The Money Pit

Even though I swore that I was done buying Heroscape stuff here I am $110.00 later with two bags full of it. For those that don’t know, Heroscape is a battle/war game where you and friend draft an army of small miniatures and fight it out on a multi-level battlefield made up of modular hexagonal plastic pieces that all fit together to create thousands of different types of battlefields.


http://www.hasbro.com/heroscape
There are a lot of miniature based wargames out there, one of the most popular is probably Warhammer, but games like Warhammer are very expensive as they rely on pewter/lead miniatures. These figures are also unpainted so if ya want them to look like anything more than a lump of silver you’ve got to paint them, which can be very time consuming. Now sure there are lots of folks that LOVE to paint their miniatures, some it seems focus more on the painting then actually playing, and boy some of them do fantastic jobs! But I’m a gamer and I would rather play, so I’ve always been on the look out for a game like Heroscape where the miniatures are plastic, i.e. cheaper, and pre-painted. But before I found Heroscape I stumbled upon Mage Knight and Heroclix.

Now Mage Knight and Heroclix were great, Mage Knight fulfilled my need for a Fantasy based wargame and Heroclix featured Comic Book heroes from both DC and Marvel Universes, but these games were “collectable” miniature games. What this means is that you would buy “packs” of random figures, so you were never sure exactly what you were getting, and some figures were rarer then others. My friends and I literally went crazy trying to get a decent representation of all the figures available, we spent way too much money. We eventually realized it was just a gimmick to get us to waste money and stopped. Then came Heroscape.

When my friend Ed and I, Scott did not and still doesn’t want anything to do with it, discovered Heroscape we were very excited, here is a game with cheep plastic pre-painted figures and they are not collectable. You can actually buy the figures you want and there are not any that are more rare they the others, cool! Also at first Hasbro, the makers of the game, promised just a couple expansions a year, we felt it would be pretty cheap to keep up with that. Then they started producing more and more special sets that added new types of terrain like snow and glaciers, and molten rock and lava rivers. Then there were special packs of giant size figures like Dragons and huge Robot Mechs. Then there was even a Castle Wall and Gate set. It was getting really hard to keep up. The final straw for me was when they came out with the Flag Bearers set. These were 5 individual figures with special powers that would boost other figures in your army. What really burned me about them was the fact that they were only available at Toys R Us and they were $13 bucks. “$13 bucks for one figure! That’s Crazy!” I thought. Then a couple things happened and I caved.

First Hasbro announced that they were developing a Marvel Superheroes version of Heroscape, and when I started seeing pictures of the game I was drooling. I then resigned my self to just buy the Marvel set. Then I was at Wal-mart, where Heroscape stuff is very cheap, and I saw the new Wave 6 expansion figures, they were awesome. The name of the set is Dawn of Darkness and it really excited me cause part of the set was focusing on a horror theme because there were Zombies and ghostly Shades. It made me remember one of the other major things I like about Heroscape, that it doesn’t rely on just one theme. There are Fantasy and Sci-Fi based characters; Historical based characters like Roman Legionaries, Musketmen, and WWII army guys; Oriental based Samurai and Ninjas; and the aforementioned Horror types like Warewolves, Ghosts, Zombies, and soon there will be Vampires. How could I give up on such a diverse game? Especially when I did some research and found out that there are some very cool expansions coming out. There will be a Jungle Set coming out, a Wave 7 set of figures including the Vampires I spoke of, and Right now there is a second Master Set out. The Master Set is what you need to start playing the game, and now there is a whole new one that includes a couple dozen brand new figures and new terrain pieces. Also there is already an expansion planed for the Marvel Superheroes version of the game. So with all this excitement over the new stuff that is out and is coming out I totally caved and went shopping.


As you can see I bought the Wave 6 figures they are on the top row, and because like I have said before I am a completist I went ahead and bought the overpriced Flag Bearers set. They are on the bottom row. I still have more to buy too, the Marvel Set is out as well as the Master Set 2. I wonder if my girlfriend, my family and my friends are concerned that I am dumping all this money into this game, sometimes it really does feel like a bottomless Money Pit, but what can I say, I am a total sucker.

This is What it’s All About

More Games!!! My order from Thoughthammer arrived, www.thoughthammer.com It has been almost a year since the last time I placed a game order, due to a personal shake up in my life. Now I am settled down and ready to whittle away at the massive wish list of games I have been building up on Thoughthammer over the past year, all the games that I’ve been wanting to buy but had to wait on. Most of the games on my list are expansions for games I bought in the past and so because I like the original game and because I am a completist of almost OCD like proportions I had to put those games on my list first. Strangely enough though, the first games I ordered when I got back in the saddle are for the most part not expansions.



Sure I did buy the 2nd wave of expansion decks for Runebound, you can see them in the picture above, they are the little yellow card boxes. The games I bought that are not expansions are a little bit of a branching out for me.



Colosseum is a game from Days of Wonder, www.daysofwonder.com/en the same company responsible for great games like Ticket to Ride, Battlelore, Memoir ’44 and Shadows over Camelot (which I own). This game obviously has a Roman Gladiator theme to it but with a twist. The game focuses on gaining points for putting on a good show and gaining spectators for your Colosseum. This is different from a lot of games of this theme that would focus on Gladiatorial Combat. This game looks like a lot of fun, I can’t wait to play it, but it looks more complicated then other games from Days of Wonder. There is a ton of stuff in the box, and boy is that box heavy. It took my girlfriend and I over an hour and a half just to punch out all the cardboard counters and tokens in this game, whew!

Formula De’ is not the usual type of game that I would buy. I am not attracted to games based on real sports, probably because I do not follow any professional spots. Football is the only sport that I will actually sit down and watch with any real enthusiasm. But I was blown away when Scott introduced me to Pizza Box Football, www.boardgamegeek.com/game/17851 I was really surprised that I like that game. So when Ed showed up with Formula De’, which is based on Formula One racing, I was willing to give it a try. Once again I was blown away, “how can a game about racing be this much fun” I thought. When the rules were first explained to me I thought “this is like racing in slow motion, that can’t be fun.” But I was willing to try and boy was I wrong. Is it fast paced like a real race? Do you feel like you are driving a car at a high rate of speed? No. How could a board game feel like that, it’s not a video game, but the game does focus on the strategy of lane positioning and speed management, you can’t just floor it all the way. You have to figure out the best way to take turns and shift into higher gears when it is safe to do so. It’s just fun and competitive, and I really enjoyed it. Of coarse after playing it I was horrified to learn that the game is out of print now, and that there are some 30+ expansion tracks out for the game that are also out of print. For a completist like me this is very scary, but when I found a copy of the base game on hammer I just had to buy it. I just need to figure out what I will do about all those track expansions, some sell on e-bay for over a hundred bucks!! Forget that! I’ll just secretly hope that they get reprinted some day, ugh.

I think the my biggest branch out from the norm would have to be Yspahan, www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22345 This game is very “Euro”, and it’s got camels in it for Pete’s sake!! I usually leave the “Camel” games to Scott. As a matter of fact Scott should be all over this game. Well what made me decide to branch out and get this game, besides a grudging acknowledgement that Scott maybe onto something with these “euro” games, is a video review of the game on “Boardgames with Scott”, http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?p=65. I love the “Boardgames with Scott” website, it really helps to see the games in action. It was seeing Yspahan in action that convinced me that it would be fun, I don’t think anything else could have done that. The thing that most enticed me about this game was it’s unique “Dice Tower” mechanic, where the first player rolls 9 dice (or possibly more) and depending on what the results are and how the dice get grouped together will make a difference on what actions will be available in the game. That little bit of randomization ensures that no two games will be the same. It also makes certain outcomes more rare and desirable, which if you are player one when these outcome come up will probably make you giddy with excitement.

Well I am going to tear into these games this weekend and I guess it’s a good sign that I am very excited to do so. Hey gaming isn’t cheap you should get your money’s worth.

The Next Big Thing

Well like I said last time my friends and I have been on the look out for the next big game, that new game that will excite and compel us to play for hours and hours until we finally succumb to sleep depravation and pass out in what we hope will be a graceful manner. Scott sure picked a winner last time with “Thebes” but that did not slow him down on his mission to always search out new sources of gaming goodness. So here is what Scott and the rest of us are considering for purchase.

I know that Ed is looking strongly at a game called “Through the Ages”,
www.boardgamegeek.com/game/25613



Ed says that this game is like the “Civilization” Board Game but a lite version as it only uses cards. We all liked the “Civilization” Board Game, but as it was mentioned elsewhere on this blog the game was a marathon, requiring 2-3 days to play. This “Through the Ages” game promises to be much shorter, but contain all the depth and feel of “Civilization”. I find it interesting from the standpoint that it appears to have even more depth in some areas, like all the advancements your civilization can attain. The game is supposed to be re-printed soon with better components and hopefully better artwork on the cards, if it does get the re-print Ed says he will buy it, GO FOR IT ED! I will play it with ya, even if Scott won’t.

Now Scott, always looking for the next game to hook us with, has also been on the look out for a good Horror game. We both really like the Avalon Hill game “Betrayal at House on the Hill”, but it is only really fun with 4 players. A while back I bought “Arkham Horror”, an HP Lovecraft based Horror game by Fantasy Flight. I really like it, but Scott absolutely despises it. Well now Scott has his eye on this game called “Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game”,
www.boardgamegeek.com/game/25613



This game definitely has the right “atmosfear”. The artwork really sells the theme. I’ve been hearing about this game for awhile now and I know Scott has been watching it for a long time too, but I don’t know much about the play mechanics of the game, I wonder when this game will be done so we can find out more. I do have to say that the theme looks great and the idea of a modular board which will make every game different sounds very appealing.

As for myself, I have been watching very intently the big release from Fantasy Flight Games called “Starcraft the Board Game”, www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22827



I know that lots of people have been waiting for this one and there was no information for a long time, this, I think, was due to the fact that the game went through a process of having its early design completely scrapped and reworked from scratch. I have to say my enthusiasm for this game did die down quite a bit once information was finally released. I really thought the game would be completely different than the way I now know it will be. I was envisioning more of a huge warfare/skirmish game with tons of tiny plastic army units battling it out on a modular board that changed for every game, and contained hidden resources that you would move in and take possession of and defend. In short I thought it would be like the computer game in slow motion, some people think that would be boring, but I thought it could work if there were more resource management and strategic decisions for the player to make in order to keep it interesting while the battles were being fought. I was also a little bit disappointed that the game looks and has a lot of similarities to the game “Twilight Imperium” or TI, don’t get me wrong, I like TI, I own TI, but let me say that it is so obvious that Christian T. Peterson (the designer of TI) helped in the design of “Starcraft”. Like I said there is nothing wrong with TI or Christian Peterson, I was just hoping that “Starcraft” would be more unique. Despite my reservations I still plan to purchase the game, I still think it looks very cool, and I know that the other guys will play it and in the end I guess that is all we really want; to find a game that we all enjoy playing together.