Monday, October 23, 2006

Geek-Out Weekend

Aside from the major addiction to World of Warcraft, my husband, Todd, and I also like RPGs and pretty much any geeky fantasy gaming in general. One such geek-a-licious game is Heroscape. You can click on the link and learn all about it.

So this past weekend, our good friends Jan & Marsha and their super-incredibly cute daughter, Sylvia, all came over for some Heroscape fun. There are many recommendations and ideas either online or in the game boxes to help you set up "the board" and to play pre-planned scenarios. This is great for younger fans of the game. And we've done this as well. However, Todd just bought some new expansions to the game and he pulled out ALL the stops in creating his own uber-cool original board layout and game scenario!

We had to put the leaf in the dining-room table! AWESOME! [Throws up the horns]

Here's a bunch of photos.

This is a shot of the arrangement the night before. As you can see, there are 2 castles on either side, representing 2 different teams. In the middle are the perils between the two: water, ice, and lava:


Next is a shot of in-game play. The scenario was this: There existed three glyphs. Each castle had their own glyph and there was one glyph positioned somewhere in the center of the playing field (in the ice area) among other glyphs. The goal was to find out which glyph was the correct one and then capture it from the snow/ice area and get it back to your castle first. Then you would have to capture the enemy's glyph and bring that back to your castle. So whoever could successfully get all three glyphs back to their castle would win.

The winged warrior with the sword at the top-center of the photo is standing on that special glyph (this was a character from Todd's team). Some of the other glyphs we uncovered during the game included a glyph that gave a +1 to defense rolls. The female character dressed in all white with the gun is standing on that one:


We played in 2 teams, Marsha and I were on one team and Todd and Jan on the other. My team's castle was the one on the water side with the trees. Here is an aerial view of the setup during game play:


Now, the star-shaped cards you see on the table are cards that correspond to the various characters you can play in the game. The cards explain any special abilities and also tell you what a character's move, attack range, defense, and attack strength are. The variety of characters is un-frickin'-believable: from flying acid-spewing dragons, to yeti, to cyborgs, to outlaws, to ninjas. You name it!

Here's great close-up that Marsha took of some of her characters, which these happen to be Roman legionnaires. And also, here's Sylvia enjoying the little figures too!:



The game is played in rounds, with each person taking a turn to move and/or attack. At the start of every round, each player rolls for initiative. Whoever rolls the highest goes first, then play continues to the person on the right.

Some more cool photos. We took some shots as if we were looking out of the castle across the battlefield. And check out the rockin'-cool-ass dragon that Marsha and I chose for our team!



Yeah, see? I told you we were geeks! :-P

3 comments:

Beth said...

Whoa! I don't know that I could ever get into playing it, but I think it is very cool. We do like to play lots of games cards, Cribbage and Scrabble etc.

Marsha said...

Beth, once you saw the way-cool dragon figures, your inner geek would fight its way out and you would SO get into this game. :)

Marsha said...

So Gina, are you going to write to the makers of Heroscape telling them to add rules that incorporate random attacks on the figures and board by a wandering toddler-Godzilla?

(By the way, I almost bust a gut when I read "Throws up the horns"--heh.)