HeroScape is coming back!

[Good Pig]

Originally Posted by Cyborgs Gaming

That being said. I agree that Master of tides is overly complex and shouldn't have all 4 of those abilities. I think just not having that familiar beast bonding thing would have made her fit the theme of water control better and removed a lot of complexity. Also probably wouldn't even really need to lower her points that much as she seems a bit OP for those points right now. However I haven't played her at all yet, so maybe not.

If you look at the unit composition of the Battle Box, it's Ewashia plus two familiars vs. three pirate heroes. I would venture to guess familiar bonding (and maybe points discount) was given to Ewashia to balance them with the pirates team. The intent of this set was to be designed for brand new players. From a product design perspective, it would potentially avoid redesigning the familiars and throwing the power levels of other finished cards out of whack.

[nyys]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

More complexity =/= more power. Now if you're worried about complexity creep, that's something else.

That's a much better way of putting it, complexity creep is much more of what I was thinking but didn't covey.

Originally Posted by Grungebob

Practicing restraint when designing is an important discipline. If a designer has the right tools though, it makes this task easier. Cluttering up a card with a common ability like flying actually makes the card itself more difficult to decode.

Another great point. It's on the design team to not fill that empty space just because it's empty. I'll just have to trust that will be the case until it's not (and that's not to say I'm against 3+ power cards, I'd just prefer they be on the rare side).

[nyys]

Originally Posted by foofoofun

Complexity is something that can catch people off guard. I think game designers are particularly susceptible to it because when you're very familiar with games it can be hard to notice when something has become unapproachable.

Agreed and that's not a dig at designers. I'd compare it to writing a rulebook. After playtesting your game over and over and over again some things are going to feel intuitive or obvious. But have to keep in mind that won't be the case for someone coming from a blank slate.

Originally Posted by Cyborgs Gaming

Major Q9, Syvarris, and Marro Stingers all only have one ability each. Yet those 3 are some of the most powerful units in all of classic scape with Syvarris being from the original master set.

Syvarris and the Stingers are great examples of units that probably took some restraint with all that empty space left on the cards.

[Tauros105]

I think it's a tad more complex, but not strictly so. Killian vane, ordo borealis, and others have one ability. I also think using 2-3 weaker powers over something like stealth dodge is in the name of balance and avoiding making crazy units early. Also ewashia's abilities totally could have been consolidated to 3.

[Tmac2200]

I can't be the only one excited for pairing Ewashia with Vipers, Marro Warriors, & Microcorp Agents. Dropping water on top of lava rock to make high ground lava rock safe to stay on. If a board is dominated by a single pathway you can drop water on it to keep non-slithering units slowed down. Having portable water to respawn Marro Warriors. It all sounds very fun to me, I'm not concerned with the complexity.

[Bonesaw]

Originally Posted by Hogg

I wish they had not made the minis as detailed so they wouldn't need as extensive of paint jobs and would be cheaper for both reasons. Plus they would match the original aesthetic better. Hopefully when they develop new stuff they simplify the minis and paint to drive the price down and make them match original HS better.

The first thing I noticed when watching the stream. Agree 100%. I will not be paying that and also not buying unpainted minis. The new trees look pretty cool but I am not even sure I would pay what they want for that.

[Just_a_Bill]

Originally Posted by Grungebob

Unfortunately, as it stands, I’m going to pass on buying any of this.

I'm in the same boat. I'm happy for those who are excited about these offerings, but neither of these two revival attempts have tapped into the things that made me spend literally thousands of dollars on original Heroscape.

Originally Posted by boromir96

I imagine there will be people that buy multiples of sets for the walls and wellspring water

Maybe, and for a minute or two I thought I might be one of them, but most of the terrain in the master set is stuff I already have tons of; and you literally only get 7 segments of wall (not counting the connectors), probably 2 or 3 segments of which are the ruined end-pieces. My guess is 3 longs, 2 shorts, and 2 ends, which isn't going to make much of a structure beyond the original RotV ruins. We saw a lot of cool wall pictures during AoA, but this will be just a tiny sample; nowhere near the structure-building experience of FotA.

This would be very cost-ineffective for me. Given the age we live in now, my guess is that lots of people are just going to 3D print their own wall pieces (they do look rather easy to reverse-engineer), and quickly develop variations on those shapes that will be far more interesting and versatile than anything Renegade could hope to keep up with.

Originally Posted by foofoofun

Honestly I think a good number of the new units have too many abilities.

With the preorders now (somewhat) open to examination, I'm getting an uneasy overall sense of not quite enough design discipline. Somehow the new cards just seem overall "sloggy" or "gooey" rather than smoothly digestible. Part of it is the number of abilities, part is the wordings, and another part is whatever is going on with character naming. The names themselves seem awkward, we've got diacritical marks that almost nobody will know how to type, and it seems that now most characters' names have to end with "the somethinger of somethingness." Ewashia's name is already awkward and on-the-nose, and by the time I finished reading her card I was already weary of having to read that name over and over again. Classic Scape didn't have this problem; most of the names were well chosen, but these modern attempts all feel like they're drifting into the realm of little boys sittin' in the clubhouse going "Yeah man, Cruushathränxlt the Stabbinator of Goorlaxx is gonna have a SWEET HUGE sword dudes!"

Really miss the old craftsmanship.

Originally Posted by STAROCEAN980

I like the idea of the big tree in the jungle set

It's basically the same trees we got in Ticalla, just redesigned so they look less like real trees and more like Playmobil parts. (Again, the loss of craftsmanship and beauty is a huge loss for me.)

Originally Posted by STAROCEAN980

(And I'm still puzzled as to why they don't feature them in the picture on the back of the box. But I guess they don't show the wellspring tiles there either.)

I noticed this too. It feels like they've made a big mistake "hiding" some of the things we want to see the most. I also have to wonder if continuing to show painted models in the sets that don't have this is going to create confusion and disappointment in the casual market.

Along these lines, I'm kind of baffled why the unpainted miniatures have a wash. Surely this adds more production cost, while potentially making the player's painting efforts more difficult or possibly causing some loss of detail. But I'm not an expert here, so maybe this is a non-issue. I just don't see that throwing a wash on the unpainted figures is going to make everyone feel better about the lack of paint.

But really the biggest reason I won't be buying any of these is the surprising lack of anything that really appeals to me. I was excited to see there was a new Marro until I drilled in to see that it's a Marro mashed up with a Pirate, wearing ... pants? ... and with a backstory of hating and wanting revenge on Utgar -- but he still fights for Utgar and synergizes with other Utgar figures? I guess I'm just stupid, but this confused me. Marro are foundational to Heroscape's personality, but we only get one in this whole wave and it's this?

It seems like the message here is that the old ways are done and gone, and if I want new content I have to change what I love or maybe even how my brain works. Feels like it's a new clubhouse that I don't belong in any more. Everything is so new and innovative and groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting that there's no room for old-school Scape nostalgia to tempt me in. There's probably some GREAT gameplay here, I have no doubt. But once again the aesthetics and charm and heart that I fell in love with have been pushed off to the side. For some reason we just can't have both any more. Maybe people like me are an anachronism and the market just doesn't care that much about these things now? It's sad but maybe that's reality.

Originally Posted by wriggz

I would not worry about unpainted deterring people. This is not unpainted to be painted

Maybe that explains the wash. Still seems weird to me.

Originally Posted by Bonesaw

The new trees look pretty cool but I am not even sure I would pay what they want for that.

To me they look more artificial and globby, somehow. That old excitement of wanting every new terrain piece just didn't happen. The pictures really reminded me of smooth, glossy Playmobil pieces. Might be all hard plastic now, hard to tell from the pictures since most of them are digital renders. (Another marketing decision that I think is hurting the excitement of this initial offering.)

It's hard not to keep thinking, hey Renegade, why don't you want to just show us what all of these things really look like?

[Robotech Master]

I'm not seeing a problem with number of abilities looking at the whole set:

Figures with two or less abilities ( 7 )
Onshu: Two abilities, one of which is flight
Kita: Two Abilities
Killian: One Ability
Dorim: Two Abilities
Admiral EJ-1M: Two Abilities
Knight Irene: Two Abilities
Frostclaw Paladins: Two Abilities

Figures with 3 abilities (7)
Fia
Bok-Burn-Na
Revna, one of which is Flying
Raakchot
Xenithrax, one of which is Flying
Raelin, one of which is Flying
Exiles

Figures with 4 Abilities (3):
Knaves, Lovi, and Ewashia

I get that those 3 are like the new outliers, but they are a small sample packaged alongside plenty of examples of extreme simplicity like Vane's one Shotgun, Onshu's simple fly and special attack, and the Frostclaw's simple Bond and Run.

[nyys]

I haven't really looked at any of the cards yet, but 3 out of 20 is 15% having 4 abilities. That's kind of a lot. At that rate (assuming it doesn't, god forbid, go up) there'll be a whole heckuvalot of 4 ability units out in the wild after a couple years of releases.

Games evolve, I realize that, but that makes it sound like a very different game.

Of course we also don't have the full sample size of the full boat of units for AoA, so that % is likely (hopefully) smaller.

[boromir96]

Number of powers on a figure’ card is a meaningless statistic IMO. There are figures with less powers on their cards that are more complex and hard to play against than Ewashia. For the same point total you could draft two units with 3 powers each. That’s more powers to keep track of while playing the game, but no one considers that a problem.

[Robotech Master]

Originally Posted by nyys

I haven't really looked at any of the cards yet, but 3 out of 20 is 15% having 4 abilities. That's kind of a lot. At that rate (assuming it doesn't, god forbid, go up) there'll be a whole heckuvalot of 4 ability units out in the wild after a couple years of releases.

Games evolve, I realize that, but that makes it sound like a very different game.

Of course we also don't have the full sample size of the full boat of units for AoA, so that % is likely (hopefully) smaller.

I agree with Boromir above, but also for me this kind of speculation gets to a pretty wild level where we're thinking percents of ability numbers will be a trend as opposed to a coincidence of which figures get released in what order, and how they were designed.


The fact is there is a spread of figures with very simple powers or low number of powers in the AoA release, and there are some that are more complicated. And there are some that have 3 rules but some of them are basic things like Flying, Disengage, and Phantom Walk. The only assumption I'm willing to make from what we have seen so far is that we will continue to get a mix of figures with only one or a few abilities and figures with several. And that variety should make a lot of different player types happy.

[nyys]

What?!? You don't like my irrelevant and basically made up numbers?