I’ve seen this on the shelf in Wal-Mart and Target for the last several months, but you never know if a customizable/collectible game is going to be any good. Plus, I don’t want to be that fanboy who buys anything with Spider-Man or X-Men on the box. But I had heard good things about the mechanics of HeroScape itself and it was almost worth the money just for the figures, so my fiance and I finally broke down and tried it.
I don’t consider myself a gamer but I have dabbled in collectible card games here and there, but what usually turns me off from them is when the starter decks don’t include any major characters or very powerful cards, and even when they advertise that they can be played without buying any expansions, they find ways to make the game not nearly as fun without spending a lot of money and building up a huge collection. I was worried that Marvel HeroScape might end up being another major commitment, while we were just looking for a one-time buy, strategy-board game based on some Marvel characters we like. And surprisingly enough, that’s exactly what we got. Sure, it’s customizable with other HeroScape sets, but the set includes enough hex ground pieces and powerful enough characters to play the game several different ways and not loose interest.
The game includes a lot of the characters you’d want in a Marvel strategy miniatures game. You get Spider-Man, Venom, Hulk, Abomination, Silver Surfer, Thanos, Captain America, Red Skull (probably the coolest looking figure in the game), Iron Man and Doctor Doom. Okay, so there are no X-Men represented, but you can’t win ‘em all. As I said, the figures look very impressive and are all to scale. Each figure has stats and powers that very intelligently mirror their characters in the comics. Hulk and Abomination can jump ten spaces on a turn, with a particular die roll Thanos can be “rejected by Death” and come back to life after being killed, and Captain America can attack multiple characters on his turn with a shield throw.
The rules are complex enough to give the game a fair amount of strategy but not so difficult it takes hours to learn. In fact, once you know the rules yourself, it takes almost no time to teach someone else. There are realistic rules dealing with line-of-sight, climbing, being attacked while moving away from a character you were just standing next to, etc. Other games like this have similar rules, of course, but what makes this game unique and fun is that it has a customizable board that you can build in multiple shapes and sizes and the spaces are hexes instead of squares, making movement a bit different from other games. The rules are also simple enough it’s easy to add to them. You don’t have to play a game where you simply kill off all your opponent’s players all the time. You can get creative and build on what’s already here. We’ve come up with capture the flag, king of the hill, holding another player’s character hostage and various other scenarios.
At the moment, no other Marvel sets have been released for HeroScape. I like the game enough I might purchase another if it came out, but because I enjoyed this set so much, not because I need a supplement for it to be enjoyable. This is a high quality product that looks pretty, has a very good rule system, and it’s easy to play a different game every time. For the twenty-three bucks we paid for it, that’s not a bad deal.
LLAP
-Cap’n Logan
