Monday, September 17, 2007

Gen Con 07 Review - Thursday Heroscape Day

Thursday the events I had scheduled were Heroscape Marvel or Marro event and the Heroscape Win-A-Wave tournament. Those were both scheduled late in the afternoon, so that gave me all day to hang out in the vendor hall. The hall was twice as big as previous years, of course they had a huge section dedicated to video games. My friend Gary and I checked out the booths, gathered swag (which was way down from previous years), and spotted stuff I was going to buy, and took lots of pictures. The first thing I bought at the con was the Heroscape expansion pack Knights Templar. These guys are just plain cool. I can’t wait to play and have the knights come rolling out charging the enemy. The best swag of the day was the Heroscape con exclusive Master Win Chiu Woo. It’s always cool to get a free figure for a game you play. I hope WOTC keeps up this tradition, but when you see guys paying someone who has no interest in Heroscape $5 so they’ll get a figure for you to get and sell on Ebay, you can see the beginning of the end of this.

First up for events was the Marvel or Swarm of the Marro Heroscape games. At first I thought one side had the Marvel and the other had the Marro and there would be a big battle. It turned out to be a chance to play the two games and try them out. Since I was already familiar with Heroscape I decided to try the Marvel game. I liked it better than Heroclix, but not as much as the regular Heroscape game. There was just something missing. I’ll buy the Marvel sets to support the game but don’t see myself playing the Marvel version that much.

Next was the Win-A-Wave tournament. I’ll start by saying that I have never played a tournament before, and most my experience is against my 8 year-old or one of the other kids on my street. Needless to say I was not prepared for the tournament. I brought what I thought was a pretty good team, Agent Carr, Guilty McGreech, Nikita Agents, Krav Maga Agents, and the Marro Warriors. It seemed like I had all my bases covered, range, special defenses, and a guy that could bring it in melee. The guy I played sets down 16 of the 4th Massachusetts and Marcus Decimus Gallus. The beginning I did pretty good, I was taking the 4th Massachusetts guys at a regular pace, I even took Marcus out, but I learned quickly with 16 guys from the same common squad, if you take one out another takes his place. Using unique squads you lose that advantage. So when I took out a 4th Mass. Soldier he still attacked with four, when he took out a Nikita or Krav Maga, I lost attacks. He snagged a +1 attack glyph, and eventually tore me apart. Agent Carr and Guilty McGreech didn’t even get an attack before getting blasted by the 4th with height advantage. I needed a squad killer in my army. After the game the guy I played said you should have brought Major Q9 instead of Carr and McGreech. Oh well, at least I had fun playing.

Playing a little Marvel Heroscape