Heroscape Takes a Rating Hit

My two most recent run-ins with Heroscape has done the game some damage, mostly due to fun murderers. I'm not talking about the flesh and blood kind, I'm talking about the little plastic kind. On two separate occasions I've run into squads that have managed to drain fun out of the game.

The big one was the elven archers, who in the particular situation we were in were more or less invulnerable, partly due to landscape, but partly due to their abilities. The kid playing them had a small patch of high ground, with a flat plain in front of him. Originally there was a patch of water that would require two or three turns to get around while in range of the archers, essentially suicide, and I made it pretty clear that no one on our side of the board would even consider stepping into that space. Ever. Made no sense. The kid would move up a single archer as a Judas Goat to pull us out, who of course could shoot at us, but anybody approaching was in for at least four attacks, and perhaps more. The archers have a Frenzy ability that lets them take extra turns, and the kid was rolling lucky. So the game just became a lesson in futility.

The thing is, the kid had other units, but they got no turn markers placed on them. He even put his X marker on the archers. He was a one trick pony and the other guys just stood at his corner of the board. He didn't need them, he just used them to fill out his points.

I can't knock the kid for the strategy, because it worked. It just wasn't fun. The green dragon is the same way, as are the flying guys with the shotguns, who get to roll big-ass dice if they all attack the same guy and manage to score a first hit. The game becomes futile or even worse becomes work, where you're not having fun, just dealing with another problem that doesn't want to be fixed.

I've come to the conclusion that any special ability in Heroscape that has a "take another turn" aspect to it is just beat. And there's a lot of them -- some characters have affinities with each other that let that happen as well. For some squads the creatures getting the spare turn are largely junk and it doesn't matter so much, but it really makes a turn drag on and results in players just doing the exact same thing over and over each turn. The game becomes a factory instead of an adventure.

So we talk about fun murderers here in the guise of humans that suck the life out of games when they play, I'm going to add a board piece or game strategy version of the same concept, where some aspect of the gameplay brings the joy to an end. I really enjoy Heroscape and until this evening it was my highest rated title, a game I've given the catch-phrase "damn near perfect game" to. But when I play with others with their three or four squads of min-max guys it loses its charm. Don't even like it when they're on my team because I'm stuck sitting and watching while they claim the glory taking two (or in the past week's case three) turns each turn. It takes longer to execute and is unimaginative as hell.

I'll be needing a catchy name for these pieces by the way, feel free to submit candidates.

S.

They're basically the miniatures version of overpowered cards in MtG. Out of all the Heroscape minis, there is likely a answer to the elves (and whatever else). But, then your moving from casual play to competitive play with an evolving meta, etc.

The fun mudrerer in Magic is the old school blue counter deck. Or a stasis deck. Just a big fuck you to your opponent.

The elves aren't even very good. It seems to me that the map was just built in such a way that they had an insurmountable advantage.

Star Trek: Attack Wing has those as well, they're called The Borg.

The problem is that ST:AW's costing structure is broken. Simply add up all the ship's stats and multiply by two. First, that puts equal weight on all stats which is flawed. Second, it didn't take into account factors like abilities granted from the ship, fire arcs (90, 180 and rear didn't matter), actions a ship can take, upgrade slots available to a ship or the movement capabilities of ships.

It was always an issue largely dismissed at first, factors like the scenario's objectives and more upgrades getting released created a sort of chaotic balance where different strategies were viable. Things got weird at times, but overall it worked.

Then The Borg came out and the strained and flawed system just broke. 360 fire arcs and the ability to pick a direction and move that way basically made all other ships inferior, and these abilities weren't balanced by an increase in points cost. Since The Borg released, I think this game shed more players than picked up.

Running parallel to this was the Attack Cancellation. Now, in an of itself, not really a big deal, there was an attack cancelling card that came with the first prize pack, but it was a one use discard and you had to discard a crew along with it. But then a captain that prevented that discard came out, then attacks were able to be canceled by just a crew. Eventually it hit a point where it was possible to build a ship that could cancel two or three attacks each turn without discarding a thing and reset to do it all again next turn.

This Counter Attack build feels a lot like those blue counter decks from Magic. Not fun to play against and sucks enjoyment out of the game. The Borg don't necessary suck the fun from the game, but suck the game of any sort of skill, it takes away half the fun of the game which is the maneuvering and positioning of your ships.

Now, what they've gone through and done now is pretty much blow up the game by creating this online rules forum where they've made a blanket rule cutting the legs off the Attack Cancelling build but causing a ripple effect to where the way people were playing things from the beginning, all those early assumptions, are now considered wrong.

Of course this is all just a factor of the competitive Organized Play. None of this stuff has ever been an issue in the casual scenarios.

Points system has always been broken, even with additional restrictions. The idea is if you make two forces using the restrictions and at the same points limitation, you'll always have 2 balanced forces.

Never happened.

The archers are good, but their only ability is taking another turn 25% of the time. Other than that they're a vanilla range squad. It sounds like any ranged squad could have stopped you at that point.

Sag, the name for what you are feeling is called "Josh Look Poopy Pants".

Ha! Just kidding. The one gripe I have against Heroscape is when a person has multiple squads of commons. Like the Minute Men or some such. I too played on a map where the range attack squads took a position (close to their set up area) where to get to them was a dash across a large area of open ground and they just destroyed me. Sure I could have hid on my side of the board and we could have stared at each other for six hours but...to hell with that.

If and when I run my own Heroscape Game Day, or a tournament I have contemplated having a rule where the first to squads of the same commons cost list price but after that they double and double again. So first squad is 10 second is 10 third is 20 fourth is 40 etc.

I think my biggest issue is the One-Trick-Pony aspect of them, and in this particular case one that prolongs the pain with a take-another-turn chaser. Nothings more tedious than one guy getting multiple turns while you wait.

The game was saved when my son wandered the black dragon into the middle of the skirmish. He's a bad-ass, he can tear you up, but he can be hurt too and he gets his attack and is done.

Getting badly beaten isn't fun, but it can be quite a moment for comedy. Getting badly beaten in a tedious way waiting for another guy's turn that's twice as long as everyone else's becomes labor instead of recreation. Lately I've been running into more of that, perhaps because the kids I'm playing with are getting older and more interested in min-maxing.

S.

So, the acronym JLPP doesn't have much pizzazz. Jaloopy maybe? Jaloopoopoo, as in jaLOOpoopoo? Or do you just want to go with "joshing"?

When playing Magic I hate playing against blue control decks because they rely on destroying the game I want to play. So basically they take away my possibility of playing my own deck and having fun with that which sucks.

The same goes, to some extent, for decks that rely on looking through your deck and going after one or two specific cards. But here the problem is more that I - as a rather novice player - can't follow what is happening meaning that I don't feel like I'm part of my opponent's play.

That's a bummer, but I suppose I'd try to build anti-ranged maps.

mads b. wrote: When playing Magic I hate playing against blue control decks because they rely on destroying the game I want to play. So basically they take away my possibility of playing my own deck and having fun with that which sucks.

The same goes, to some extent, for decks that rely on looking through your deck and going after one or two specific cards. But here the problem is more that I - as a rather novice player - can't follow what is happening meaning that I don't feel like I'm part of my opponent's play.

The thing is though that there are players that find playing control decks fun. Control magic is fun, counterspelling a dragon is fun. There is a problem with customizable games where match ups can have a disparity between how fun the game is for either side based on their builds or why that player plays the game. There are ways to avoid this with play between friends, but to take your squad/deck into the wild of an open play or tournament setting, you really just have to accept that this is how these games work. If you don't include units/cards to deal with certain general strategies, you might end up in a bad matchup. I'd just concede, or do a suicidal charge. You've got to know when you're beat, and it isn't the games fault.

Funny enough, this is one of Richard Garfield's core design principals. Create a game with enough luck that a novice could upset a skilled player (albeit a rare happening), and a losing player can push the blame if their loss off on that luck rather than themselves. Both of those make players feel good about playing or having played.

I don't mind control decks as such - and I certainly don't mind getting a solid beating in a tournament. But that doesn't change that decks built around destroying the opponent's game will make the experience less enjoyable for the recipient. And while losing - or even being beaten thoroughly - is fine, not being able to do your best can be a really frustrating experience.

Is it a deal breaker? Not at all. Is it a fault in the game? Definitely not. But I think it's a good example of what Sag brought up, namely a part of a game that can be a fun murderer.

If I was sat there getting my ass owned by a blue control deck I would fall back on the Summoner Geeks classic and just keep shouting out at the opponent "I cast magic missile on the darkness"

This isn't a problem with Heroscape...all minis games have this issue.

If a unit of models with decent range attacks are higher elevated and have a clear killing field in front of them, you're going to have a real problem. It's like this in any minis game I've ever played.

There's a reason the rule of scenario-less battlefield design is that prior to the game the sides take turns placing terrain. Then randomly deciding which table-edge each side will start on. Due to table-edge uncertainty, the players will aim to set up terrain in what appears to be the most balanced way. It's self regulating.

You either set-up like above, or you play a specific scenario design.

This shouldn't impact Heroscape's rating at all.