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!