RobNeville.net

Repeated luck isn’t luck. Repeated bad luck isn’t bad luck. Repeated luck is more accurately labeled as skill. Repeated bad luck is called incompetence.

There is such a thing as random hapenstance. Rolling the dice is still rolling the dice…that’s not the kind of luck I mean. I’m talking about life in general. Sure, there’s some randomness there, some luck. But the more I observe, it seems to me that people who constantly find themselves on the short end of the stick make or have made a series of choices that put them in a position where “bad luck” was more likely to strike. Likewise, there are their counterparts. Those who seem to make a series of choices that put them in a position to take advantage of good fortune when it comes around.

Question is - which one are you?

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Game time again!

Alright, the game this time isn’t exactly a “designer” or Eurogame like Carcassonne. But, it’s still a lot of fun. I enjoy playing it and my kids absolutely go nuts for it. So, just like Carcassonne does, this game manages to get a 10 year-old, a 6 year-old and a 4 year-old around the table together laughing and having a good time. Show me an Xbox game that does that?

So what is it? It’s Heroscape! Heroscape, what the heck is that????

Well, if you’re a guy, certainly you remember playing with little green army men or GI Joe’s when you were little? If you were lucky, you had a friend or sibling to play them with and you’d have “battles” with them. Well, if you were like me, those battles quickly turned into battles of words over who killed who’s guys, etc etc.

Heroscape looks to capture the magic of those games but put some amazingly simple rules around the whole thing. Heroscape is technically a war game using miniature figures.

Part of the genius of this game is the game board. It’s not your typical folded cardboard affair with glued-on artwork. As you can see here, the board is comprised of plastic colored “hexes” representing different types of terrain and those hexes can be stacked to create elevations. These hex pieces interlock in addition to being stackable. The end result is this: the game board is completely customizable by you and never needs to look the same twice.

The miniatures are either a “hero” or a squad of “guys”. Here you can see my squad of  Airborne Elite soldiers. But Heroscape is not just an “army man” game. In the distance there you can just make out my opponent’s pieces…a dragon, some futuristic terminator robots and some sort of alien army dudes. And to round out my side, I’ve got some Matrix-like agents and an Elf (which I jokingly call Legolas).

It sounds like chaos but the game pulls it off nicely. Each hero or squad comes with a card that explains how far each one can move in a turn, their range for attack and then the number of dice to roll for their attack and number of dice to roll for defense.

Combat is stupid simple. You visually check to make sure that the attacking unit can “see” the defending unit. Then the attacker and defender roll special 6-sided dice as indicated on the cards.

The dice have skulls, shields and blank sides. If you’re attacking, each skull is a “hit” and if you’re defending, each shield is a “miss”. If the number of hits exceeds the number of misses, then the defending unit is hit otherwise, it’s safe. Simple.

Most units have special abilities that alter the rules somehow…either they can move specially, have a special attack or something similar. You can optionally play a simplified variant of the game where you ignore these special rules and some other more advanced rules are ignored for the most part.

For me, a good attribute for a game is how expandable it is and Heroscape is uber-expandable….you can buy nearly 100 new units/heroes and dozens of new types of terrain to add to your board in a ton of expansion packs. They even have one that just came out a little while ago where you can have units of Marvel super heroes like Spiderman and the Hulk. How awesome is that?

As always though, the true measure of any game for me is - is it fun for everybody and does it bring people together to the table again and again? Yup, Heroscape FTW. I love it…at least an hour of no Xbox, no Gameboy’s, no TV. Want some family togetherness?  Get a good board game.

Be sure to read my other board game reviews for other great suggestions.

Just thought I’d give everyone a fair warning…if you’re at all interested by the trailer for the “movie” The Blindness starring Julianne Moore…be aware, this is not actually meant to be a feature film. Instead, this is really a very elaborate university joint psychology-economics-sociology experiment to study how long it takes before the theater empties out. They’re interested in studying the effect of utter crap cinema on the price elasticity of a movie ticket.

Honestly, Diane and I got up and left. The movie stumbled around like the suddenly blind people that it was meant to portray. There was little plot that I could detect. The characters made choices or reacted to situations in totally nonsensical ways…I mean Julianne Moore’s character walks in on her husband committing adultery with another woman and her reaction is to comfort the other woman? Please ::rolls eyes::

I don’t know how the movie ends now, but then again, I don’t think it really does end as the experimenters were sure no one would last the advertised running time of 2 hours anyway.