Heroscape with Space Marines

the group

I had 3 people over last night for a teams Heroscape match.  Because I wanted to show off my 40K figs, I found some rules adapting space marines to Heroscape.  You can download what I used as a word document here

This game didn’t go all that well for me, it seemed like my troops were way over powered compared to everyone else’s, and between my partners Marro it seemed we were

the table

decimating our opponents. Sure I wanted to win but I caremore about having decent game.   We were doing really well, but part of it was good luck, and the other part is that we were wiping out their cannon fodder.  I also found out that my soldiers weren’t really all that overpowered, they had strong defense, good attacks, bad movement, and short range.

the Space Marines

I tried taking notes during the game again, but that didn’t work all that well, I couldn’t stay focused on the game and taking notes at the same time, so you can check out the pictures and synopsis next.

Matt – Space Marines
Kyle – Marro

Justin – Sargent Drake and his WWII guys and a dragon
Jared – As usual Jared’s army is a mash up of all kinds of stuff, lizards, knights, robots, winged dudes

terminators advance

Turn 1, Justin takes the fight to me and blows up a bike, he then lands on massive curse, I lost one shotgun guy, but Jared lost 3 dudes.

Kyle kills one of Jared’s winged dudes

Jared moves around

I move around get the initiative glyph, I go again

the dragon

Turn 2

I move some more

Justin kills another bike, wiping out the bike squad, and kills a few marros, he’s landed on a glyph that makes all his soldiers immune to ranged attacks, heroscape is stupid.

Kyle puts his marros in regneration mode

Jared's Dead pile

Jared sends his snakemen after the marros, and also gets a rez glyph which gets me a bike back, as can be expected he didn’t get anything, his luck sucked.

Turn 3

I send the assault squad against Justin’s glyph guy and kill it, then I kill off a few more of his troops

Justin kills an assault marine

Kyle keeps regenerating, he’s like swamp thing over there.

Jared has some good luck with Deathwalker 9000,

I kill another winged dude,

Jared tries to kill Kyle’s Agents that are mixed up with the Marros and fails.

Kyle kills one of Jared’s knights.

Kyle gets a glyph that lets him give anyone a wound at the end of his turn, again, Heroscape is stupid.

I sent all my stuff against Deathwalker 9000, and they all die, I can’t stop that thing.

Sgt. Drake wins!

I’m pretty much out of it, Jared’s robot gets blown up, Justin sends his Dragon against Kyles stuff and ends up eventually killing all of Kyles stuff with Sargent Drake.  It was kind of nuts to see one guy kill off a horde of Marros.

Transcript of Heroscape Game

Three guys played a game of Heroscape the other day, I took notes, here they are.

Jared takes Knights

Justin forms an army of  Demonic Aliens

Matt (me) takes orcs

-discussion of rules

-Justin turn 1, figures out how to count, gets movement glyph

-Jared moves towards me

I move towards Jared

Justin kills a samauri, after Jared tells how good they are at defense

Justin kills another Samauri

Matt cheats

Jared attacks Justin with Samuri, kills something

Jared attacks my dino riding orc and sucks

Dino-Orc takes on the Templars, I don't know how they put the two together but it's exceptionally cool to have Orc's that ride Dinosaurs

Matt kills a templar with DINO-ORC

Short discussion on the merits of 17th century Baraque art

Arches suck, can’t hurt anything

Justin kills THE LAST SAMAURI

Justin will die, he attacks orcs, kills one blade

Jared sucks with Templar, gets one wound on Dino-Orc

I kill another Templar, also kill one of Justin’s gargoyle things

Justin kills more orcs with gargoyles, he will die I swear!

Jared can’t kill Dino

Matt is tild he hasn’t used any of his special orc powers, he should have won an hour ago.

Justin attacks little Dino

Justin tries to disengage from combat and loses a dude

Justins giant, Krug tries to kill little Dino and fails

Jared fails to kill DINO-ORC again and also sabertooth cat riding Orc.

Matt’s Grots kill off Frug

Some of these figures, like this guy are pretty awesome looking.

Justin’s vampire guy climbs on top of a hill to survey the battlefield and hide since he’s all that’s left.

Jared kills an arrow orc, I don’t care no self respectign orc would shoot arrows anyway.

I do nothing

Jared kills off arches and one blade

Matt finally plays right and kills off two templars

Jared strikes back and kills off 2 gruts and little Dino

Justin lands his last guy on a summoning glyph and kills one of Jared’s last guys.

I kill off Justin’s leader and Jared’s leader to win the game with 2 units left.

Great game, but my army should have won pretty quick, if I’d been playing right I would have used every unit every turn.

The Orc's have dominated those foolish enough to stand against them.

Heroscape is growing on me.

Rematch, Blue Box again

I realized that I got several things wrong in my last game, not only my tactical decisions, but also basic rules. 

In an attempt to get things straight I played the game again, basically the same setup, same deployment, I did everything my cousin did, and tried to make the best decisions for the orks when I changed my movements.

Turn 1

• Assault Marines jump across the board to the left, Dread moves up
• Terminators shoot at Grotz and kill 8 of them, they run.
• Dread destroys truk weapon
• Tac 2, the 5 man squad destroys the big gun in shooting
• Kan shoots and catches on assault marine in a skorcha buring him alive

Turn 2

• All 3 marine squads move about 3 inches back
• Terminators and Tac2 kill 5 boyz
• Tac1 immobolizes buggy
• dread immobolizes kan
• Nobz drive up and assault Tac 1 and kill six marines but they hold their ground

Turn 3

• Assault Squad and dread assault and destroy the Nobz
• Terminators assault big mob and dish out 4 wounds, but take 4 wounds from powerclaws
• 2 remaining grotz regroup and head for objective, this was wrong they should have kept running
• Big Mob kills off last terminator
• Deffkoptas outflank from the side of the board and kill one Tac1 marine

Turn 4

• Assault Squad, Tac2, and Dread kill 5 boyz, they fail and fall back
• Close Combat with Koptas is pointless
• BigMek and Warboss turn around and slaughter the assault squad

Turn 5

• Dread kills off warboss
• Tac1 kills another kopta, koptas aren’t to good in close combat, they should have used hit and run to break off and fire missles
• Big Mek assaults the Dread and dies
• Turn 6
• Dread kills off 2 grotz, but herder makes leadership, he shouldn’t even be there.
• Tac1 kills another kopta leaving 1

Turn 7

• roll a 1, no turn 7, Marines should win even though its a tie since there are enemies within 3 inches of the objective

What did I learn?

Target priority, keep units out of assault range, don’t assault the warboss, shoot him to death, read the rules.

Looking forward to game against another person.

Battle for the Blue Box

800 points Orks vs. Space marines

My Cousin came over for another 40K game last night,  I’ve boosted both armies from the Assault on Black Reach box set now to around 800 points by adding a 5 man assault squad and a 5 man tactical squad to the Space Marines, and a unit of Grots, a warbuggy, and a Big GUN for the Orks.

The forces looked like this

Space Marines

10 man Tac Squad with Captain, I called this my Command Squad
5 man Tac Squad
5 man Assault Squad
5 Man terminator Squad
Dreadnaught

Orks

20 Boyz with Warboss and BigMek, I called this the Big Mob
5 Nobz in a Trukk
10 Grots
Big Gun with 4 grots
3 Deff Kopptas with Rokkits
1 Killa Kan with Skorcha
1 warbuggy

We played a game with a single objective, which was a mysterious blue box that appeared in the middle of a field on the Planet Shuffletard 7.  Both orks and the empire want to claim the box and have sent a task force to aquire it.  The forces have arrived at the same time and face off for a Pitched battle

I wanted to play Marines and he agreed to take orks saying he couldn’t believe it would be fair with 4 times as many soldiers as me.  We rolled to set up terrain,  Coz went first and grabbed the largest piece to protect his Big Mob and we set up the rest of the terrain from there.

Turn 1

Since he got the first piece of terrain I went first, but there wasn’t much I could do, he had the 20 boy mob hiding, he had the trukk of nobz out of sight, the kan was hiding behind a wall and the only thing I had to shoot at was the grots, which I killed 4 of.  I moved the dreadnaught up and took a shot at his big gun which missed.  I had moved my jump packed assault squad 12 inches up to take the objective but right after I had I realized I wanted them elsewhere.  The terminators moved forward a bit and killed off his Big Gun crew.

His Turn 1

He rolled a 5 to run his 20 man mob and they came around the hill pretty close to my assault squad, but he didn’t use his WAAGH and couldn’t assault them.

The Trukk moved a bit closer and hid behind another piece of terrain.  The Grots moved forward heading towards the objective.  The Kan came out in the open and headed for my dread.  The Buggy came over and got in the way of my big squad.  His shooting was unproductive, the big gun scattered from my tac squad into the terminators but couldn’t hurt them.

Big Mob is surrounded but doesn't seem to care.

Turn 2

My failure begins, I fly my assault squad to the right of his big mob.  My dread moves forward, the big tactical squad stays put.  I shoot and kill 4 orks with my assault squad, but my tactical squads only kill a couple despite rolling like 15 dice.  The BigMek Force Field pays off here. My dred shoots at his Kan and doesn’t hurt it. My Terminators shot at his big mob and kill a couple more.  I’m not happy about my rolling seems like he should have a much larger dead pile.

Outflanked by the DeffKoptas

His turn 2.

His DeffKoptas move in from reserves from  the right, now my left flank is completely exposed to rokkit fire.

He does something I didn’t expect.  I expected him to continue his big mob forward and run into my terminators, but he instead redirects them sideways towards the assault squad.  The trukk drives forward and dumps off the Nobz right in front of my command squad.  The Kan moves forward towards the dread.  The Deffkoptas move towards my left flank.

The Nobz about to wreck havoc on my Commander's Dquad

He shoots two handfuls of dice at my assault squad and kills 3, they pass their morale.  His deffkoptas kill two of my command squad.   His nobz shoot up  and kill off two more of my command squad.   I’m now realizing that I’m going to lose this game.

Assault Squad gets assaulted to death.

He assaults the remaining two assault squadies and miracolously one survives, I purposely fail the moral check and make a fall back move.

The Nobz assault my command squad, they take 4 wounds and only manage to kill one more marine.

The Kopptas assault my Dread but don’t hurt it.

The Kan assaults my Dread and rings it over the head for a stunning blow.

Turn 3

The Command Squad rolls some good saves, I think they could have took the Nobz if it wasn't for everything else.

I move the terminators just a bit, and I move the remaining assault sargent closer to the big mob.  I shoot up the Big mob with my terminators and 5 man tactical squad assault squad and kill off like 7 boyz, which was starting to make me feel better.

In assault I send the lone sargent back at the mob.  He gets a couple more kills, but dies a heroic death and is grinded under the feet of the warboss.  The terminators are afraid of the powerclaw in the big mob and they assault the side of Nobz.  I can’t remember if you can shot and assault different units but at this point I don’t care.  My dread is imbolized. My Command squad does well in CC against the Nobz, they have like 1 wound each and 3 of them have 2  wounds.

His turn 3.

Whats left of the Big mob kills off my 5 man tac squad in shooting.  The Kan destroys my Dread and it exploded giving one wound each to the Koptas.  The Nobz kill off a few more of my Marines, and  I get a few more wounds now each Nob has two wounds.

Turn 4

This is what I had to deal with on my last turn, out numbers, out gunned, and surrounded.

At this point I give in, its getting late and I’m tired, all my units are locked in combat, and while he hasn’t killed a terminator yet, and I still have like 2 marines and my Captain I’m pretty sure they won’t stand up against the warboss, Killa Kan, and BigMek’s Power Claws, not to mention the Rokkits

I’m thinking my two biggest problems were letting him get close enough to assault and moving my dread up to close to the Kan.  That and my first turn was completely useless.  The Dread should have been in front of my Command Squad blocking the assault, and the assault squad should have been out of assault range.  Got to pay more attention next time, as I am underestimating how far 12 inches is.  I think I need to try and focus my fire power more.  I have avoided repositioning my Tac Squad so I can fire the stinking missile launcher and I’ve yet to actually kill anything with it.

The Grots climb the mysteriouys blue box and claim victory! and one is riding a kitten?

This game went a little better then our last but I still had to look occasional things up from the rule book.  Coz still thought it was too many dice, but since I  bought like 30 dice it’s not so bad.

Heroscape First Impressions

I played some Heroscape with my cousin for the first time recently.  He’s a big fan of the game and been playing it since it came out.  I’d only heard of it a bit and assumed it was more of a kid’s game and not something for a more serious gamer.  Turns out I was wrong, sort of. 

A Shaolin Monk faces off against my Hive Lord

When he started taking the models out of the box I was stunned at the quality.  He had some very interesting models with a surprising amount of detail.  Some of the paint jobs were good while others were very lacking, none of them were great, but the fact that he got all these models pre painted at a very reasonable price is really something.  When I asked him how much the game was he thought the starter sets were very expensive and in 40-50 dollar range but he couldn’t remember exactly what he paid for them.  I told him I thought it was a steal and if Games Workshop made it then it would probably be 3 times that.

This was where the Mayhem insued.

So Heroscape is a simplified war game system marketed to older boys where you build then command armies on a 3D hex battlefield.  The unique thing about the battlefield is that the terrain is stackable so that every battlefield is different and the possibilities are limitless.  My Cousin set up a very vertical battlefield that I found cramped and challenging, very different from the 2D hex based maps I’d played on in the past.

Much to my annoyance I found out that you could only control a limited number of your units per turn and you had to mark which ones you wanted to control on your next turn before your opponent went, the inclusion of one dummy marker to keep your opponent guessing could make for some strategic confusion, but I’d much prefer to just move all my troops. 

I constructed an army of creatures that seemed to go well together, they were called Marro and apparently hatch from some kind of hive.  My Cousin built an army with some of his favorite characters mostly from the good guys army.  It was a bizarre mix, he had WW2 era soldiers, Matrix style agents, Shaolin Monks, flying winged dudes, and a robot called the Deathwalker 7000.  I guess variety is the spice of life and there’s probably some elaborate back-story explaining why these guys are all on the same team, but I don’t get it.  When I looked through his box of minis I saw Scottish Highlanders, Knights Templar, Cowboys, Elves, all manor of creatures, and perhaps most notable was the orc riding a dinosaur; A real motely crew of seemingly random warriors.

His winged dudes were hard to kill

Once we got started I enjoyed the game play, it took just a few minutes to learn and I was playing confidently in no time, but I knew I was going to get killed, my cousin is a veteran and had surely picked a superior army.  My army seemed to be working together sort of, and I quickly got my big awesome hive lord over to his side of the board and killed his robot.  But his three agents shot the big guy up and I lost a third of my army’s strength.  I guess I should have supported the big guy with some weaker or ranged units. 

Only moving 3 units per turn requires some better planning, and units should have been staggered to support each other, instead I kept charging with the same 3 units.   Something soon began to annoy the heck out of me.  Squads had no requirement or reason to stay together; in fact they probably should have been separated.  I guess I’m tainted by warhammer unit cohesion but it seems to me a squad of soldiers should stay near each other, otherwise are they even a squad?

As you can guess I got my ass handed to me, all of my cousins units had excellent special powers, mine had some ability to regenerate but I never made the dice rolls to do it.  I did manage to kill his flying dudes, but was thrown for a loop when the Monks got to attack every adjacent enemy.  I hadn’t read their card, and I was moving my squads as units so I had surrounded them.  Each Monk got 3 attacks per turn and wiped me out pretty fast.  Kind of ticked me off because my usual battle in most games strategy to to overwhelm individual units with superior numbers and firepower, with these monks you needed to deal with them one on one.  

Overall its an impressive game and the terrain and models are really cool.   It’s not collectable in the sense that when you buy a booster pack you know exactly what you’re going to get.  I really like that because when I was playing Axis and Allies miniatures and buying booster packs I kept getting crappy units I didn’t need.  The rules seemed a little too simple to me, but could probably be adapted to be more interesting, of course you could probably own everything in this game for less the the price of building one good warhammer army.

Assault On Black Reach Battle Report 2

I've got most of the orks painted

I got in a second game of 40K recently, this time I actually followed the rules, we rolled for mission and came up with Capture and Control, our deployment was Dawn of War.  I played the Orks again and this time I set up a little differently.  I put my 20 Boyz together with my Warboss as one unit, I put the 5 Nobz in the truck along with a Bigmek that I’ve recently aquiared.  I had my 3 DeffKoptas and one Killa Kan.  My opponent was still using just the space marines that come with AoBR, one tac squad, one terminator squad, and one dreadnaught. 

We treated Dawn of War a little differenly since my table isn’t really big enough, we set up our troops and headquarters units then had all our other units appear on our table edge at the end of our turn.  I let him set up his Terminators on some Terrain instead of bringing them in from the edge of the board.  We used two Duracell D batteries as our Objectives and set them up on opposing corners. 

The Orks prepare to WAAAGH the marines, notice the creative use of bird house as terrain.

This game only went 3 turns.  I went first and ran my 20 boy mob up about 9 inches and everything else appeared at the end of the board. 

The Tac squad was strictly on the defensive and stayed parked in front of the objective, they boltgunned  and got 4 wounds but were shooting through a wooded hill and I made 2 cover saves.  The Frag missle flew way off.

The Dreadnaught and Terminators were on the offensive and started moving towards the Ork objective.  The Terminators moved and fired wounding my 3 Koptas once each.  The Dreadnaught ran and didn’t shoot.

The Orks are greasing up their gears and getting ready to ride into battle

Ork turn 2:  The boyz run again and cluster up behind the wooded hill.  The Nobs drive 18 inches and park but don’t disembark.  The Deffkoptas fly up and shot at the Terminators with zero effect.

Marine turn 2:  The violet bastards chapter fire off another salvo of shots, they are just outside 12 inches so they still get one bolter shot, and kill 2 more orks.  The cover save is really saving my ass.  The frag missile scatters off again, its not helping that I rolled an 11.
The terminators try to take out the Koptas but this time luck isn’t on their side and they go no wounds.  The dreadnaught moves forward and hides behind a building.

Terminators survey the battlefield below.

Ork turn 3:  I unleash my WAAAGH and the Boyz roll a 5 on their run, they easily make it within assault distance.  The Nobz disembark and have no problem making it to the terminators.  The boyz roll 55 attack dice and kill 4 of the tac squad, but not before loosing 4 more boyz.  I’ve got 12 boyz left and the warboss which wasn’t close enough to fight,  and they have six marines and the captain.

The Nobs assault the terminators and I get like 30 attack dice and and handfull of wounds, the terminators roll 2  1s and I rejoice.  I have 3 more woulds to spread out on the Nobz.  The kan attacks and kills another Terminator.

The Orks and Tactical Squad mix it up.

Marine turn 3, now that 2 of his 3 units are locked in combat he moves the dreadnaught forward and shoots at the kopptas, uneffectively and starts to get frustrated.  He kills off a few more orks but looses 3 more marines in the process. 

Ther terminators get some more wounds on the Nobz but he looses another terminator.  At this point he concedes the game, even though I assure him its far from over.  

It seemed like the marines had a good strategy to just wait for the boyz to come to the objective but on reflection he should have let the boyz have the objective and moved to where he could have rained bolter fire on them without a cover save.  The Dreadnaught should have been more direct.

The Nobs take on the Terminators

The Orks pretty much did what the Orks do best, run up to something and club it over the head til’ its dead.  I’m starting to wonder if it’ll get bored playing them, I see more strategic play available withe the marines.

It was a much better game then my first one, I followed the rules better and the play was smoother, but it still took to long and lots of things had to be looked up.

New Ork stuff and battle report

Ork Warbuggy and Killa-Kan

I made a few purchases for my Orks to try and even the score, a trukk, a warbuggy, and a Killa-Kan.  I purchsed the Trukk from Ebay and the others from my nearest game store.  I paid like 12 dollars for the Trukk and about 40 for the others at the game store.  I mainly made the game store purchases to support the store and talk to the owner about the 40K play night which is Wednesday.  I live almost an hour away so its going to be hard to get over to play much. 

My new grand spending total is $163, my wife is starting to get worried.

My cousin plays some miniature games and agreed to play me in what would be both of our maiden Warhammer games.  I had played a bit in the past, but it was 2nd edition rules and limited two squad skrimishes so I consider this my first real game. 

My cousin plays heroclicks and heroscape so he has a basic understanding of miniature gaming, and I had praciticed the rules a bit, but it was pretty clear neither of us knew what we were doing.  He just decided to forgo a mission and simply try to kill each other.  I wish I had taken a few pictures but was busy trying to find rules in the rule book.

I took the Orks and divided the 20 boyz into a 8 and 12 man unit placing the Trukk in the 12 man unit and embarking them.  The Warbuggy and Kan aren’t built yet so I got no help from them.  We set up some terrain blocking LOS across the table and we began the battle. 

My trukk raced across the table and hid behind a building while everyone else ran forward.  The Space Marines positioned the Dread to intercept my Trukk and was able to see it and shot it at, but luckily missed, he moved his Terminators and Captain up, he found a gap he could shoot his missle launcher through which scattered far away. 

My Trukk ran away and thanks to its long move was able to get away.  The 8 man squad moved into shooting range of the Terminators and did nothing, and the DeffKoptas fired some inefective missles at the Dred. 

His turn, the Terminators and Captain killed 4 of the 8 man boyz unit.  The Dred shot down a Deffkopta, and the Tac squad moved up. 

My Turn The Nobz run forward again but are still out of range, the 4 remainaing boyz kill a terminator in shooting, then assault and kill one more but are wiped out, My Trukk drives across the board and finds a spot close to the Terminators to hide.  The DeffKoptas can’t hurt the Dred again, poor rolls.

His turn, the termintors move forward and manage to get a shot at the trukk which makes a cover save,  The Tac squad unloads on the warboss who is out in the open in front of the Nobz, he dies.  The Dread finishes off the remaining deffcoptas. 

My Turn, the 12 boyz disembark from the truck, fire off a handfull of dice in useless shooting against the terminators, then charge into the breech.  My Cousin is blown away by the sheer number of dice I’m rolling in attacks.  I manage to kill 2 more terminators, but lost 4 orks.  The Nobz are barelyout of assault range on the Tac squad and can’t hit a barn in shooting.  THe Koptas are all burning wrecks. 

His turn, The Tac Squad gets 4 wounds in shooting against the Nobs then assault and get a few more.  The Dread is wanding around trying to find something to shoot at, The 2 remaining termys and captain kill 3 more orks, I can’t hurt them.  I concede the game. 

My cousin’s impression is that 40K is “complicated” and “uses way to many dice” though he thinks the models look cool.  He says next time we play he would rather play heroscape which he assures me is “way more fun”

My impression is that 40K is complicated and uses way to many dice too, but by the end of the game it was going smoother.   

Tactically I’m a real idiot for putting a 8 man boyz squad up against his best unit while my Trukk drove straight towards the side of the board with the Dred then spent two turns running around the board running from the Dred.  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have bene able to hurt it.  I also grew to hate the Space Marine’s armor saves even more.  

I had fun though and look forward to another game.