Allopatric Speciation, or is My Heroscape Your Heroscape?

Allopatric Speciation
Or is my Heroscape your Heroscape?

“Allopatric speciation is the phenomenon whereby populations are physically isolated by an extrinsic barrier and evolve dissimilarly due to the isolation- becoming two separate but related species.”

I am a single father with four kids, two jobs and a cat that throws up on everything. You might not think that we are scapers, but we are.

My son received SOTM one year for Christmas- after Santa had been looking at it in a TRU store for over a year. Money’s always tight, so Santa tries to be careful. The boys were small, 5 and 8, and games had to be simple and quick. We began to play Scape, the basic game.

Then we found a beat up ROTV on clearance at a big store. The boys loved all of the new figures, especially the Tarn. Quickly the basic game was not enough and we began to incorporate elements of the Advanced game while still keeping much of the basic game. OM’s never really caught on. Heroes have two lives, squads one. We use stats from the front with specials from the back. Q-10 was terrifying, and the Tarn, though well intentioned, were found lacking. We did not know where to get more Scape, or even if there was more Scape. No TV, no internet, but every night was a family game night.

The evolution began. Customs and house rules were born, play tested and evolved. We made our own cards and coloured them by hand.

We found a pack of Shades and Orcs! The excitement spurred us to create all sorts of new things. Bleakwoode, our first forest, was born. Thirteen homemade blackened dead trees that gave area bonuses to the undead and penalized the living with fear driven attack and defense penalties. But it wasn’t enough. The boys wanted climbable trees that were also destructible objects. The Gorn forest began to grow, fifty green trees that could be climbed and not only gave height bonuses but specials like Leafy Camouflage and the dreaded Drop Attack.

The forest was becoming a death trap, even with road hexes. Troops needed to move through faster and so we summoned horses to Valhalla. We made herds of homemade wooden horses, both squads and hero stallions, all with different specials.

Then, inspired by The Two Towers film, Isengarde Wolves- nasty hyenas that carried and attacked and smelled bad too. The latest in the vein is our first Mumak, the war elephant that carries troops and trample stomps. And from the Harry Potter books- Grims- huge black dogs that can carry small and medium figures and get shadow bonuses (long before MS3).

With the addition of long ranged catapults castles walls became destructible objects.

I read about Lexan mats and so we bristoboarded a sea and are just getting into boats and water battles.

Unable to find a lava set we made foam pieces the size of glyphs and made our own lava world. And because the foam is moveable, we soon had volcanoes that could erupt by whim of the 20d, rivers that could flood and now inspired by MS3 shadow tiles all over the place.

All of our customs were leading us somewhere- to the big game. A huge wall map, 240 grid squares, with three capitols and fourteen wells is now taped up in our play room. The capitols generate 50 points per turn and the wells 10 points per turn. The map is dotted with mountains and lakes. Thirty points builds a road through a normal square and ten points builds one cylinder of castle. Armies are represented by different coloured push pins and when armies meet it is played out on our now permanent standing hexes. Defensive structures are aided as required by scenario. 6d shakes by attacker and defender add randomized terrain- trees, bushes, water, snow, ice, lava, shadow, swamp, elevation.

Our map creation time has been reduced to about ten minutes per battle. And the battles are amazing- battles that you probably would never play- unbalanced battles of 60 defending points against a medium size 360 point invading army. Retreating to save points is allowed, as is taking hostages, prisoner trading, bribery, pay offs and extortion.

I recently won (ending with my twelve year old in tears) a 20 point defense against his 120 point attack. The Marro warriors literally couldn’t clone to save their lives.

This big game has taken over our lives- we talk about it in the car, we’re always adding something. In the middle of the night my son will wake me up to tell me a new special that he just thought of.

We play many battles but it is all part of a large on-going war detailed on the wall map. This is our scape, right now. I bet it’s different than your scape, but we can live in peace, right? If not, I dare you to invade….

I apologize for this too long premiere blog. I know the blogs are not that widely read (except by me).
I have lurked on this site for two years, ever since my one job got internet access.
Thank you scapers, for this amazing site. I have learned so much and enjoyed so much reading your battle reports, fiction, news and seeing your maps and customs.
I like too finding out a little about the real people behind the avatars.
And special thanks to Onacara, (he had a “I want to be a Site Supporter contest” and picked me and my sons!) Thank you Onacara. Happy Scaping!