[Mombo101]

The following comments I'm about to make aren't going to be popular, and might anger some. All I ask before you comment is to please consider my viewpoints...

It came as an utter shock to me to see that Heroscape has been canceled. It also came as a shock, because I have met a number of great people playing this game, and I have met a number of these people playing this game at National Heroscape Days, various tournaments, and heck, just at peoples houses. So, the idea that there will be no more new releases, no more waves to speculate about, or to toy with in play testing before they are released, quite utterly, sucks.

Like many, I have thought about the ideas to keep Heroscape alive, keep it active, keep it going. I toyed with the idea of making custom home figures to play with my friends, or to test out our own cards with already released figures. I toyed with the idea in my head that maybe new cards for old figures would do the trick in the long run, but in the end I kept coming to one conclusion, it won't keep the game going.

I have played a number of games which have gone under, everything from HeroClix, to the WoW card game, to Netrunner, to Star Wars CCG, to the Lord of the Rings CCG, and everything in between. When the game is canceled the immediate knee jerk reaction is to do something which keeps the game alive, but it only prolongs the inevitable. In the end, no matter how much people tried to keep these games current, whether through custom cards, or whatnot, ultimately the game still died, just slower and more prolonged. And honestly, the prolonged death ruins the game for many people, it ruined many games for me.

Now, I'm not trying to sound like a naysayer, and I'm definitely not trying to insult the creators of this game. What I'm saying is, is that we need to be realistic. It's all well and good to want to make customs, but it won't get new players interested. With a game like Heroscape, unlike card games, is that there needs to be easily and readily available product to purchase. Nine times out of ten, you will not convince a new player to play and start collecting if they need to hunt through a slew of locations to find pieces, nor go on a myraid of websites to get the "custom" pieces everyone's clamoring to purchase. These players are just going to shrug their shoulders and move on, and in the long run this is going to cause people to slowly leave the game and the trickle effect as a result will cause this prolonged death.

To make a long story short, when the next wave is released it means that it is the last wave. Rather than try and prolong the tortuous realization that the design team will not be releasing any further product, let's enjoy it for what it is, what we have, and what we can do with what is already in existence in the future. Let's not try to ruin a good thing by prolonging the inevitable...