HeroScape, bitches. Simple fun for jaded dice monkeys.

C'mon, you're intrigued!

Hi, I'm not Cliff.

I don't write simple, yet, inclusive out-of-the-box rules systems. I don't really run games. I don't strike stoic poses. I do, however, inspire insipid bullshit (A River Runs Through Hell!, Fly Fishing in a Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare) that gets run through the author of this blog to turn out far more palpable things like Another Day...although I assure you, I will author a splat book detailing proper fly usage after nuclear armageddon).

I also play his games, and I fuck them up. I take pride in fucking his shit up. The most amazing thing is he keeps asking me back. I don't know why. I also don't know why he asked me to do this, although I suspect it was because he usurped my GammaWorld 3E game so we could get back to his shit. This is the price I pay for loving the man.

No homo.

So, what this nonsense all about? I'm here to treat you to an overlooked nugget of Hasbro fun,  HeroScape. What's HeroScape, I hear you gnarled indie gamers ask... Its stupid fun, and as per most things touched by the hand of WoTC, its been cancelled. Well, ish. Cancelled-ish. But, we'll come back to that. First, let's make with the magic...

HeroScape is like wargaming lite. I dunno about you, but I need that in my life. I love RPGs, and I love the concept of wargames, but what I really like is a simplistic system that delivers max fun without hours of fucking math. I don't need more math in my life, they threw me out of high school so I like to keep my leisure as simple as possible, for fuck's sake, why would I want to involve measurement into my fun?

HeroScape gives you that. Its like a trip back through time when your old AD&D books had all those awesome hex maps and little crappy line drawrings of minis and you thought, "man, that shit would be awesome!" except those little blister packs of lead Ral Partha fuckin halflings was way more allowance than you could have, and who the fuck could ever actually afford enough for an entire dungeon of shit?

Not me. Probably not you, either. I was 13. I had Iron Maiden albums to buy!

You will never repack the box like it came. NEVER!

So, let's get serious... HeroScape is a pretty interesting line of Hasbro toys. Its not an RPG, but its not really a board game, either. It was designed to be expandable, and the original line had a pretty rad story line about Valhalla being invaded, time rifts, and Valkyries gathering heroes through time and shit. This is why if you see proper HeroScape stuff, its all quite random. The non-D&D master sets involved point buying armies and going to town. Of course, because Hasbro is run by braindead accountants with no sense of fun, they shuttled this shit off to WotC who promptly shit all over it and pissed out lame D&D themed sets, I guess so they could just re-use the plastic minifigs or something. I don't care. I'm using this paragraph to basically say, "fuck you, WotC." Its what I do. Its what people who grew up at the Gygaxian altar do. C'mon, the man taught us the meaning of words like dais and portcullis. Love him!



Yes, that's a trout stream.

 The game itself will come with a series of interlocking hexogonal tiles. The tiles come in various different plate sizes, and textures, and can put together in any desired landscape. This lets you create a visual indicator of land height, including line of sight, in the most simple of ways. Since their the classic hex, it also lets you determine character facing, and count off range to target with ease.  One of the nice things about the system is the interoperability of it, and the various Master Sets and supplements all lock together, meaning you can use the D&D HeroScape boxes with any other. You can also have a limitless variety of battlefields with only a few minutes to re-snap together some pieces in a new format, making replayability infinitely variable.

The Rogues' Gallery

The box set will also come with a series of different characters to utilize to your choice. So far, I've had the pleasure of the Battle of the Underdark Master Set and the Swarm of the Marro Master Set to play with. The Underdark set definatly fares worse, with less character options and an almost mandatory breakdown. The Marro box was better at giving you options, although I suppose even that's gonna be "all Marro" and "random shit" teams, whatever. D&D sucks. Any chance to trash it during this review shall be taken.

Don't let Dragon drive the Bus.

The figures are plastic, and come in two basic sizes, normal (ie one hex big base) and the large ones (two conjoined hexes for bases). They have some flash marks, and are certainly reasonably well painted for something you'll play with. I'm not an expert, but I think these are out-of-the-box WotC plastic minifigs. As I understand prior sets, like the aforementioned Marro set, were of slightly nicer quality (not being WotCized BS, of course!) and a slightly smaller scale. All that aside, I'm pretty happy with these. I was also always quite pleased by playing with the D&D figs that friends would break out for games, that being one of the nicest changes WotC brought to AD&D. Not so amused by the way they sold them, but I blame Magic CCG for that. I blame Magic for alot. ALOT.

Roll them bones.

The concept is simple, set your sides and select your end game. My friends and I basically opt for "wipe out the other guy(s)," but the sets do include a series of pre-scripted "campaigns" and scenarios to play through. Each character sheet will have a set of simple to understand stats, basic attacks, and special powers. As the turn plays out, you'll manuevere your armies against each other, and leverage the ranged attacks and supplementry powers against each other, with conflicts resolved with a simple roll of specially marked dice. Skulls are hits, shields are defends, add or remove dice depending on your character stats and height differences and biggity bam! The more skulls than shields, the more that shit hurts. Its just that simple!  Apply hit counters to the character until you've maxed out his health, then he's out of the game.

That's it in a nutshell, the biggest problem is availability. Shit, even information on the status of the game isn't all that available. It would appear its been cancelled, but the game was designed for the expansion packs to go in and out of print, not to create artificially high prices but to give chances for new pieces to go in and out of production. Perhaps its just a sign of the economic times that we can't pay the Chinese little enough to paint these guys or something, and they'll just come back. That's a real shame, because the core system has some real playability to it.

You'll notice I bitched up a storm about the WotC-ization of the game a few times. I understand it may have been to cut costs on the figures, but its a real pisser as the War on Valhalla/rifts thing is a fun little idea and made the mix-and-match of genres not only acceptable, but fun. The D&D set seems like a lame cash in, and of-fucking-course its fucking Drow, the most trite thing to come out of TSR ever, but sometimes you just suck it up. For what its worth, the WotC master sets appear to be the only ones available at this time. Its why I was forced to buy in, but its cool coz I can add to my buddy's marrow set and add in the boosters that tickle my fancy.

In the end, I freely admit I'm a huge fan of the game. Guess that's why its being killed, eh? Fucking universe hates me.

The river may have, in fact, run
through Hell. Or not. Whatever.

If you were intrigued by the near constant and none-too-subtle fishing references in this, perhaps you'd be interested in reading my regular screed where I wax poetic on the nature of the extensive amount of bullshit in modern fly fishing, while at the same time actually telling you what to think, making it an entirely circular sort of Hell in which one asshole tells you that you're wrong for not having free thought while at the same time crushing your free thought. Sound rad? It should. I write it. You read it. Fuckin' eh.

-gfen.