Mars Attacks?

[cobravigon]

Has anyone done any Mars Attacks unit cards for the new miniatures game? I am thinking about ordering some expansion sets just for the fun of it, thought I would see if anyone else had the same idea to bring them into the Heroscape fold.

[lefton4ya]

Ack, Ack, Ack!

I saw those on clearance in miniature market yesterday and would have bought some had I not noticed they did not come pre-painted. I think 40s-50's pulp Martians would be a fun squad in Heroscape, but haven't though of cards/powers.

[cobravigon]

I went ahead and purchased a squad of grunts from Miniature Market last night. I don't mind painting them, but making cards that are balanced is what intimidates me.

[Kajoq]

I'd definitely help play test/play with them if cards were made! I backed the KS for Mars Attacks pretty heavy and just topped off my armies some more with MM's black friday sale. I've got about 50 of my models painted already and have started working on some of the terrain

[japes]

Originally Posted by cobravigon

I went ahead and purchased a squad of grunts from Miniature Market last night. I don't mind painting them, but making cards that are balanced is what intimidates me.

I wish I didn't mind painting. After seeing your thread I checked out the game and was tempted but I'm spoiled with C3G and Heroclix.

Cards though I could help with.

[Kajoq]

Originally Posted by japes

I wish I didn't mind painting. After seeing your thread I checked out the game and was tempted but I'm spoiled with C3G and Heroclix.

Cards though I could help with.

If you want a little guidance on where to start here is a BGG link to someone who made reference cards for all of the MAs units:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/1...s-descriptions
You'll have to be logged into BGG to DL it, but this will let you see all of the different units built in to the game

[ollie]

It's been a while since I saw the movie, but an easy way to get balanced "customs" for figures you want to include is to crib them directly from existing units.

The Stingers are the ones that come to mind. Rename the Stinger Drain power Ack Ack Ack, get a friendly soul to make a fresh card and you have a cool thematic unit to drop straight in to the game without worries.

An alternative would be the Stormtroopers from the Heroes of Star Wars project. The Imperial Markmanship power is both awesome and, I think, fitting here.

Other than that they wander around shooting guns saying Ack Ack Ack the only other thematic consideration I remember is that

Spoiler Alert!

they are vulnerable to easy listening music.

I have no idea how to represent that in 'scape. Maybe

Spoiler Alert!

Do-be-do-be-doo
When defending against attacks from an opponent's figure, if that opponent crooned in a cringeworthy manner while rolling attack dice then the Mars Attack grunts roll one fewer defence die.

Or maybe not.

[japes]

Friendly soul here.

[cobravigon]

Awesome, thank you!

[japes]

Whenever you finalize your idea's just post them here in text format and I will see what I can do.

[igelkott]

For a fun exercise I thought I'd make up some customs for the Mars Attacks board game figures and this thread seemed like an appropriate place to start. I made up some stats for a bunch of the martians, I haven't looked at the humans yet. I am learning about Heroscape since I never really played before and am just getting into it after being sucked in by the Planeswalker game. I have read a bunch of stuff on this website but there is a TON of custom material so that there's no way to catch up. So I'm putting out what I've done so far and soliciting input on what I've done and based on that I might continue to work on it. Obviously there's a ton of work to do still but this is a start. Think of this as an early early draft to test the waters.

But first some background about the original game. Below you'll see links to all the MA stats for the various units in the Mars Attacks game. The numbers are target numbers to roll or higher, so lower is better. Heroics is kind of like extra hit points but they can be used for special abilities. You can see all the figures and their original game stats on some pages I made up a while ago here:

http://home.armourarchive.org/member...asoldiers.html
http://home.armourarchive.org/member...s/maheros.html

The Mars Attacks game is based on the Topps cards (mostly the new series, not so much the original cards) and the recent comic books. They aren't based on the movie so some things are different, like there's no sensitivity to crooning music and the martians are pretty much human sized, not short as in the movie.

So here are some notes on what I've done so far:

General comments
----------------------
Most of the martians have some form of armor in the game. So I included this as Tough in Heroscape. I'm wondering though if that might be overkill. In HS it looks like this should be much more rare. I've kept their defense low I think and I'd be willing to lower it a bit more if needed for some cases.

I didn't attempt to map MA stats to HS stats. I sort of just used them as suggestions for how to differentiate units.

I haven't even attempted to assign any points yet. I think it's too early to do that. But if some things are way OP than they;ll need to be adjusted.

I tried to include some things that would synergize with some HS units but I didn't want to end up with a lot of this.

Here are the Heroscape stats I've come up with so far:

http://home.armourarchive.org/member...0martians.html

Individual unit comments
------------------------------

Banner Bearer -
I took his ability from the orc banner bearer.

Beloss Bel
I came up with a disguise ability but then found something close to the same thing with a Princess Leia custom which looks like is more complete so I'll be switching to that if it's ok to use stuff from people's customs.

Chief Surgeon Gorl
This guy has a pet mutant named Wrex so I created the Wrex Fetch ability which synergizes with that figure, plus it synergizes with the Scince division troopers abilities also. I think it's very thematic but there wasn't anything like it that I saw in HS. He's also a mutant insect handler.

General Tor
I stole this straight from Kato Katsuro's ability but applies to Martians, of course. I think this works.

General Zar
He has a cool force sword so adopted Armor Piercing for him and made him a tough hand to hand fighter.

Martian Dredd
Steal everything from Judge Dredd

Supreme Regent
I made up We Are Your Friends for this guy. I don't know if he should have a wider effect range for this?

Wrex
Already talked about with Gorl. I don't don't know what species he is... Mutant?

Grunt
I envisioned these guys to be the reckless but dangerous common invaders of the Martian force. I haven't found anything to reflect their character yet. I was trying to think of something that reflects their easily distracted nature in the movies, which sometimes made them easier to kill.

Grunt with Freeze ray
I came up with the freeze ray special attack which I got from the mindflayer, but I don't think I'm quite satisfied with that. I didn't want to make a complicated mechanic that required a bunch of extra bookkeeping but that's where it might end up.

Grunt unit commander
a grunt with extra life.

Marine
These guys are the real soldier class of the Martians. I made them better fighters than the grunts.

Marine with rocket launcher
Gave him armor piercing for his rockets.

Marine Commander
He's a capable soldier with leadership that I got from some other HS figures.

Science Division Trooper
I had a little trouble with Science Division to begin with. The original game had them able to collect specimens for victory points but HS doesn't have anything similar. So I finally came up with the Sample Collector ability which I think is really cool. It allows them to collect opponent figures and store them back at the lab in stasis for later experiments. Then I added Lab Attack Boost which motivates them to collect even more specimens. I just had this vision of these guys running around in mobs tackling opponents and injecting them with sedatives and then dragging their bodies back to the lab...... Note that the victims aren't dead, they're just in stasis so zombies can't come back

SD Engineer
I need to do something unique for this guy but I'm not sure what yet.

SD Commander
He gets a cool shock stick. I'm not sure if losing OMs is really what I want (similar to freeze ray problem)

Stealth unit
These guys I got from the Ninja

Stealth sniper
He's just a stealth Martian with Deadly Shot

Mutant Bugs
These are great minis and wanted to make them tough scrappers. They are even more dangerous when there's an Insect Handler around. There are actually 2 types of bugs, spiders and antlike things. In the original game they have the same abilities but in HS we could make them different somehow. Perhaps some more work is needed here.

Attack Saucer
This has a few variants but I'm not sure at all how to approach this, since there aren't any vehicles in Heroscape.

Giant Robot
I measured him and he's 18 tiles tall. I need to do some more work because he has a choice of several arm attachments, claws, freeze ray, shrink ray, or heat ray.

[igelkott]

I was thinking about the Giant Robot today. I would think he should get some ability to ignore terrain. I then remembered the AT-ST should be similar so I looked it up, and sure enough there it is. So I'm stealing that and making it a little higher because Giant Robot is a little bigger:

BIPEDAL WALKER
When moving up levels of height to move onto a space with the Giant Robot, do not count spaces for the first four levels and only count one space for each two levels after that. A Giant Robot does not have to stop its movement when entering water spaces, ignores Heavy Snow, may not move up more than 10 levels in one move, may move through small and medium figures, never takes leaving engagement attacks from small or medium figures, and never makes leaving engagement attacks.


And then because he's really big, I'm trying this out:

Freakin' Big
Giant Robot does not gain targeting benefits from being on higher terrain. Opponents do not gain level benefits in combat unless they are 10 levels or more higher than Giant Robot.