Heroscape @ our Board Game club party

[Vivaldi]

Since I'm pretty stoked about 'scape right now, and about to expand my collection, I took my modest collection to our end-of-year board game party.

At the moment I own RotV, SotM(figures), and most of Ullar with scattered units up until wave 9.

I wasn't even sure if anyone would be interested in playing, as I knew there would be piles of other options there(There was over $1,000 worth of boardgames stacked up on the table for people to play), and the club focuses on board games as opposed to tabletop and miniature games. I was pleasantly surprised by the response and, most importantly, got to play a few rounds.

In the end, I played 4 matches, against 4 different players, with 3 being unsolicited challengers.

In preparation, I printed up a couple of the quick reference rules cards and laminated them to make things as easy as possible. I got there before most of the crowd so I claimed a table and set up a map using my RotV terrain.

The best battle - 3 player FFA
I recruited one guy and another asked to join in, so I had them just look through the card and pick what they wanted. We decided on about 350 points to keep it fast. I explained the rules while they perused and gave them the 2 rules cards for reference.

The Armies -

Me- SotM Drake, DW8K, Tarns
Neil(Passerby)- Raelin ROTV, AE, Major Q10
Dan(Familiar with Scape as he is from Ohio and it seems relatively prevalent there)- WoA x1, Su-Bak-Na, Ne-Gok-Sa, Theracus

Let me say I was very impressed with Neil's pick of units having never seen the game before. We ended up having to gang up on him a bit once his army started doing well. Additionally this proved to be maybe the most fun game.

Round 1- I move out with my tarns to try to screen for DW8k. Dan moves the WoA out. Neil mows down two of my tarns with his machine pistol in the first turn. On my second turn I move out DW8K and Rapid fire 2 WoA. Dan moves Theracus out without NGS. Theracus subsequently takes two wounds from the Major, and I finish him off with DW8k on my last turn. NGS comes out, and Raelin positions herself for Major Q10 to move up later.

Round 2- The AE drop and Neil wins initiative, and wins it from here on out. He moves up and wrist rockets my tarns into oblivion. Now Neil has a nice little pod covering most of the map. I have all my markers on Drake this round, as I am expecting DW8K to get focused and killed. Dan moves both SBN and NGS towards DW8K over his next two turns as I send out drake who expels an AE from Height and scores two wounds on SBN with his pistol on his way towards Q10. Neil continued his onslaught of turns 2 and 3 taking shots at 8K, Drake and NGS with little effect. NGS moves onto even level with 8K and misses his mind-shackle and can't break the 8 defense dice.

Round 3 The Clash
Q10 comes in rockets blazing putting 1 wound on Drake. I charge the distance and come up to even height and drake throws a mean swipe with 4/6 dice as skulls, but Q10 counters with his 7 defense dice pulling through with just enough shields. Then it gets interesting when SBN swoops in and bites at Q10 scoring 1 wound. Q10 replies with a rocket for each of us scoring wounds on both of us. Then I have Drake do the coolest thing, he grapple swings through the engaged Q10 and SBN onto a perch of height without leaving either engagement, then lands a crushing blow on Q10 for 2 wounds. A 4 wound SBN bites at Drake and scores a solid 2 wounds leaving him with 2 left. Q10 takes a break as the 3 remaining AE assault DW8k, and NGS hitting NGS, but 8K continues to defend like a champ. The round ends with a defended attack from drake on Q10 and NGS trying to break 8k again with no luck.

Round 4 and cleanup
The round starts with the AE again raining bullets down on us, where they finally drop SBN. I follow by finishing up the 3 way engagement with a final swipe from Drake to disassemble Q10. NGS tries again to shackle 8K and fails, but the Deathwalker roll had to be coming up and he smote the robot with a just 2 skulls on his attack dice. Now end game comes in. Essentially, the AE flee from Drake and destroy NGS and the final WoA. Drake eliminates Raelin in the meantime and then clears the boards of AE with 2 life remaining.

Other battles-
Eric who was watching our first battle and had taken a liking to the Marro Hive challenged me next. I picked a hero heavy army, and his stingers basically rolled me in just a few rounds.

Rematch with Eric- After a shameful defeat, Eric eagerly accepts a rematch at ~ 600 points. He stocks up on Marro, while I bring a Raelin backed Elf posse. This time I roll him with Jorhdawn blasting through multiple Marro repeatedly by focusing SBN and the Rebirthing Hive.

I think the loss was a bit hard on him as far as introducing him to the game. I should have picked a stronger army the first time, so I didn't end up building him up just to crush him to save my ego .

Final battle-
Dragon Guy- Sonlen, Charos, Mimring
Me- Drake, Jotun, Syvarris

Quick match since this guy was pretty excited about the dragons. I had him on the run, but really in the end I forgot how long it takes to kill Charos, and he beat me out.

This post is much longer than I originally intended. Here are some thoughts.

Even with just the two master sets and a boring rolling hills map, we had a lot of fun and the game got much more attention amidst competition than expected. I was even thanked by the club organizer as he noticed so many took an interest in playing.

The reference cards were good in that they helped the guys who bothered to read them. Still, some guys never bothered to read them so I ended up explaining just about as much anyway.

I like Heroscape

[chas]

And the Heroscape Community likes you! Thanks for spreading the gospel among the heathen...