One method that I often use:
Take a wild guess. Then pit it against army after army until you think it's balanced. What? Did you think it was anything else?
A more detailed run-through of the process could be easily defined as simply checking over multiple things from recording matches, playing on specialized tournament maps, and going all out and playing them in point values 200 to 1500. In reality, there is no true way to play-test your custom except your way. The way it will be played at your house.
Probably one of my favorite and most despised customs is Flail-Stomp the Grape-Crusher(who I rated as an "F" if it were to be usable in a tourney).
And although in your typical 500 point game he would be decimated, he's proved to be invaluable in Dungeon Crawls(pending the right scenario). His ability to be versatile on small maps has rightly earned him the title of Grape-Crusher. Play-Testing for him was very lenient due to the circumstances. I only put him in a few Dungeon Crawls and he seemed well off enough at 140 and that stuck.
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Effective Play-Testing also requires plenty of practice to really be accurate. By pitting two 500 point armies on a map with one containing your custom in it may not the best of routes to take. Instead many customizers take another approach. They often test them against units of nearly equal or equal worth before they do all of that. It's also very common to test them against squads to allow more insurance of a close cost.
Furthermore, some members of heroscapers.com have been considered to be experts almost. This quote from Hamha suggests keeping records will help.
"I keep a notebook with me when testing and I write every turn down when testing. You don't have to, but you should at least jot down a note here and there to acknowledge certain points during a test that might be important. If either team wins because of winning most of initiatives to get advantage, that's worth noting. If either team rolls unusually good attack or defense, that's worth noting. Anything that might be worth the readers of the test sheet needing to know to get a better idea of the events during the test can be noted. If nothing else, keep some notes so that if someone questions your test results, you can go back and say, "well this happened that was unusual or that happened, or so in so had height advantage throughout the game or whatever." That can help people judge test results better."
If you don't exactly know what "If either team rolls unusually good attack attack or defense" means, you can check these tables out. If the numbers aren't similar, well then you know what's different. But because HeroScape is random don't allow these numbers to rule you pricing.
When pricing units who are meant to deal damage to your opponent's figures like most figures, it's pretty easy to track the amount of kills and damage they dealt in points. Over a bunch more tests, you can get an accurate number based upon how you think the results price them. But HeroScape has more than just "Attack, Attack, Attack!!" units. Some are more specialized or are solely meant to boost their allies. They are often called "Cheerleader" units. Not only are these guys(or girls in the case of Raelin) much harder to price as they don't do the whole fighting thing, but they also become great targets for your enemy attacks. Even more difficult are figures who don't directly deal damage, but aren't supporting their allies with stat or dice boosts.Instead they are inflicting status effects or healing their friends. This causes a very difficult situation for play-testing. But the mastery of this type of play-testing is quite valuable even if customs with these types of effects are rare.
Preview:
HeroScape: Then and Now...
Then: 4 types of terrain with only 1 doing something special all the time.
Now: A bunch of terrain that's often does lots of things.
Then: Expansion consistently comin..........
Thanks to all who have contributed to this admittedly difficult post.
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