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Published
By: Milton Bradley
# of Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 60-90 Minutes
Category: Sci-Fi, Trading
Mechanics: Trading, area control
Currently in Print
HeroScape
This Fantasy Battle Board Game comes with dozens of painted plastic miniatures, each representing a warrior from a different era, and hex-based hard plastic terrain pieces which can be put together in many different ways.
The warriors include 30 plastic figures, including World War II soldiers, furturistic robots, medieval knights, a large dragon, and many more. Each unit (some units are one figure; some are multiple figures) has its own card that controls both movement and combat strength.
There are 85 tiles of terrain in the game. Some terrain tiles are large (up to 24 hexes) while others are small (1 hex). There are water, sand, rock and grass tiles (in roughly increasing order). Many different battlefields can be built by attaching and stacking the tiles.
The rulebook features two games: a basic and a master version. In the basic version, designed for younger players, characters move, attack, defend, and have range -- but there are no special powers and some other rules are minimized and/or eliminated. The master game includes special powers, wounds, engagement rules, falling rules, and a few other additions.
A battlefield/scenario book shows
how to build five battlefields, layer by layer. Each battlefield may have
multiple scenarios, where the goals vary. It can be opponent elimination,
getting to a certain space, protecting a certain figure, or holding out for
a certain number of turns.
Each unit has a movement rating ranging from 4 to 7, which is the number of hexes it can move in a turn. Moving up a level counts as a hex; moving down does not incur that penalty. Moving down more levels than your height when moving from one hex to another counts as falling and you might take damage --unless you are falling into water.
Combat in the game is fairly straightforward. You roll attack dice as listed on your unit's card (2 to 6 dice), and the opponent rolls defense dice equal to the number on their unit's card (2 to 9 dice). Extra hits count as wounds (figures may have more than one wound).
The master game uses a point system in which players alternate drafting cards until they reach the pre-assigned point value for the scenario. It's possible to bring a "pre-fab" army to the battle in order to save time.
The basic game is for two players. The master game is for 2 to 4 players.
Master Set
Our Feedback:
I really liked this game. The box says for 8 years old and higher so I was a bit nervous but we played twice and it is very easy to get a hang of. Reminds me of Heroclix and the sort but the custom cards, powers, and special abilities add some spice and the multi-unit cards are a nice feature.
This is not a collectable game but does have expansions that have extra characters and tiles. Oooh the tiles!
Did I mention this uses a 3D hex set of tiles te create the battlefield? This was really cool and even through we used a pre-designed template, I cannot wait to create some of my own.
Starter box comes with everything you need for 1-4 players and a ton of tiles. A bit pricey for around $40.00 which I spent on it, but compared to Clix or Magic that is really a drop in the bucket.
Played again recently with some of the added materials and a totally custom board layout and we loved it. Just plain fun to play and with some real neat miniatures too.
Resources
Heroscape - Quick Reference Chart
These files are PDF format and have been reduced from the original size (which was huge). These are view and rpint quality at about 90% smaller the file size as the Hasbro Versions.