Of Stargates, Swamp Grass, and Christmas Customs

It's been a month since I've posted anything new.

December is a pretty busy month for Christian pastors like me, and there hasn't been much time for posting about Heroscape.  After Christmas, though, I have a little bit more down time and am using some of it to update my blog.

Yesterday, we had some people over to play Heroscape on another version of the Pit of Doom board that I posted about last time.  This board, however, was a dungeon board rather than snow and ice.

When I build the board the first time, I couldn't escape the feeling that the platform I'd build in the center of the board needed something on it.  I tried a couple of differnt things, but ultimately, I decided to put one of my Stargate custom terrain pieces in the center of the dungeon.  That was perfect.  It was just what the board needed.  It also gave me an idea for how to structure our game.

The Stargate, along with its DHD (Dial Home Device) is seen in this picture:

I orginally got the idea for the Stargate from a blog on heroscapers.com (Gate).  When I went back recently, the images were no longer visible in the blog.  The author describes making a gate like this from extra Order Markers by cutting off the bases and gluing the pieces together.  As a Stargate fan, I thought it was a great idea, so I ordered some more extra Order Markers and made a couple of gates.

With a gate at the center of the board, I decided to add another board to which the gate would connect.  It was a swamp board filled with lots of rich stuff (read Treasure Glyphs and such).  It looked like this (with a green gate):

The blade grass are some of my custom terrain pieces, too.  To make them, I took some aquarium blade grass (2 parts yellow-tipped, and 1 part red-tipped) and cut the individual blades off their base.  Then I drilled small holes along the edges of swamp tiles (3 holes along an edge) in various patterns.  Finally, I stuck the grass pieces through the holes and hot glued them underneath the swamp water tiles. Then you have swamp water with blade grasses.

In order to win the game, most players had to travel from the dungeon board (via the gate) to the swamp board to retrieve a Treasure Glyph and then return through the gate back to their starting location on the dungeon board.

The rules for gate operation were as follows:

1) Only an unengaged figure adjacent to the DHD can activate the gate.
2) When the gate is activated, any figure on one of the four spaces in front of either gate is destroyed.
3) Once activated, the gate remains upon through the end of the round.
4) Gate travel can only go one way, moving from the gate that was activated to the other.

When stepping through an active gate, a figure's movement is interrupted at the event horizon.  Movement ends on the space in front of the gate and then continues on the space in front of the other gate.  You can move through up to your maximum move number.

The trouble we ran into (which will require further future work on the rules for gate travel), was if an opponent's figure stood on the space in front of the receiving gate, according to Heroscape rules, without phantom or ghost walk or some kind of flying, the figure on the sending gate couldn't (legally) walk through.  I also had to deal with my son putting one of his figures on the space in front of the sending gate, blocking my ability to get through it to the other side.  GRRRRRRR!!!!

Anyway, we tried out a lot of new custom figures, too, including this one:

This figure was made for a friend to give to her son for Christmas.  I couldn't post anything about it until after Christmas, of course, because I didn't want to give it away.  It's a custom revision of a Heroclix Crimson Dynamo:

The figure was repainted and Major Q10's weapons were added to him.

Here is Major X79 in action just behind the base of the gate:

He performed really well in the game, and Anthony (who I made it for) really likes him.  That's all I can really hope for.  It was fun to make more figures for other people.

I made his brother, Damiano, a custom figure, for Christmas too: Damian the Red.

Damian the Red was made by cutting Sonlen's dragon off of Sonlen, repainting it red, and gluing it to the back of a Bonded Fire Summoner (D&D: War of the Dragon Queen, 10/60).  Damiano didn't draft it for this game, however.  He went with knights instead.

Anyway, we had a great time and a good game.

We used Quest Cards for the first time in this game, too (I'll post about the Quest Cards later).  It went pretty well, and definitely changed the nature of game play.

If you look closely, you may see some Alien Warrior Drones in the picture above (and in the first picture of the gate).  Fun, fun, fun!!!

Taylor, home from Basic, even got to play with us, which was very cool.  We also got to introduce Woody to the game for the first time.  I'm hopeful he'll become one of our regular players (we have so few adult regular players).

On another, more important subject: Joy to the world! Christ, the Savior, is born!

Merry Christmas, everyone, and happy heroscaping!

Cryonnakis and the Pit of Doom

I usually try to get a game over the Thanksgiving weekend, and this weekend we had some of our Scaper friends over to play.  I designed a kind of an arena board called the "Pit of Doom" for up to six players that has sand, lava, grass, snow, water, and swamp versions.  We decided to build the snow board for Friday afternoon.

Here's a picture of the acutal board from near the end of the game:

As you can see from the picture, the trees plotted on the VirtualScape image aren't really the trees from the Road to the Forgotten Forest, but frosted pine trees that are readily available at this time of year from Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Lowe's, K-Mart, or any place that sells those Department 54 and other miniature houses.  I saw a pack at Lowe's today (Carole Town 21-Piece Trees) for something like $12.99.  For that, you get the 21 trees (seen below). 

I don't usually use the two largest ones, but the other ones are perfectly suitable for Heroscape use.  I have two sets of these that I use.

It was a great game that lasted about 7 hours (including drafting and a short supper break).

Here's a picture of the final shot as Agent Uniqua shot down the last Sentinel of Jandar and our final two players:






















Though it was a difficult game for him (my boys learned a lesson about how life and gaming intersect...which may be the subject of an upcoming blog entry), Benjamin won the day with his army of agents.  Congratulations, Ben!!

One of the most significant aspects of this particular game for me though, was that this game was the debut game for one of my favorite custom creations...Cryonnakis!

As I said in one of my previous entries, I like dragons a lot.  When I found the Dungeons & Dragons gargantuan white dragon for a good price from Auggie's Games, I couldn't resist getting it.  There aren't too many boards on which a Gargantuan dragon like Cryonnakis can play, but Friday's board was designed with that possiblity in mind, and Charles drafted him.

Cryonnakis was quite intimidating.  The fear was that in drafting such a large and powerful dragon, it would become a very large target, but as it turned out, when Charles drafted him, it brought a chorus of, "Truce!" from several of our younger players.

When making custom figures for Heroscape from D&D figures, I try to translate the figure's special D&D powers to the Heroscape custom as best I can (and, yes, he fits on a two-space base). 

Here's the card for Cryonnakis:

Here's some of the things I learned in watching him being played:

(1) A 10-space Ice Breath line is pretty powerful, especially when it affects figures adjacent to those in the line of attack.  Charles used this power against Ezra army of Romans and Greeks.  He significantly wounded Marcus Decimus Gallus and Parmenio and destroyed a couple of Sacred Band (who were in the line of attack) and destroyed 3 more Sacred Band and 2 Roman Legionnaires (who were adjacent to them) all in a single attack.  Whoa!!!

(2) I think most of Cyronnakis' stat values are good.  I'm not sure about his point value, though.  He may be pointed too highly.  We wanted to make Cryonnakis the most highly pointed figure (more than the Hulk), but I'm not sure, even with his high life value and great strength, that he is worth 380 points (see (3) below), though J.P. said he think he could be worth it in the hands of the right player.

(3) When the game started Ezra had a bunch of Legionnaires and Sacred Band squads and we all thought he was crazy for taking some many squad figures, but as it turned out, Cryonnakis is extremely vulnerable to large squads.  His Gargantuan power allows him to be swarmed with squads, all of whom get a disengement shot at him if he should try to fly away.  There is the possibility of Cryonnakis being engaged with up to 22 figures simultaneously.  Whoa!!!

This presumes that a bunch of squad figures could reach him which, in our game, they did, and Ezra's Sacred Band finished off Cryonnakis on the turn after Cryonnakis' devestating Ice Breath Special Attack on his forces.

All that is to say that Cryonnakis can get trapped pretty easily making me question whether he's worth the 380 points.  We'll play him again and see what how valuable he is in another player's hand before I decide on his points.

It was fun to watch him in the game, though.  Another great adventure in Heroscape!