I've been hassling Joe Knapper (AKA spider AKA the Michael Jordan of Heroscape) for the last couple years to write an article about what sort of preparation and skills are really important for going home with a trophy or 20 dollars worth of stuff you already have.

But he never does. Truth is, he probably doesn't enjoy writing as much as I do, and I finally won a tournament again, beating him along the way no less. I liken it to when MJ came back after baseball and tried to jump right into the playoffs and wasn't even able to wear his own jersey right away. He'll be back, just like the terminator he was.

All right, that's enough analogies. On to the advice, in semi-chronological order. The even shorter version of this is to be confident without being overconfident.

1. Don't stress about your army build.

Nine times out of ten, I may come up with thirty different builds, but the one I actually end up playing is one of the first...

I was going to a give a flippant response to this thread asking why we like Heroscape so much. That answer, in sum:

"Because it has an Orc on a mother****in' T-Rex."

Yeah, that's right. You know that Van Ness, Daviau, and Baker are all proponents of a creationist theory, at least on Grut, because Orcs and Dinosaurs lived at the same time, and that's totally badass. I'm actually not sure which of these guys is personally responsible for Grimnak, but I want to shake his hand and commend him on a job well done.

I waxed nostalgic not too long ago about how sweet Krug is, and I'm sure my appreciation of Nilfheim is pretty well known now, at least to site regulars... but Grimnak was the first figure that I picked up and said "YES! I need to draft that one!"

It's a relatively simple concept, but executed so perfectly. There are two parts to the figure, which are both translated so well into this little game of...

Not a whole lot to say.

Between watching all the new D1 units get played at a high level, participating in a budding tournament scene for Summoner Wars, and just hanging out with some good friends for one really long weekend away from work, words cannot adequately express how much pure enjoyment I expect to experience for those four days.

If you're on the fence about going, and you're reading this, start saving up now (or last August).

Krug is the closest that Heroscape has come to design perfection. From his sculpt to his personality, from his special powers to his class, from his price to his posture, from head to toe, Krug really stands out several years after his release. Why is that?

He is imposing, yet lovable. He's got a big, bulky sculpt and a wicked looking club for a sword, and yet, when you look at his big dumb face and sagging paunch, you get the feeling that he's just getting dragged along on this war because he's very suggestible. And really big. He's the Lennie Small of Heroscape.

Okay, so people think that he's cute for a brute. That's weird. What about gameplay?

When it comes to the left side of the card, his powers are rather elegant and work well together. Sure, we had already seen Double Attack with Syvarris, but combining that with Wounded smash for an exponential increase in raw threatening might was a stroke of design genius. As a Relentless...

Discuss.