HeroScape is coming back!

[Nukatha]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

I just wish japes and I had been able to convince the other admins. Maybe a groundswell of public support would do it?

I HAD TO PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE DARNITALL.
(Do not take this seriously, the Report button exists for true rulebreaking, I'm okay with neg rep going away).

[Lord Pyre]

Any minor concerns can also be addressed via PM, no need for the anonymity. All it does is allow for nasty comments that are hidden. (Yes, I received some as a kid way back and it really sucks). All it does is encourage bullying.

[Just_a_Bill]

Okay, so having found much better pricing at the online retailers, today I started thinking maybe I should take the plunge. Maybe I was just put off by a couple of details I ran into early, and there's some really good Heroscape story waiting for me. So I dove back in and checked out some more details on the figures.

The Frostclaw Paladins have a very cool concept and look -- possibly my favorites among these new offerings -- so I started there. Their planet name is trying to be clever but falls flat (how interesting that on your planet, you sleep at night). Okay, whatever, some things just gonna be dorky. Their class should be KNIGHTS, not KNIGHT, but again, whatever. I'm wondering why they bond with only Champions and not Knights, but probably there's a gameplay reason that isn't immediately obvious to me. This leads to their boss...

Knight Irene. Irene? You've got to be kidding me. What a terrible name for an alien bear from another planet. It doesn't even fit the Heroscape naming cadences. Worse, she doesn't actually have the class of KNIGHT. Great, another example of a character who, for anyone with half a brain, obviously has a certain role, but doesn't actually count as that role for gameplay. What could possibly be the benefit of purposely making the game counter-intuitive? It's baffling. Are they trying to make sure we can see that they don't understand Heroscape? Because it seems like they don't understand Heroscape.

Next was Admiral EJ-1M, a Soulborg jammed into a pirate costume, complete with cape! And a bunch of lore about his feelings. Vydar Soulborgs have army ranks, but this one is navy. I guess he commands a fleet of ships we aren't told about? Or he is so proud of being a pirate (but not really a pirate) now, that he changed his name? Never until now have Soulborgs been so flamboyant and dorky and confused about their rank, all at the same time. Anyway, it also seems that the pirate terminology hierarchy has already broken down. Bok-Bur-Na deals with the fact that Captains are Pirates but don't actually count as Pirates by saying "a Captain or Pirate you control" -- but I guess he was so busy thinking about how terribly he misses his family that he forgot about Admirals also being faux Pirates. Already this production team is showing us the fragility of this unstable terminology house of cards.

These figures might (even probably) have great gameplay, but thematically it's hard not to see some of them as a joke.

Didn't get any farther after that. Pirates that aren't actually pirates, a knight that isn't a knight, a Marro and a Soulborg who have squishy feelings and are nothing like the rest of their species... damn, why has the Age of Annihilation gone out of its way to make it SO HARD to want to own this mess? (I guess it meant the annihilation of what Scape once was.) Now I feel stupid for giving it another chance.

[Nukatha]

Regarding Knight Irene being a Champion, this isn't Renegade's doing, it is the War Council.
Note: Knight Primus, and Knight Adjutor Oberon (who was renamed to Irene) both being Champions.
See also Sir Denrick, Sir Gilbert, and Sir Hawthorne being Champions, or best of all, the DEATH Knights of Valkrill not counting as Knights either.

[IAmBatman]

The Knight/Champion mix is something from the very beginnings of knights being in Heroscape, right?

[Alexandros]

Irene is a much worse name. Changing the name to force in an Eric Clapton reference is a baffling decision.

The adjutor title was cool too, but if they kept it around the reference wouldn't work.

[gbizzy]

Originally Posted by Alexandros

Irene is a much worse name. Changing the name to force in an Eric Clapton reference is a baffling decision.

The adjutor title was cool too, but if they kept it around the reference wouldn't work.

Who the hell is Eric Clapton?

[kolakoski]

Wel met!

Originally Posted by gbizzy

Who the hell is Eric Clapton?

This explains a great deal . . .

[Alexandros]

Originally Posted by gbizzy

Who the hell is Eric Clapton?

Controversial artist who is known for his rock and blues music, racist diatribes, "accidentally" letting his kid fall to his death, suing women who list CDs on ebay, and recording a fairly well known cover of the song Goodnight, Irene - among other things.

Get it? Knight Irene...

[nyys]

Originally Posted by Alexandros

Irene is a much worse name. Changing the name to force in an Eric Clapton reference is a baffling decision.

Is that really where it came from? That's a joke I'm just not getting, right?

[Alexandros]

Originally Posted by nyys

Is that really where it came from? That's a joke I'm just not getting, right?

All I know is that one of the playtesters alluded to that being the reference in the discord. I'd love for that to be wrong or a joke.

[ThrasherDarkrai]

"Goodnight, Irene" isn't even really a Clapton song, right? It's an old folk song, first recorded in the 1930s by Blues/Folk singer Huddie Ledbetter (better known as "Lead Belly"), that got covered by numerous people over the years. I suppose it's possible it's a reference to the song, but it's not clear to me at all it's a reference to Clapton specifically.