The New York City Gang Of Four

[Taeblewalker]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Awesome. Thundarr is going to clean house.

Ookla! Ariel! Ride!!!

[chas]

HEROSCAPE: THE GAME THAT REFUSES TO DIE!

The four of us met for two games using some Heroes of Fiction cards with GM Taeblewalker. We decided that Kolakoski's using two figures who could return after death might break the game, so he modified his original army twice, and played with one of each in each game. These were free for alls with full card scoring; see a previous post for the other scenario rules. While we usually play one FFA and one Team game, in this case Dave wanted to try his two different armies out in FFA, so we did two of them instead.

Map: 4-Way Frenzy by Sir Heroscape

While we almost never play with Power Glyphs, I liked the central placement of the only 2 glyphs proposed for this map, so I made up a random pool of five from the simplest--those which buffed up a card stat or the Initiative roll.

This is a great map; having lots of interesting terrain but being very simple to build!

For Game One, making fun of the name of one of Kolakoski's cards, I played the soundtrack of Ennio Morricone's music to the Western movie trilogy By Sergio Leone (with Clint Eastwood) which I picked up some years ago in Italy--after Sherman Davies started to sing a snatch of it while discussing this character before the game started.

*The Armies*


Kolakoski Army Game 1
Kratos 300 (HOF)
Ezio Auditore 150 (aka "Ennio Moricone") (HOF)
Cyprien Eisenwein 150
Total: 600

Kolakoski Army Game 2
Duncan McLeod 160 (HOF)
Tanis Half-Elven 120 (HOF)
Alastair MacDirk 110
Knights of Weston x3 210
Total: 600

Chas Army "Men In Gray"
Dalinar Kholin 210 (HOF)
John Wick 215 (HOF)
Krag Maga Agents 100
Phantom Knights 70
Total: 600

Sherman Davies Army
Predator x2 240 (HOF)
Quahon 190
Fyorlag Spiders x4 160
Isamu 10
Total: 600

Taeblewalker Army
Thundarr The Barbarian 110 (HOF)
Ookla The Mok 110 (HOF)
Ariel 70 (HOF)
Wyvern 100
Fylorlag Spiders x28
Total 600

As a member of the Heroes of Fiction gang, Taeblewalker had designed these three HOF cards himself. Ariel was still in development but mostly finished, this counting as a playtest for her along with her two other Thundarr companions. We thought they worked well and also well together, and I suggested they be allowed in any future game we play, where normally we have to declare an HOF game to use them.

We had done this once or twice previously, I using as I recall HOF cards like Duncan MacCleod, Captain Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones, Agent J, Katniss Everdean, Neo, The Doctor (Who), and Ash Williams. Sherman Davies had used the Predator. Check out the HOF thread if you haven't seen their offerings before!


*The Games*

Game One

I had very poor initiative rolls in both games. From Turn One both my neighbors Taeblewalker and Sherman Davies viciously attacked from both sides, and I had to change all my initial glyph grabbing plans to turn and defend myself. Sherm's Quahon dragon got above my start zone and wrecked havoc against my adjacent figures before I could do anything about it. (The map was small, and only had 14 hex start zones instead of the usual 24. We just put a couple of extra figures off the board and considered adjacent to the owner's start zone).

I later made a good truce with Sherman that allowed me to continue. (We usually make such truces if someone else pulls ahead too far, which you often seen in multiplayer Scape Free For Alls). Although we all had powerful figures, we were surprised in this game at how quickly many of them took multiple hits and were eliminated with a number of vicious multiple wound attacks early on!

Eventually Sherman Davies was able to win.

Game Two

Sherm and K. changed seats, and my two powerful HOF characters proved able to hurt Kolakoski's Knights of Weston. I even took out Duncan McLeod quickly, although he soon came back--but after that he stayed away from me. This time my Krav Maga survived to climb a hill and fire away, finally taking out K's last Knight in his start zone. This time I made a truce with Taeblewalker, and this allowed us to punish the other two.

John Wick got involved in a vicious fight in the center pond, where both glyphs were located. Jungle trees and bushes here made it a tough fight with limited acess to key hexes.

By the time TW broke the truce, I had helped him sew up the win, and was satisfied to have helped him out. My army had proved flexible in many situations, and both HOF cards earned their points.

***

Afterward K. had to go home, and since we hadn't had the group together in a while, the rest of us just ate some dinner brought up from downstairs and talked for a while. Its good to have the family back together!

[chas]

We welcome Sherman Davies back to the site in general, since he's been away for months. You can see him posting again on his customs thread. Next month in October he'll be running our game, in which he thinks will playtest some of them, probably Superheroes/Villains. Which will appear?

[chas]

Our next game date will be Wednesday, October 6.

[chas]

Fall is here; I put on my bathrobe in the cool morning for the first time this year yesterday. In September there is already a retail push for Halloween! Here in Brooklyn our two big annual events will be this weekend: the Atlantic Antic street fair and the Brooklyn Book Fair, both near my Game Palace here in Brooklyn Heights. I'm still avoiding crowds in the main myself, but will probably make a brief outing or two! Local restaurants now need to see that vaccine card.

Sherman's game on Wednesday will be a four player team face off with his own Marvelscape figures eligible, as he playtests his own Asgardian Destroyer. Each player gets to draft an army of 800 points, which may include Classic and VC Custom figures as well. The map is Rush Hour by Dignan. Regular order marker activation rules will be used, rather than SD's own Group Shared OM variant rules.

Facing off against the Destroyer, and with such a large army point total, this will probably be a game of big bruisers! SD will provide all the Super cards and characters we will use, so we're sending him our army drafts. It seems like there will be no duplicates so far.

[chas]

A couple of months ago I joined a BGG thread called The League of Extraordinary Heroscapers. Its a discussion thread for older Scapers. I got their microbadge, which says "You can have my Scape when you pry it from my arthritic fingers!"