HeroScape is coming back!

[Shiftrex]

@kolakoski

I mean... you do you.

We can play anything we want at home obviously but if Heroscape has a sanctioned way to play, that is the game. Everything else is house rules. This is coming from someone that has made over 300 customs and who does support customs quite often. What we are doing is homebrew.

What Renegade puts out, is officially heroscape. We don't own it. Much like any other hobby that is on the market now, we are slightly at the mercy of what comes out. Probably best to look at it in a positive light if possible instead of trying to look down at it. The current release isn't for me, but that has more to do with the fact that I'm getting out.

[kolakoski]

Well met!

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

@kolakoski

I mean... you do you.

We can play anything we want at home obviously but if Heroscape has a sanctioned way to play, that is the game. Everything else is house rules. This is coming from someone that has made over 300 customs and who does support customs quite often. What we are doing is homebrew.

What Renegade puts out, is officially heroscape. We don't own it. Much like any other hobby that is on the market now, we are slightly at the mercy of what comes out. Probably best to look at it in a positive light if possible instead of trying to look down at it. The current release isn't for me, but that has more to do with the fact that I'm getting out.

Getting out!? What does that mean? I for one would hate to see you go. And speaking of cryptic remarks: What do you mean by "I mean... you do you"?

Anyways, I hear you. It's unfortunate that our HomeBrew(T) is generally superior to the sanctioned stuff, especially as it contains C3V/SoV and "official" Heroscape does not.

[Owlman]

Originally Posted by 1moreheroscaper

Very interesting if the information about creating new units is true. To try to be fair, it is hard to understand how to create balanced units that add to the game publish worthy quality (in either classic or a new innovation) if creative team the team doesn't already have a lot of practice at making HS beyond 1-2 years.

I disagree to a point. While i've never been a big custom units person, I've designed a couple customs myself in the past, and used them, my friend/family said felt very balanced. I think anyone can do it. It's not rocket science. Didn't have to be on some sort of official Scape council or anything.

It is easy to get out of control, though, but so long as you have a couple honest playtesters, you should be golden IMO. Shouldn't take years to design good units, perhaps a couple months, but not years.

TL/DR version, I don't think it's as difficult to custom design heroscape units as people imaginne.

[Owlman]

Originally Posted by kolakoski

Well met!

Only in the minds of deluded Capitalists. We decide, individually and as a Community of those who care, what Heroscape is. If Renegade expands the Community, all well and good. But we are the ultimate arbiters of 'Scape's fate. Thus far, thanks to C3V/SoV and others, I believe we've done a pretty good job.

P.S.: What happens when the new serfs feeding on slop get a load of what we're eating?

"Deluded capitalists?" Lol... Wish I could negative rep this post....

[Owlman]

Originally Posted by Shiftrex

@kolakoski

I mean... you do you.

We can play anything we want at home obviously but if Heroscape has a sanctioned way to play, that is the game. Everything else is house rules. This is coming from someone that has made over 300 customs and who does support customs quite often. What we are doing is homebrew.

What Renegade puts out, is officially heroscape. We don't own it. Much like any other hobby that is on the market now, we are slightly at the mercy of what comes out. Probably best to look at it in a positive light if possible instead of trying to look down at it. The current release isn't for me, but that has more to do with the fact that I'm getting out.

Yep. So many people can do customs, not putting C3V down, they have made some really interesting units for sure, but I personally feel a fair percentage are not priced as well as they should be. I'm glad there is now "official" channels and the game is being produced again. If anything I'd love Craig/Grungebob to at least advise Renegade about future balancing of units, as they designed a ton to begin with.

[1moreheroscaper]

Originally Posted by Owlman

I disagree to a point. While i've never been a big custom units person, I've designed a couple customs myself in the past, and used them, my friend/family said felt very balanced. I think anyone can do it. It's not rocket science. Didn't have to be on some sort of official Scape council or anything.

It is easy to get out of control, though, but so long as you have a couple honest playtesters, you should be golden IMO. Shouldn't take years to design good units, perhaps a couple months, but not years.

TL/DR version, I don't think it's as difficult to custom design heroscape units as people imaginne.

I agree with you that to create fairly decent balanced customs it does require years of playtesting and playing experience. I know because I use to run an eective class based on customizing games like Heroscape. I just think having such experience helps expedite the trial and error process.

My mindset during that early post was more directed at a few things: fair-point costs, interplay/combo possibility of prior units, and more importantly a power creep.

With fair-points costs, there has also been a genuine question for units, even with official units going back to Taelord at 180 to even the Einar flag-bearer.

Power-creep is more of my concern because I would rather have all units be viable in enough situations to make them playable/draft worthy than to be stuck in storage bins. For most of Heroscape official releases I think the power creep hasn't been too bad. I know players of other games do commonly mention how some units/cards become obsolete with some new releases.

[Shiftrex]

A good portion of the classic library is not really playable though. I think a lot of tension, when working on customs or seeing new releases, is that a lot of units in heroscape are pretty weak. If we sit down and just want to play the best armies, there is going to be a 50% of the library we dont ever consider as worthwhile.

So fo you design at that very weak level? Do you design things that are enjoyable to play like how Orcs and knights work? Do you design units that help those weaker units play more like the better units?

It isnt hard to make a decent custom. At all. I think there are a few possible flavors that people may like or not like based on the experience they want in the game.

[1moreheroscaper]

You may be correct when thinking from competitive play. Especially if official tournaments are a new brand focus. So with each wave released in the past I do agree tournaments would feature new super-draft armies. On the casual playing side of playing, I personally enjoy trying to win against the odds. So, I like some of the rock/paper/scissors aspects to the game.

[Tmac2200]

Originally Posted by GaryLASQ

I've not yet attempted miniature painting. On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, where does this rank?

That very much depends on your existing skill level with painting. What looks simple can be harder than it looks. I've been painting miniatures daily for many wargames & RPGs since 2016, so I could likely paint it to equal quality in a day or so depending on how detailed I wanted it to be. If it's your first miniature ever you may struggle with it. You could get away with a simple paint job with just a primer, basecoat, and wash if you wanted to. Or you could go deeper with layering, edge highlights, dry brushing, liners, glazes, ect. It really is up to you how difficult you make it.

EDIT: To illustrate the point, here's one of my more recent models.

And here is one of my first.

I found both to be of equal difficulty, but the growth in skill overtime made the difference in quality.

[Sherman Davies]

Originally Posted by GaryLASQ

This sculpt creates an interesting hit zone paradox. Errata on the bat cat wings, or not?

Yeah, that is either an error or a departure from previous Heroscape convention in which wings on Large/Huge units count as hit zones.

[Dysole]

I've been involved in the customs process on this site in a lot of the major ones (C3G, C3V, SoV, and even dabbled in Heroes of Fiction and HoSS) and it's fairly straightforward to make a custom.

The big thing I've found is that the game favors squads, multiple attacks, flying, range, special attacks, multiple turns (bonding et al), commonness, and a few other things. It's relatively straightforward to design things that make these things better. It's much harder to design things that play against this and still provide interesting options. There's a lot I've learned in that time frame and how I would approach things than I would've a decade ago and I'm still learning things. The 10,000 hour principle is very real and I've noticed it in multiple facets of my life beyond just here (my actual gameplay and things outside of Heroscape like writing and DMing).

As a player I've been on the competitive scene for a while now and I think the general consensus is I'm a really solid player and I'm definitely interested to see what organized play looks like, but I have a feeling there's going to be "competitive play" outside that particular structure. It's probably too early to tell much definitive one way or the other. I'll be playing it but I do hope they'll at least look to what has been done on the competitive scene just to keep from reinventing the wheel.

~Dysole, who has a lot of other thoughts but probably outside the scope of the current discussion

[Hahnarama]

@GaryLASQ

are you slapchop or airbrushing ?