Heroscape Review

Tyler [my son] got Heroscape for Christmas. He wanted it for the minis inside, and I think I’ve enjoyed playing it more than him. First of all, the game has a huge set-up time as you’re supposed to build the terrain out of these Lego-like interlocking pieces. It can take me up to an hour to make the layouts as shown in the instruction book. The actual combat mechanic is nice. There are attack dice and defense dice and you want to roll more skulls on your attack dice than your opponent can roll shields on his defense dice. In the basic game, this means a kill, but there is a “hit points” mechanic in the advanced version we don’t use. Big monsters (particularly the robots) have lots of defense dice, so you basically have to keep attacking and hope to just get lucky. Also, a lot of the figures have special powers. Tyler loves these aliens that can clone themselves when they’re in water. I have to take them down fast, or they just come back faster than D&D trolls! The scenarios can take 1 to 2 hours to play out. Tyler hates scenarios with goals other than “kill everybody,” as he then has to out-think me rather than out-fight me. Most other scenarios are “capture the flag”-like setups.