Agent Minivann

With the recent news that the *cough* esteemed management of Wizards of the Coast has pulled the plug on Heroscape, I have spent a little time reflecting on the last five years.

At about this time five years ago, I was employed by a company that was just pulling itself out of bankruptcy and a change in ownership. There were many changes going on with the company. It was precarious, but things were starting to stabilize. I had a distant goal of coaching college volleyball, but I was content to stay put with the relatively good pay of my current job of ten years.

In December of 2005, I think as much because they did not want to pay out the company's standard severance package plus unused vacation time, I was fired on trumped up charges. While I knew I was in trouble, but I had not yet learned that I had lost my job, I was walking through a Toys R Us with my wife doing Christmas shopping for our children. I had about $60 budgeted for my own gift. As we were...

Some time ago I had an idea about making wholesale changes to the packaging scheme for Heroscape. I think that the D&D master set just drove home that I'm onto something good. Walmart shelves have space for a Marvel size box and a box or two of small expansions.

Part I - The Big Sets
In this new packaging and distribution scheme the big sets change a bit. For D&D, Marvel, and Fortress of the Archkyrie nothing changes. For everything else it does. First the existing master sets, Rise of the Valkyrie and Swarm of the Marro, get divvied up into smaller chunks. For the RotV it gets separated into about four equal portions. SotM goes in half. The large expansions get put in with one of the Master Set portions. Each master sub set would have a couple 24 hex pieces, a selection of the other standard terrain, one type of expansion terrain, expansion LOS pieces, and two players worth of order markers. Each set then gets a selection of the unique figures that...