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.

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!