Sunday, June 30, 2013

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Heroscape 4 Player Free for All #2 (The Finale)

So in rare fashion we finished this game in our second sitting. Although our second day was pretty long (4 hours). Let's get right down to it and see where I stand.

Ah, right, the base thing.
So, the party area is still in my base and I need to get them the hell out so I can play a little offense. Right now I've got Captain Marvel controlled by Tyler next to Lobo and Doomsday (Leeper) adjacent to Marvel. Time to do work.

Mission complete!
Base cleared, time to get ready for an attack. Stephan still has Superman who really needs to go. Leeper, Tyler, and I seem to all have the same idea.

AHHHHHH
Okay, fucking Solomon Grundy (Stephan) is blocking me now back to step 1...

Getting real sick of this...
DOOMSDAY IS BACK. Yay. Mentallo (Stephan) brought him into my base. Although I think Leeper and I are on the same page at the moment and decide to go for Superman.

Finally! Offense!
I used Dr. Fate to bring over Lex Luthor, Tyler has brought Thor close and Leeper is bringing in Non. So far things are not looking good for Superman.

Wow what?
So Stephan had a dastardly dickish plan. I admire that kind of work. He used Mentallo to take control of Thor (Tyler) and wasted his God of Thunder attack which can only be used once per game. I say "wasted" because he could have attacked far more people. Unfortunately for me, 3 wounds were inflicted on Dr. Fate and Leeper did him in. Ugh..

Go get 'em Lobo
So Lobo has gotten caught up in a little pickle. He's adjacent to Doomsday and Non (Leeper) and Thor (Tyler) is near. Lobo does have healing so let's hope he can hold them off.

Can't say I'm surprised
The whole "kill Superman" plan got aborted and I didn't get the memo. Lex did his best but it wasn't good enough.

Bad roll
Lobo rolled bad defense once, and it did him in. Classic Lobo..

Wut
Somehow I took a blurry picture of Leeper.

1 vs 3
Leeper has brought 3 characters out on the left (Parasite, Thanos, Bane) while Stephan tries to put a dent in them with Silver Surfer.

Plan B
I brought a couple of tanks out in Colossus and Abomination. I have an odd plan with them so I hope it works out because I could really do some damage with them if that is the case.

Step 1
Colossus used fast ball special and threw Abomination at Doomsday, giving him one wound.

Step 2
Abomination caused wounds and rolled high enough to throw Doomsday towards Colossus. Unfortunately he did not cause an extra wound but he now has to deal with Colossus.

That's how it's done
How do you kill Doomsday? Roll 6 dice and get 6 skulls. Plan worked perfectly.

Let's try it again!
I fast ball special'd Abomination to the top and attacked Parasite, then threw him back to Colossus.

Get wrecked
Plan works again! Parasite was killed by the Colossus/Abomination throwing combo.

Dammit.
Abomination had a poor roll of the dice, and that's the way it can go in Heroscape. You did good work, Abomination.

There goes his partner
Colossus was hurt going into the center of the map so I'm not surprised he was killed, but I'm on the ropes big time.

"Hey I'm playing a board game!"
I've got another plan. Deadpool and Wolverine both have healing abilities. Arm Deadpool with energy rings which will give him 3 attacks, give Wolverine super speed and attack.

Sup, Green Arrow?
Leeper wasn't happy that I was able to attack twice with Deadpool then attack with Deadpool's rings. Good.

Uh oh.
Okay so Leeper now has Deadpool nearly surrounded with Thanos, Green Arrow, and Doomsday. Good thing Deadpool can attack all 3 in one turn.

Wolverine to the rescue!
Wolverine comes in for support while Leeper also brings in Ms. Marvel turns out while trying to move into Tyler's base to take out the new #1 threat after Superman (Dark Phoenix) we created quite the log jam.

Not enough healing...
Well that wasted my whole round. Deadpool gone.

Time to accept my fate
I'm now really down there on characters. I decide the point of my game now is to play spoiler and try to take out a couple strong characters.
 Elektra, I choose you!
Elektra is sneaky good. Not a power character by any means but enough to cause a fit and take some people out.

This fucking game...
I was able to do a couple things with Elektra but not enough. Tyler's base is packed with strong characters and I lack firepower.

My boy Weather Wizard!
Weather Wizard came on out to attack Archangel (Tyler) I was finally able to use his lightning re-strike attack to it's full potential and gained attack dice for each space Archangel moved this turn. I did end up doing a little damage to that annoying Archangel.

Can't say I'm surprised.
Low life, low defense, low attack. I brought out a support character on offense and he died, but at this point I had to do something he did what he could though.

My final push.
Punisher, Batman, Two Face. My last stand if I could do something decent it would be a little moral victory but things don't look so hot.

Bringing the war to Tyler
Dark Phoenix (Tyler) is getting attacked from all angles. The only hope for this game is Dark Phoenix dying soon without losing...anyone. Batman is to the left of this picture actually doing decent damage to Dr. Doom and Darkseid

Look at sexy Two Face at the bottom
Two Face...TWO FACE one of the weakest characters in this game delivered the kill shot against one of the strongest, Dark Phoenix. Small moral victory on my side but Dark Phoenix did quite a bit of damage to all of us.

So long, Dark Knight.
Batman was taken down by Dr. Doom. At this point we did something we don't often do but we called the game. Stephan and Leeper may have had an outside shot at taking down Tyler but since we're going out of town to SGC soon and want to set up a new game for when we get back we conceded victory to Tyler. I've had much better runs but that concludes a game of Heroscape. Can't wait to play again.









Saturday, June 15, 2013

Heroscape 4 Player Free For All #1

So I've mentioned Heroscape a lot on the podcast and figured I'd give people some context. So I'll be making posts of our current Heroscape game. Typically when we start a game it takes us 3-4 days to finish. We usually play twice a week so as you can tell the games are quite epic in scale. This one is no different with each player having between 14-17 characters. The only way to win is be the last team standing. First things first...check out this map.

Intimate setting.
As you can see the 4 dark areas are bases, the white tiles are road which give you +3 movement as long as you stay on the road. This particular map is somewhat small so I'd have no problem drafting a lot of people with 1 range. Typically due to the size of the map having too many people with only 1 range can be a downfall. With that said let's get to drafting....
Look at all those characters, well over 100
We have 3 ways of drafting. First is everyone gets a certain amount of points (say, 2000) and roll a d20 for order and start picking. The second is an auction draft where we go through alphabetically and auction off characters. The third and most popular method is random draw. This is the most complicated but assures a wild mix of characters every time. We have characters separated into tiers. (Support, Low, Medium, High). We then decide how many of the top 3 tiers we get. This game we decided to get 5 Low (3 random, 2 picked) 5 Medium (3 Random, 2 picked) 4 High (2 Random, 2 Picked) and 3 untradeable choices (1 random from random tier, 1 picked from random tier, 1 picked from high tier). You can also trade 1 Low tier for 2 support tier or 2 of a lower tier for 1 of the tier above it. Also there are random trades along the table with 1 character from each tier and a veto. Yes it is confusing at first and text doesn't do it justice. But it all starts with a roll of the dice.
Dem Bones
So we'll be following my team, I decided to get Lobo again even though I have had bad luck with him. Sentinel Mk. III is my high tier guy so I always get him unless someone randoms him before me. And of course I gotta get Weather Wizard (who I would have never thought of getting had we not drafted this style, makes you learn new characters). So here is my team after draft and before trades.
Punisher, Emma Frost, Two Face, Lizard, Weather Wizard, Zatana, Dr. Fate, Batman, Colossus, Deadpool, She-Hulk, Hulk, Sentinel Mk. III, Lobo, Elektra, Mandarin, Abomination
Pretty solid team. Not too happy with Emma Frost and Two Face but that's why we have trades. I think I will trade up two from low tier to get a mid tier given that I'm not too fond of any of them other than Weather Wizard. Let's check out how it looks post-trade
Punisher, Two Face, Weather Wizard, Wolverine, Dr. Fate, Batman, Colossus, Deadpool, Lex Luthor, She-Hulk, Zauriel, Sentinel Mk. III, Lobo, Elektra, Mandarin, Abomination
So as you can see Lizard got randomly traded for Blob. I then sacrificed Emma Frost and randomly sacrificed Blob to trade up and get Lex Luthor. Zatana was Traded for Wolverine and Hulk was traded for Zauriel (after I vetoed Sentinel Mk. III for Zauriel). Let's get the characters on the table.
It's going down!
Now I have my cards and figures, red damage markers and hit dice are ready. I also have my order markers (I chose green this game) and my glyphs for Mandarin and Batman. Let's place them on my base and get to it!
Ready for battle!
I've got my team ready. Weaker and support characters behind the walls, ranged characters in the back, and tanks up front. Let's get out there and fight.
Welp...
Not a great start. I sent She-Hulk and Sentinel Mk. III out into the middle to start dealing damage. Lobo I sent out onto the road but not too far. She-Hulk had a hell of a time against Solomon Grundy controlled by Stephan. Strong character out early is never a good sign.
Here comes Zauriel
I decided to bring Zauriel out and was able to take care of Grundy and join this battle on the right. Doomsday at the top is Leeper's. Black Adam is Stephan's and of course Zauriel at the bottom is mine.
Son of a bitch..
So Black Adam was able to take care of Zauriel, two strong characters gone early but I'm not out of it by any means. Sentinel took care of Black Adam but now I have Mentallo taking control of my characters. Luckily I have an ace in the hole against mind control. Mandarin and anyone adjacent to him can not be controlled by other figures. Time to teleport him with Dr. Fate and try to take down Mentallo.
He's the hero we need...
So I brought Mandarin right to Stephan's base. My plan got foiled a little bit by Leeper randomly bringing Nova over and getting 3 wounds onto Mandarin (he has 5 health) none the less I decide to use my energy rings and do damage to a figure withing 3 clear sight spaces. I rolled a 19 which is 3 automatic wounds. I know I wanted to go after Mentallo at first but with Superman right there, 3 wounds right now is huge so I chose Superman.
Whoa wtf?
So Hulk came on over while Mandarin was doing his thing. Luckily I have him surrounded by Lobo (6 attack) and Wolverine (4 attack +1 for being higher) Hulk is a beast but I have my characters placed well and both have healing abilities. Time to let loose.
RIP Mandarin 2013-2013
Looking back I think I got too aggressive with Mandarin. Keeping him in my base would have kept a lot of people from being controlled by Mentallo or Gorilla Grodd (who died early anyway). He's not a HUGE loss to me but losing his glyphs doesn't make me happy. Also I still have this Hulk problem...
Dead sucka!
Getting rid of Hulk without him doing a ton of damage is huge since he gains attack die for every wound he has on him up to a maximum of 5. (Base attack 6 so he can roll up to 11 attack die) Dr. Fate came in and helped, Lobo actually got the kill. My plan now is to retreat to my base for a bit and heal Lobo up. (he's at 3 out of 6 life).
Bullshit
So apparently my base is the party area. Lobo was able to fully heal. Leeper brought Nova close, Stephan (via Mentallo) brought Nova right into my base. Tyler then decided bringing Captain Marvel over was a good idea and eventually Stephan brought Red She-Hulk close. Nova ends up getting killed while Doomsday comes in to take his place. Sentinel was killed by Red She-Hulk and we eventually called it a night. Two players ended up losing 4 characters and 2 players lost 3. All in all a pretty even battle....so far.



Monday, June 3, 2013