The Ecstacy of Heroscape

So yeah, Pete's parcels showed up last night and I honestly don't even know where to begin. I went from having zero Heroscape to TONS of Heroscape literally overnight. Terrain piled up everywhere. Some 100+ figures, many of which have TNT ownership markings. For some reason, Pete really liked the Redcoats.

And god damn it if I'm not already thinking "well, I need to get these guys...and one of those...and some of those..." EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY HAVE A MOUNTAIN OF THIS STUFF. Then I downloaded this fucking collectors app that only helped to highlight what I was missing.

Where is Jeff White, I need him to talk me down off the ledge here.

I also got the Marvel set in from a trade (Kreta!), I set it up and soloed a little battle and that was fun.

I was going to hold off on giving it to the kids until Christmas but I'll be damned, a dragon fell off the box and River found the whole thing. "What's this game daddy" so I said to hell with it. They LOVED setting it up, but Scarlett got ill that there weren't many girls. She threw her figures into the lake and walked off. River and I played a really, really simple battle of robots versus dragons and it was fun, mostly just to teach him about movement, "seeing" other figures, and how many dice to roll, that kind of thing.

Many thanks to Pete for this deal, but I'm afraid it may be a "thing" now. I just put in a $45 order to fill in some pieces missing from the ROTV set and some random cheap stuff I wanted like the Charlie's Angels girls and some more elves. I really like the elves for some reason.

I got some of those TNT branded figs too.

It's like getting a syringe of Ameritrash Viagra!

Like I mentioned previously, I had a bunch of HS in the house as I came across some good deals, but released it to the children gradually. I had:

RotV
Marvel
Wave 1
Wave 8
Orm's Return

This stuff was distributed to the kids throughout the year at Christmas, Birthdays, End of School Year gifts, something to buy with chore money during the summer, etc.

The idea was to play and explore with the units/terrain in small increments so that we could get familiar with them, all the pieces get played with (dollar per play ratio), and the kids develop patience building terrain. I feared that dumping all of it on the kids at once would be overkill with too many units that would never get a look in favor of others, there would be too much terrain and the game would feel more like work, etc. It took patience on my end, but seems to have paid off.

We have since added two of those Forgotten Forest sets, Raknar's Vision (more dragons!) and a few singles of interest.

I think besides a few more singles we're on the tail end of our collection. We _might_, _might_ get that Marro starter set because my son really digs the Marro, but again, I don't want there to be so much HS that sorting through/getting it out of the way to decide what to play with is more work than play.

Looking at a Heroscape collection should bring joy not dread, IMO.

So, not going in on lava sets, frost, D&D, trying to get every fig, etc.

Enjoy the game!

On the lack of female figs....here's what I did to play GW Talisman with the kids.

There are 5 female characters, so I went through all of the characters and selected about 5 male characters. I have these 10 flagged for playing with the kids. They've never even seen the others.

So, when we play Talisman they are both deciding through an equal stack of choices.

Now, for HS, I seem to have quite a few females with the valkries, agents, elves, ninjas, etc. Enough that my daughter hasn't seemed to mind. when I have ordered singles, I was sure the male/female ratio wasn't too bad.

Yeah, I'm engineering this stuff, but it's kept a happy household with all excited to play.

I swear Jeff White is the descendant of Cotton Mather or Johnathan Edwards. How much temperance can one man possess?

Two quick adds...

1) don't know the app, but I'd drop it if it's driving your purchases based on filling holes in the line rather than buying what figs you and the kids are actually interested in.

2) on the redcoats...I've only got one set myself, but love em. Put them stationary on a hill surrounding Capt America, and they're shooting like 5-6 dice each. My dragon killers.

In case your daughter isn't aware, Mimring is a girl.

Damn near perfect game.

Best way to deal with a lack of female figs, is to just play superheroscape. Get some cheap heroclix figs and go to town.

Potentially cheaper too since you can get a TON of figs for heroclix that aren't necessarily good in that game, and slap some good rules onto the figs for heroscape.

Who needs squads, when you have fricking silver surfer, and doctor strange?

There are a lot of official female characters in HS, maybe buy a run of them? Yes, also some dragons like Mimring and Queen Baraxus.

Heroscapers seem to have all the fan made unit cards for heroclix and star wars minis. Some characters have multiple attempts but after a bit you'll get a sense of which users seem to have honed the craft of making mods. That or just go with the one that _you_ think best represents the character.

Michael Barnes wrote: For some reason, Pete really liked the Redcoats.

It was very common in Heroscape tournaments for people to run multiple groups of the 4th Mass for stacking their ability. Then when the 10th Regiment (the Redcoats) came out, it was the 5 point upgrade from the 4th Mass, which made them simply broken. I stopped playing in tournaments when the 10th took over everyone's army lists.

One of the things I've liked about the local Heroscape tournaments is that no one seems to be doing that. Everyone is playing something different.

S.

I like Redcoats and hate Bluecoats. The "Valiant Army" bonus sucks balls. So, I opt for 2x Stingers, 2x Redcoats, and Marcus, generally, when I'm not playing Romans and Braxas, which is an overlooked and fucking wicked deadly army.

Redcoats give you the advantage of being able to spin one space around an enemy target, keeping them engaged, and still get a +1 bayonet bonus. All the flexibility of a ranged, 4 man squad, but with a potent close-range attack.

Some say "broken", I say "awesome"!

Still, I never won shit with them.

My favorite army was still full of Shades of Bleakwoode, Dumutef, and some snipers. Talk about an ultimate glass cannon. When it worked, it was awesome, when it didnt, you lost quick.