There is an article on wizards.com (the official Wizards of the Coast website) that details some of the going ons in the wizards game world. Heroscape gets a mention as does heroscapers.com. Wizards links right over to us in there article, expressing that we are a good place to come for heroscape information. No longer are we the lovable but ugly step child that gets hidden away from formal company. Wizards is putting us out in the spotlight, directing fans towards us.

Heroscapers remain hopeful as Wizards does some really cool things like having their staff members show up on the forums, requesting our input on the game, and now recognizing us on the official site.

We all still look forward to seeing how Wizards handles product releases. Heroscapers has brought you news of some possible terrain releases that have met with mixed reaction, but the fact that we are getting news at all, is something to be positive about. Keep checking back here for the latest....

If you have not been following along on our forums you have missed a great deal of Heroscape News.* Wizards of the Coast representative - Paul Barclay has been answering questions posed to him by the community of heroscapers gathered here.* We have compiled these questions and Paul's answers to them.* I now bring the results of that ongoing Q & A session here to the front page.

Design Questions:

Is the design team staying on HS?
WotC: Yes, kind of. There's been some shifting of responsibilities. The Heroscape playtester team have been given more responsibility for design and development of the sets. They've done a stellar job over the last 5 sets, and we're expecting them to do even better over the next 5 and beyond. Craig is working with them and with the R&D lead here at Wizards (Henry Stern, designer of Vegas Showdown) to keep everything running smoothly.

Will CVN play any role in future design/development? If so what specific role? ...

We recently learned that Wizards of the Coast plans on creating terrain packs to be made available for sale at hobby stores, also known as Friendly Local Game Stores.

Paul Barclay from Wizards informs us that the hobby stores are unable to stock Master Sets, they simply can't make a profit from them. This leaves a dilemma when trying to bring HeroScape into the hobby market, as you can't play the game without the terrain provided in Master Sets. Wizards' solution is to create terrain sets that are heavy on hexes and include a couple of line of sight blockers.

One such set is a Desert Terrain Set that will make use of repainted Glaciers from the Thaelenk Tundra Set. Paul sent me a conceptual picture of this Desert Terrain Set. Note that this is not necessarily how the final product will look.

Wizards sent me this teaser photo of Wave 8 in its packaging.

Wizards of the Coast is the world leader in hobby gaming, and a subsidiary of Hasbro. If you've ever been to a gaming convention, they are the guys with the gigantic booth swarming with game fans. They produce a number of massively popular games, including Magic the Gathering® and Dungeons and Dragons®

Monday, January the 21st I found myself on a conference call with a round table of Wizards executives. They setup this exclusive meeting for the sole purpose of answering any questions I have about Heroscape's transfer over to Wizards of the Coast.

Already, dear heroscaper, your head is spinning with questions. You love every nuance of this game and are concerned about what this means for the future of Heroscape. Well the fine people at Wizards plan to interact with the fans that have gathered here on heroscapers.com and answer some of those questions directly. This interaction from those who will be working on Heroscape hearkens back to days of old when designers...