking a little easier than defending.

Nice reveiw!
Just another correction to add, the squads only come in groups of 3-4, with one exception squad of two, none with five members.

Appreciate the heads up. I actually had thought of that while writing, but didn't have the dice in front of me.

ME

Somehow I'd gotten it into my head there was a five-man squad, but I think you are correct.

ME

He is correct. Most squads are 3-4 members....only the Zettian Guards are a two-man team. There are no squads with more than 4.

great review! if you really want to get nitpicky then the heros have 1-9 life points

A great part of the game is Heroscapers.com where you can print any official card and just use proxies, which is really a amazing feature.