Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
This past weekend, I had the chance to meet up with my friend Rick (rfedin510) and play several rounds of Heroscape. At first, we did a three person general battle with our other friend Jim, which are always fun, but after Jim fell asleep early on in our Heroscape Game Night, we decided to play some 1v1 games.
Our first two games were fairly competitive, and we played with our own pre-drafted 500 point armies on BoV maps. After about two matches of normal 1v1 play, and with the time creeping earlier into the morning, we decided to have a bit of fun, and we started coming up with different ideas for having more interesting games. These games were in no way competitive, and were incredibly fun. Here I will post some ideas, including some that Rick and I came up with, to making your Heroscape Game Night more interesting, as well as giving others the opportunity to share their ideas. 1.) General-Based Armies In these games, each player chooses from one general, and must create an army with the amount of points given. It is recommended that, since players are dealing with a narrower selection of units, that the point limit increase in order to make more thematic armies. This also opens up the door to figures that don't see a whole lot of playing time, and to different strategies.2.) Large and Interesting Maps (Glyphs, Terrain, Obstacles) Games with large armies tend to last pretty long, but it's best to give each player several options on where to play within the map. These kinds of maps differ from the typical BoV maps for competitive play. One suggestion is to have separate parts of the maps have different themes, such as a forest, a glacier/ice area, a volcanic area, etc. This gives the maps a flare, and makes it more enjoyable to play on. Playing with Glyphs is definitely something that should be included in large games with large maps. If playing with more than one person, these glyphs should be placed so that everyone is fighting against each other for the glyphs, and that not one person seems to be getting teamed up on by the other players. I would suggest looking at StarOcean980's Map Thread for large map ideas. You can search through these maps depending on how many terrain sets you own. Fortress of the Archkyrie is definitely a fun terrain set to own for these types of maps. Using ladders, high walls, and doors are fun ways to create obstacles for players.3.) Large Battles / Team Battles 4.) Objectives/Scenarios General-based games, large battles, and team battles are nice, but many people have never really tried objective based maps. Those who are familiar with the Master Set Campaigns are familiar with these types of games. In this type of game, players compete against each other while at the same time trying to complete an objective. Some objectives can be:5.) Choosing Random Armies These games are probably the most fun of them all. They really allow for more units who are not usually played to be played, and also bring a lot of laughs to the table. In these games, players will most likely not have the type of army they want for competitive play, and their armies can be chosen in several ways.6.) Creating Custom Units These are just some ways to liven up your Heroscape Game Night. I'm sure many of you have used similar, or different ways to make things interesting. If you have your own way of making a game night more fun, or would like to add on to anything I have said here, feel free to post your ideas and opinions here. Thanks for your time, and I hope that others find this useful for their next Heroscape Game Night! |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
All of these are excellent suggestions.
General-specific armies is also a great idea if you're playing with some inexperienced players. The draft is far too intimidating for them, as is just choosing an army from the massive stack of cards many of us possess. Instead, I find it helpful to ask, "what do you prefer - good guys, bad guys, sci-fi, fantasy, or historical?" And then I hand them the stack of cards for the appropriate General. If they choose Utgar, however, it's also helpful to further subdivide it for them, by suggesting Orcs or Marro, etc. |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Very nice and some similiar ideas to what my group has done.
Our most recent "fun" match idea is Rainbow Play where we pick a sole army card from each general (excluding Aquilla) to make a 500 point force. We have a few variations of this, we've done it with any 1 army card and also with heroes only. We also discussed playing where you are allowed to have multiple of the same card from a specific general if its common, though you must still have atleast 1 unit from each general. Its been fun because we've started to use many of the non-competitive figures! |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Nice ideas! King of the Hill sounds like it could get quite chaotic near the end as players throw everything they've got into the fray.
I'm a fan of big battles, even though they take a long time(see my signature link for ideas on how to make them quicker). An idea I'm using for random armies is to randomly deal out X number of Heroes and X number of unique squads to each side, with no point total. The goal is to kill off a number of opponent's figures equal to your starting points(or their whole army). |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Great ideas and great post, Gomolka. We've played many of those ideas and they work well (I love to play non-kill 'em all games).
One challenge with some of the scenarios is trying to find a balance between army sizes and specialized objectives. For my playing group, the secret has always been that we try our best to find a balance (often using the closest Hasbro scenario available as a general guide) and then all agree that we're going to just enjoy what happens, even if it turns out that a specific scenario or idea is too easy or hard for one side or another. It is our "we are just having fun" rule, but we like to reiterate it before trying a specialized objective. (For more options for drafting, check out my thread, see the link in my sig; for Hasbro's sites, there is a link in the Index, also in the sig, to Official Scenarios. And, Monkeyclops, I will add your draft idea to my thread, if you don't mind--I've seen it mentioned before, but didn't have it in my thread--thanks! Beowulf, if you want to clarify the specifics of your random draft method, I'd love to have you add it to my Draft thread as well.) |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
I really like playing the capture the flag games at our house. Each team has a flag (we use the yellow glyphs from the Marvel set) and you have to land on the enemies flag and get it to your starting zone before being killed. Charos does well at this since he has 9 lives :D
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Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Great ideas, Gomolka! I'll be using a few of these soon... :D
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Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Yes, great post, all good ideas. Consider rep bosoted.
I also recommend using the Heroscape Quests that you can download somewhere on these forums. They are a wonderful way of playing Heroscape. my friends and I enjoy playing Heroscape in this manner. It allwos you to use units you don't usually use. Also, along the lines of what you said with the random draft. Here's what I like to do with a random draft. Let's say you're playing a free-for-all Heroscape game with 4 people. Have the stack of cards and randomly choose 3-4 cards for each person. If you give out a common unit nobody else can get a copy of that common unit except that person. Don't worry about the point cost, you can pretty much ignore it. What cards you get you have to play with. In a free for all it usually works out in that the people will gang up on the person with the most points, leaving the poor chumps stuck with bad cards the opportunity to stay alive for a while. I find it pretty fun and it definitely allows for some odd combinations of figures. This works great for people who don't like to draft or pick armies because they don't know enough of the figures to make a decent army. |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Very nice idea's! My gaming group has used many of those with great success. A personal favorite of mine is general specific armies. I just love the idea of an elf army battling a marro army or a knight with 4th Mass army taking on a Vydar soulborg army. That is one of the beauties of Heroscape. Lots of diversity.
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Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Nice, Gomolka. Another quite easy option, but one which changes the dynamics of the game quite drastically, is the "Heat of the Battle" set-up, where you take turns placing card's worth of figures on the map anywhere (except on glyphs or other people). It really is very different from starting zone play.
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Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
An easy way to do random drafts is to use the Surprisingly Tart Heroscape Draft Wizard. I haven't been there in a while, but its a great way to generate multiple armies in a hurry.
For a little more control, you can have the Wizard generate more armies than you need and have each player pick their favorite. Discussion Thread: http://www.heroscapers.com/community...read.php?t=102 Direct Link: http://waronline.net/heroscape/draft/hsdraft.htm |
Re: Heroscape Game Night Ideas!
Cool stuff.
Are there other threads like this I can look at to get more ideas? |
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