'Scaper of the Month - May 2018

’Scaper of the Month
Ronin
Author: The Grim Reaper’s Friend

To be honest, I always love it when one of our ’Scapers of the Month incorporates some humor into their interview. I feel like it adds some personality to the replies you don’t get if you’re completely serious. I had fun with Ronin’s interview for that reason. Ronin has been working with us in the Codex for some time now, consistently supplying us with high-quality C3G Strategy articles, so I was excited to learn more about him.


Profile

Who are you really?
Nate Hutchings. Not much of a reveal unless you happen to know me both here and in real life, and never put two and two together.

How old are you?
Twenty-four, in people years.

What is your occupation?
Software engineer—mainly working in software testing.

What’s another board game/RPG you enjoy and why?
Scrabble. Only other board game I play on the regular, unless you count Super Scrabble as a separate thing. I think the main thing I get out of it is complaining about crappy tile draws. I mean, what in God’s name am I supposed to do with “TRTRTRT”?

What other interests do you have besides HeroScape?
I enjoy hiking and I’m pretty big into comics—particularly Spider-Man, Thunderbolts, and any sort of Marvel “deep cut” book.


HeroScape

When and how did you get into HeroScape?
My timeline’s a little confused at this point, but it was definitely somewhere in the back half of classic ’Scape’s run, and had to have been after the Marvel set had come out. Thanks to a slightly late arrival (and limited capital, since I was still in my early teens), I never got hold of a lot of the figures from earlier waves.

Nothing too interesting on the “how” side of things. My brother and I were looking for a new time-sink. I’d seen ’Scape in the store and was curious about it, and he’d played it one time at a friend’s house, so we gave it a shot. We started with the Marvel master set and branched out from there.

I noticed you’re fairly involved in C3G. What got you started there?
I drifted away from Heroscape when they switched over to the D&D units, and I got into comics in a big way after that—I’d always been a superhero guy, but I hadn’t been as much of a comic reader until around that time. A few years after falling out of the ’Scape habit, I came back to it and discovered C3G.

C3G had gotten pretty big already at that point, and I was impressed with the scope of the project. I started helping out here and there with testing and some organizational stuff, and I kept getting in deeper until I wound up where I am now.

What is your favorite C3G unit?
That changes now and again, but probably Star-Lord is the one most consistently up at the top. He’s a super fun unit to build wonky armies around. Honorable mentions go to Blink, Shocker, Buffy, Sif and Baron Zemo (Helmut). Those are all units that tend to pop up in my armies more often than they really should, and I’m always loathe to cut them out of whatever army I’m building.

What about a favorite classic ’Scape unit?
It’s actually been quite a while since I played classic ’Scape, but Nilfheim and Kee-Mo-Shi were a couple of my go-tos. I’m a sucker for a cool sculpt.

Describe your favorite HeroScape moment.
I had one really close supers match with dok that sticks out in my mind. I caught a few lucky breaks (and a few weird breaks—I lost every initiative except the two where dok controlled the Glyph of Dagmar, as I recall) and the match came down to Star-Lord and Iron Patriot fighting over the Cosmic Cube in the endgame. I lost out by a hair, but it was a really great game.

Is there anything you would change about the game (unit, rule, mechanic, etc.)?
Super, super petty complaint, but I’d get rid of “clone” as a species. That’s always bugged me about Red Skull.

What is your favorite aspect of HeroScape?
I think it’s the simplicity and flexibility of the system—it really lends itself to customs and that’s a big part of what’s kept me around. In a lot of game systems, it wouldn’t be feasible to implement crazy, large-scale, high-quality customs projects like you see for Heroscape.


Community

Can you tell us how you’ve gotten to where you are now in the community?
Good old-fashioned skullduggery and the odd assassination plot.

What’s your favorite experience involving C3G?
In a long-term sense? I love being able to design for the community and the sense of expanding a world that comes with contributing designs to C3G. I’ve never had a personal customs thread and there would probably be more freedom with that, but I really do love working around the design constraints that come with making a design fit neatly into a whole universe of cards.

I particularly like bringing oddities and overlooked characters into the game. I don’t think I’ve gotten more offbeat yet than Carmilla Black, but I’ll try to top that before too long.

More short-term, probably the most exciting moment for me was when my Kang design won the public design poll. That was the first design I got to lead and it had taken me a while to get that breakthrough.

You’ve been part of the Codex now since your first C3G Strategy Article, posted in April 2017. Can you tell our readers how you got started with the Codex, and what it’s like in the group?
Not too wild a story, really—got asked to sign on by The Grim Reaper’s Friend (which is the person who sent me this question, so it feels a bit odd to refer to him in the third person) and I agreed to it, for the sake of having a writing project to do on the side. Mainly that’s what I like it for—it gives me some incentive to do a little writing here and there. Sometimes I even manage to meet the deadlines.

Can you tell us the story behind your title?
Yes.

What do you enjoy most about Heroscapers.com?
Of all the internet forums and social sites I’ve been on, it is far and away the friendliest and most reasonable. Plus it’s centered around a great game.

Is there any member of Heroscapers.com you’d really like to play against?
Hmm. Might be fun to go up against Lazy Orang in one of the supers tournaments.


Lie Detector

Three truths and a lie

• I once missed a day of school because there was a rabid raccoon at the bus stop that I decided not to tango with.
• I have accidentally attended a cello recital.
• Once, when asked for my name at a party, I accidentally (and incorrectly) replied that I did not have one.
• I have had to cut a hike short in order to avoid a close encounter with a mountain lion.

Last Month’s Lie (Soundwarp SG-1)

• I’ve never been out of the USA.
• I have over a thousand figures waiting around to be used as custom fodder.
• I have enough different Star Wars themed shirts that I could wear a difference one each day for two weeks straight.
• I have every Transformer action figure released in the USA in 1998.

Three Fun Favorites

Favorite Movie Genre and Movie
Superhero movies and, uh, maybe The Other Guys? Those things don’t quite go together, I know.

Favorite Book Genre and Book
Comedy and Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Favorite Song Genre and Song
Not sure on the genre—maybe “Ol’ ’55” by Tom Waits on the song front?


Closing

What message do you have for the ’Scaper community?
I come in peace.

Whom do you pick for the next ’Scaper of the Month?
Let’s go with johnny139.

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