Heroscape Mêlée

[Knight of Scape]

So I've trickled bits and pieces of the house rules that I use for Heroscape throughout the forums, but I think it's finally time to post the full set. The biggest change, and what I originally called Heroscape Mêlée is a replacement for Heroscape's OM system (I know that this has been tried by lots of people before in lots of ways, but I think that my approach is a bit unique and yields a game with just as much strategy as the original). This big change has led to some other smaller changes that got incorporated into the system over the years.

Core Rules:

The Initiative Line:
The big difference between Mêlée and regular Heroscape is the structure of a round. Order Markers are not used. Every figure on the battlefield gets to take a turn once each round (barring a small number of special abilities). At the start of the game, all army cards of all players are shuffled (or otherwise randomly ordered) and placed in a line (called the "initiative" line).

Each round, the player who controls the army card at the front of the line takes the first turn of the round with that army card. Then whoever controls the next army card in the line takes the next turn with that army card. This proceeds until the end of the line is reached. If, at any point during the round, all figures belonging to an army card are destroyed, remove that army card from the initiative line. After the player who controls the card at the end of the line has taken a turn with that card, the round ends. At the end of the round, take the card at the front of the initiative line and move it to the end of the initiative line. Then perform any end of round effects (e.g. Glyph of Wannok) and then start a new round.

Common Units (and Duplicate Uniques):
In essence, Heroscape Mêlée turns every common squad/hero into an "uncommon" squad/hero (however, they are still considered common for the purposes of special abilities). Unlike in regular Heroscape where you may use a single army card for many copies of the same common squad or hero, in Heroscape melee you must bring one army card for each copy of a common squad or hero that you bring. Furthermore, each set of figures must be associated with only one of the cards (put some kind of colored markers on the figures bases and on the army cards. Stickers work great, but my family uses little colored LEGO pieces). When you come to a common card in the initiative line, you may take a turn only with the associated figures (the ones of the same color as this card), even if this causes you to activate less than a full squad.

Returning a Previously Destroyed Card to the Initiative Line:
If a card was previously removed from the line due to all its figures being destroyed, but one or more of its figures is returned to the battlefield (e.g. due to a special power like "Rejected by Death" or "Zombies Rise Again" or due to the glyph of Sturla), place the card at a random position in the initiative line (determined, for instance, by a d20 roll). If that position is further down the line than the army card currently taking its turn, the revived army card will get to take a turn this round, otherwise it will have to wait until the next round. This rule also applies when figures did not start the game on the battlefield are placed there (e.g. due to a power like "The Drop").

Prevention of Multiple turns
Any special power that allows you take a turn with another figure "before" or "instead of" taking a turn with the figure on the army card being activated may not be used in Mêlée (note that powers like "Frenzy" or "Overextend Attack" that allow you to take multiple turns with the same army card are still used). Replace these abilities with ones that allow the associated units to be placed adjacent to each other in the initiative line (note that units that have this kind of power are usually less powerful in Mêlée relative to comparable units that do not). Some example replacements are given below, although this list is not necessarily comprehensive.

Note that special powers that allow you to place one card before another in the initiative line (rather than after) should be avoided, since these powers would allow a player to "freeze" the initiative line by repeatedly bringing back to the front of the line a card that was sent to the end of the line at the end of the previous round.

Human Champion Bonding (Knights of Weston)
At the start of each round, you may take this army card and place it after the army card of any Human Champion you control in the initiative line.

Hive Mind (Marro Hive)
At the start of each round, you may take this army card and place it after the army card of any common Marro squad you control in the initiative line.

Mind Link (Ulginesh)
At the start of each round, you may choose up to two Elf Wizard army cards you control and place them immediately after Ulginesh's card in the initiative line.

Summon the Rechets of Bogdan (Iskra Esenwein)
After taking a turn with Iskra... When the Retchets are summoned, place their card immediately after Iskra's in the initiative line, instead of at a random location.

Adaptation of Special Powers Involving OMs
Several other special powers do not make sense in a game without order markers and must be adapted to fit the initiative line. Here are suggestions on how to adapt some such powers to Heroscape Mêlée.

After revealing an Order Marker... powers:
These should activate any time the unit takes a turn.

Order Marker removing abilities (e.g. Crippling Gaze, Entangling Web):
If successful, these abilities cause the targeted army card to miss it's next turn (flip the card around to indicate this, and flip it back at the time the figure would normally take its turn, instead of taking that turn). If used on a common figure, these abilities affect only the army card that the targeted common figure belongs to, not all cards of the same common squad/hero. These abilities have no effect if used on a figure who would already miss it's next turn due to an OM removing ability.

Frost Rage (Evar Scarcarver)
When taking a turn with Evar, before moving, you may choose to activate Frost Rage for the duration of the round...

Concentrated Will (Shiori)
If this is Shiori has not previously taken a turn this game, or if Shiori did not attack on her last turn, add 1 to Shiori's attack and defense values.

Gladiator Inspiration (Spartacus)
All gladiators you control (except Spartacus) add one to their move number and roll one additional attack and defense die.

Point Costs in Mêlée
The point values on army card do not accurately represent their value in Heroscape Mêlée. We recommend selecting armies from Mêlée by having one player select two balanced armies and the other player choose which of them to play. Those willing to invest more heavily in the system may consider using the Personal Delta system to find appropriate prices for their collection in Mêlée.

Why use this system?

Heroscape battles can often feel a bit unthematic when each player is just sending a small portion of their army out to fight while the rest of it sits around twiddling their thumbs in the startzone. Mêlée changes this by letting all of your figures move out together, giving you the feeling of controlling a real army, and forcing you to figure out strategies that combine the strengths of all of your units.

The constantly shifting initiative line allows a lot of planning ahead, since you know who is acting next, and adds some interesting strategy in who to target, which choices between trying to take out a unit who is about to act, or a stronger one who doesn't take a turn for a while, as well as questions of whether it's worth taking out an army card at the front of the line which will move to the end if it survives. This movement to the end of the line nerfs the advantage of having a lot of cards towards the front of the initiative line to balance out the luck of the initial order randomization. It also simulates initiative switches in end-game scenarios to avoid endless hit and run tactics.

Heroscape army building is often restricted by order markers. Top armies usually rely on explicit synergies and draft lots of the same common army card to make order marker management easier. One of the coolest parts of Heroscape for me is the huge mishmash of themes and the way that you have robots fighting alongside dragons and gladiators and cowboys. Mêlée greatly reduces the benefit of explicit synergies and makes many new hodge-podge armies interesting and viable. Good army building in Mêlée tends to rely on having a good balance of unit roles (e.g. ranged units + a screen, anti-hero and anti-squad units, sharks vs. tanks), rather than on taking a bunch of the same card and the cards they explicitly synergize with.

I have played close to a hundred games with the Hersocape Mêlée system, and have enjoyed it enough that now at my house when we play Heroscape, we pretty much always play with the Mêlée variant.

Additional Variants to Use with Mêlée

The above rules are very playable and enjoyable on their own. However, the following three modifications were inspired by changes to the meta that Mêlée generates and we find that they improve the experience. They are independent of the rest of the system and could also be incorporated into regular Heroscape games with order markers (although I haven't tested those interactions much).

Start Spaces:
Traditionally, every Heroscape map has a 24-hex "startzone" for players to place their figures in. This limitation can prevent some powerful, but uninteresting builds, like bringing 8 cards of 4th Mass. In Mêlée, however, there's not nearly as much advantage to bringing a bunch of the same common squad. Rather than putting an arbitrary restriction on the maximum number of spaces your army can be, whenever I build boards, I designate one or more "start spaces" for each player.

When a player places their army, they place it one figure at a time. Each figure, when placed, must be as close to a start place as possible (that is, if the figure can be placed on a start space, it must. If it can't it must be placed one space away, if possible. Otherwise, it must be placed two spaces away if possible, and so on. This elegantly allows armies of arbitrary sizes (although it potentially gives a tiny advantage to large armies that can start key figures closer to glyphs or height).

Realistic Leaving Engagement Attacks:
When a figure leaves engagement, the figure they left engagement with rolls a number of dice equal to the attack value printed on their card, while the figure leaving engagement rolls a number of dice equal to the defense value on their card. The figure leaving engagement takes wounds equal to the number of skulls minus the number of shields (to a min of zero).

Intuitively, this rule just says that you get to make a free attack against anyone leaving engagement with you, but, like a regular LEA, it's not technically an attack to avoid a whole bunch of messy interaction with special powers (the non-interaction with powers still leads to some weirdness like Agent Carr only using his gun for LEAs, but it makes more sense than regular Heroscape's LEAs).

This has the effect of nerfing rats, who become extremely powerful in melee where they don't even require order markers to get into position, while still leaving most other melee figures capable of tying stuff down (a 3 defense ranged figure leaving engagement with a 3 attack melee figure is actually slightly more likely to die under this system than under the regular rules). You still have tricky decisions about when to disengage, but they come at different points than in regular Heroscape (some disengages that you'd never consider normally become reasonable when you can roll defense, some disengages you'd easily take normally become iffy if the disengagement has the potential to inflict several wounds).

It also buffs DW8K and DW9K a bit, since they gain functional disengage against a lot of enemies (it always felt silly to me that a deathreaver that could never kill DW9K normally, has a 50% of doing it in leaving engagement).

Nerfing Range On Height:
I know other people have come up with this idea independently, but I at least can say I've playtested it in a lot of games. When attacking a non-adjacent figure with a normal attack, a figure with height advantage adds 1 to their range instead of adding 1 to their attack value. When attacking a non-adjacent figure that is higher than the attacking figure, subtract 1 from the attacker's range (whether they are using a normal attack or a special attack with a printed range value). The defender does not roll an additional defense die. Attacks at a range of 1 add attack or defense dice for height normally. Special powers that are not attacks do not add or subtract from their range due to height, nor do special attacks without an explicit range value (e.g. Mimring's Fireline).

This power tries to mirror the regular rule (height doesn't apply when attacking with special attacks, but does apply when defending against them), but it makes range on height a bit less strong, while still making it useful to put ranged figures on height. This nerf is extra necessary in Mêlée, where it's much easier to quickly set up a ranged pod on high ground.

Conclusion:

Any thoughts or questions are appreciated. If anyone is interested in trying out Heroscape Mêlée, I'd be happy to play a game through the online interface (my brother and I have played it that way a couple of times, it's no more trouble than regular OHS). I hope that this post might give you some new ideas for ways to spice up your Heroscape games.