Raynor's Raiders...Raiders, Roll

Wow, has it been a while since I've posted!

I guess it really is a good thing when life is so full that I don't have time to sit at the computer and post a significant blog entry about Heroscape.  I like Heroscape a lot, but I also realize it's a hobby. 

Heroscape provides me with a helpful escape from life from time to time...allowing me to imagine and create worlds filled with deadly swamps, treacherous, snow-covered mountains, broad grassy fields, and deep, dark dungeons.  I get to dabble for a while in a world in which the rules are known and followed by all the players, the purpose is clear, and your enemies are easily identifiable.  In life, it is not always so.

Another way I like to escape for a little while is through Starcraft.  It's another war game, of course, with a little less randomness in the play and a lot more blood and carnage.  I prefer to play as Terrans (I do like my Bunkers and Seige Tanks) rather than Zerg or Protoss.

My first attempt at combining the two games was a Unique Squad of two U.E.D. Marines.

I took a couple of Zettian Guards and dug out the heads (Do they really have heads, per se?).  Then I took a couple of extra Drake Alexanders (RoTV) and first, cut their heads off, then cut the faces off the heads.  I glued the faces into the head cavities of the two Zettian Guards, then painted them in camoflauge.  They turned out pretty well, and my friends (some of whom also play Starcraft) enjoyed playing with them.

After the release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, however, I was no longer satisfied with my little squad of two marines.  I wanted more!

Then I found a set of Tactical Squad of Warhammer 40K Space Marines in a (relatively) local game store, and I knew I'd found what I'd been looking for.  Each box contains 10 marines (For those of you counting at home, that means three common squads of three marines each and one unique hero.  Perfect!) that I could build however I wanted to.  I had to have them.

So, of course, I bought the box, and then, of course, I let it sit on my shelf for about 8 months.

Last April, though, I took a week of staycation, and finally got them out and start working on them, cutting them off the sprues and piecing them together with a little super glue.

My wife was kind enough to take a few pictures of the process for this blog entry (which I had planned all along).

Of course, having been inspired by Wings of Liberty, the marines I made were Raynor's Raiders ("Raiders roll..."), with Jim Raynor as their Hero.

Keeping with the theme of the original Starcraft, Raynor's Raiders had to be blue.  I used a base of a bright blue and then did a second coat in a metallic blue with some silver and some black metallic paint.  I also used gunmetal gray metallic paint for the weapong.  It turned out great.  I highly recommend the gunmetal gray.

I painted Raynor, in a metallic green, rather than blue...to keep with the Starcraft theme and to help distinguish him from the Raiders.

The final result was this:

Me like!

Once the figures were done, of course, I had to go to work on the cards.

I already had worked out some of what the stats and powers would be, but I had to put them in card form and work out a few of the kinks.  Here's how they came out:

For the Raiders, I kept the Stim Pack power from my original squad of marines, but exchanged the camoflauge (which didn't seem appropriate) for Commander Bonding.  Jandar still seemed to be the best ideological fit for Raynor and his Raiders.

For Raynor, I used the idea of Raynor's special power in Belly of the Beast (the next to the last mission of Wings of Liberty, if you choose to do it) and used the language of the Fire Line Special Attack to create his Perdition Shot Special Attack (Awesome!), and I took a page from the Orcs and gave him Marine Enhancement to go with their bonding power.

They turned out beautifully!

Of course, I couldn't stop there.  I needed to have marines from all three Terran factions, Raynor's Raiders, the Terran Dominon, and the U.E.D.  So I bought a couple more sets of marines off ebay, and made myself some more to complete my collection.  I also gave the marines from each faction slightly different powers and point values, so a player can choose the value of the marnies he wants to play with (they all have Stim Pack, though).

So in addition to Jim Raynor with his three squads of Raynor's Raiders, I now have three squads of U.E.D. Marines ("I've been waiting on you..."),  in white armor, in keeping with Omega, the last mission of Brood War) with Adm. Alexei Stukov as the companion hero.  They follow Einar.

And I have three squads of the Sons of Korhal ("You want a piece of me, boy?") in red armor, also in keeping with Omega, the last mission of Brood War), with Gen. Horace Warfield as the companion hero (who has Shredder Grenades and a Flame Thrower).  They follow Wyndar (a not as evil as Utgar or Valkrill, but not good Valkyrie my son Ben and I created that calls the desert home...seemed appropriate for Korhal and Mengsk's marines).

As for my original squad of two marines, I was going to just retire them as prototypes whose time had passed, but then I had an idea.  I renamed them and turned them into mercenaries (again in keeping with the theme of Wings of Liberty).

Oh, I also made a few other Starcraft-themed figures as well, but I think I've blogged enough for now.

Happy heroscaping!

Valkyrie Shrines - Ullar

You may have guessed from the green background of my blog, but Ullar is my favorite of the Valkyrie.  This is so because I do love the elves.  They are my favorite species to play with on the whole, and Sonlen is sort of my alter ego in the game.  He is the figure I go to when I need a good one to fill out my army.

His ability to Dragon Swoop is very effective against Soulborgs and other figures with a high defense or squads like the Krav Maga Agents with their Stealth Dodge (another favorite of mine).  Add his Dragon Healing to that and a moderate ranged attack and you have one powerful figure.

Anyway, I like the elves, so Ullar is my preferred Valkyrie.

Below are some pictures of the Ullar Shrine.

The main part of the shrine is a piece of driftwood that I got from my grandmother when she died.  It originally had a seagull on it.  We used to feed the seagulls on the beach of the Gulf of Mexico when Grandma and Grandpa would go to Texas for the winter.  I took the seagull off and glued some light green clump foliage (from the model train store).  As Ullar has a wood and forest kind of theme, his shrine needed to include wood and greens and water.

There is also a Paint Pot rock filled with some hot glue and painted blue for a pool of water, and a Syvarris figure as a statue (I like to include a figure in the shrine design).  The pool figures prominently in alternate side of the shrine card.

The primary side is pretty much like the Jandar Shrine:

The stone, as the source of the shrine's power, is the only targetable object.

The alternate side of the shrine's card, Ullar's Fountain of Life, has healing powers for those who stand in the open space of the shrine and also gives a bonus movement.

Here is the shrine in the one board we've played with it, an Ullar fortress named Talos Orn, where an alliance of men and elves, together with the Green Dragonwing, stand against an assault of the Black, Red, and Blue Dragonwings, with their hordes.

The Ullar Shrine could be a good addition to any forest board or Ullar themed board to give an Ullar army that little bit of extra advantage that may turn the tide of battle.

Next time, I'll put up the Einar shrine, a custom piece which I'm pretty proud of.

Until then, happy heroscaping. 

The Gauntlet

Greetings, Heroscapers.

Once again the stuff of real life has kept me from dallying too much in the realm of fantasy.  Today, however, I am taking the time to update my blog with another installment of my adventures in Heroscape.

This winter has not provided us with many snow days, so our play dates have been few and far between.  Yesterday, though, God provided us with a bit of a winter storm that cancelled schools throught our region, giving my friend Charles a day off of school and cancelling an afternoon meeting for me. 



Finally, we had what we'd been waiting for.  Let the games begin!

The board I built is called "The Gauntlet" (for somewhat obvious reasons).  It's a board that was inspired by Ben's Omaha Beach board that he built for his World War II project.  It is a beach landing, where a scenario game would have one army starting out in the water and trying to get through the gauntlet to the other side while being shot at from the high cliffs on either side.

Here are a couple of Virtualscape images (sea side and land side) of the board:

The first time playing on the board we tried the scenario I described above with orcs as the Gauntlet's defending army...2500 points worth of orcs, trolls, and ogres!

The ladders on the pillars, while not strictly helpful to the defending orc army, provide for a better game, and add some much-needed stability to high towers of tiles.

In addition to the archers on the high cliffs, there were swarms of Blade Gruts and Ferral Trolls hiding in every corner  and crevice of the Gauntlet.

When the boys played the scenario out a couple of weeks ago, the orcs overpowered the invading army pretty quickly.  I don't think they even really got off the water, even though we did away with the stopping in water rule (assuming the water was very shallow).

So after lunch, they decided to draft new armies, and start again with everyone starting on low ground.  It turned out to be a pretty good fight...better than I would have expected, actually.

Then yesterday, we played on it again with 5 players, two starting in each corner of the water, one in the crevices on either side of the Gauntlet, and one at the back of the Gauntlet.  It was a good game and a great way to spend a snow day afternoon.

One of the things that make the board even more fun and playable is that we gave every non-flying figure a special power called "Leap".  "Leap" says that the figure "may ignore elevation for up to one space when moving over a space of lower elevation between two spaces of higher elevation." 

Basically, it means that non-flying figures could jump from tower to tower and cliff to cliff over the sand spaces inbetween.  When leaping from a lower tower to a higher one, you still have to account for the increase in elevation, but for the space inbetween the towers, you assume it is the same elevation as the tower you are leaping from.  It's a pretty useful power and makes play on this particular board.

Actually, it turned out to be a very good board, and much better at multi-player free-for-all kind of games than I originally expected that it would be. I love being surprised by my boards.

Eventually, I will get around to putting up that Ullar Shrine.

Until then, happy Heroscaping!

Ben's D-Day Project

My kids are homeschooled, and my wife Michelle does a fantastic job with the vast majority of the work with them.  Occasionally, though, I get the chance to do some fun school stuff with them.

For the past few weeks, my kids have been working on Word War II project presentations.  The plan was for each of our boys to prepare and present a project on a particular aspect of World War II that they would present to another homeschooling family.  Their family would also prepare projects to present to us.

My son Benjamin (4th Grade) decided that he wanted to do a presentation on D-Day that included a Heroscape model of the invasion on Omaha Beach.

I downloaded some pictures of Omaha Beach including this one for some visual perspective on the landscape:

And this one gave us another perspective on the landscape of Omaha Beach, but also gave us some perspective on the Allied invasion plan and the German defenses.

We decided that the whole beach would be beyond our capacity to build, so we focused on one section of the beach.  We build the section identified in the Allied plan as "Easy Red" and included the edge of "Fox Green" so that we could incorporate the fortification near the edge of "Easy Red".

With a handful of images at our disposal, we set out to make the best representation of the coast of Normandy that we could.  We started with the beach itself then adding the water on one side and the first level of grass on the other.



Then we built up the cliff on the one side of the board and the slope up the other side with a ravine in between the two trying to make the board appear as much as possible like our source images.  When the board was finished it looked like this:

Add a bunch of Airborne Elite and a few Sgt. Drake Alexanders (both ROTV and SOTM) in a handful of overturned 7-hex concrete tiles, and you have an Allied invasion force.

Add a few squads of 10th Regiment of Foot (because when you don't have any Nazi figures, you make do with what you've got, regardless of the historical reality) in the German bunkers, and you've got yourself a great D-Day presentation Heroscape Board.

Benjamin also wanted to add a few trees to the board despite there not being any at all in our source images.  We call it creative license.

I wanted to include Benjamin's presentation in this blog, too, not so much because of its connection to Heroscape, which is minimal, but because I'm a proud father sharing the good work of his son.

This is some of the fun and educational stuff you get to do (with Heroscape) when you homeschool.

Happy Heroscaping.

Valkyrie Shrines - Jandar

Life, it seems, has not slowed up one bit since Christmas has passed.  Meetings for one thing or another and planning for the new year seem to take almost all of my time.  I have a few moments this week, though, to update my blog with a new entry.

I was trying to think about what I could put up that wouldn't take too much time to work up.  We haven't played again since the day after Christmas.  My son has the table and a lot of terrain pieces tied up with a school project which I will post about later on, after he's given his presentation.  Then it occurred to me that I could put up stuff about the Valkyrie shrines I've made.

I encountered the idea of Valkyrie shrines a long time ago on ebay.  I liked the idea, and thought that I could do something on my own similiar to what I'd seen.  I got some clay and started working on a Jandar shrine.  I also got a few colored stones (one for each Valkyrie) that I thought would work great as the power source for the shrines.

My first attempts were okay, but not really great.  I tried etching the Jandar symbol into the clay and then painting it, but I'm not as got with creating desgins by hand.  I much prefer the digital medium.  Anyway, it didn't turn out too well, so like any good desinger, I tried again.

What I finally came up with was to use chunks of stryofoam as icy formations around a central monument.  I looks good and it functions well.

 

There were four design constraints that I put on myself.
  1) I wanted to use a figure, if possible, in the shrine.
  2) The stones would be the power center of the shrines.
  3) The shrines would fit on a 7-hex tile (or its equivalent).
  4) There would be one open space for each shrine.

The Jandar Shrine has an original Raelin in statue form on the top of the monument.  The bars were white fences from one of those Department 54 accessory packages.  I made the top piece of the mounment from some scrap wood in the garage.  All of it, of course, painted gray, so that it has the appearance of metal.

Each Shrine's Army Card has two sides.  One side is the Shrine side.  The Shrines are placed on the battlefield by the creator (almost always me) as a part of the battlefield and any scenario that we may be playing.

The Power of the Valkyrie was designed to make the Valkyrie Shrine work in conjunction with the Valkyrie Dice, so we had another use for the dice, other than the flag bearers.

The other side is a variation of a Shrine.

Like the Shrine, the Battle of Frozen Souls Memorial aids any Jandar figures on the board.  The frozen souls are "frosted" Tarn Viking Warriors and MacDirk Warriors (any three will do).

Whichever player calls them into battle from the Frozen Souls Memorial receives two squads of  Frozen Warriors, but you only get one shot at it per game, so get there fast and make that d-20 roll count. 

The Jandar Shrine was the first one I did, but not the last.  Next time I'll put up the Ullar Shrine.

Happy Heroscaping.