Wylfred and the Plume

Let me introduce Wlyfred, the newest of my customs for Utgar! He came from Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume and in it he was able to turn his allies into demigods but at the end of the battle they died. His demigodifying power has been significantly decreased, but that doesn't mean its worthless!

Wlyfred (left) and his feather (right)

I'm going to base this off the idea that Wylfred killed his buddies and committed many acts of sin. Which would make sense for Utgar to nab him for his own army. And here's the stats (which are a work in progress):

Name: Wlyfred
General: Utgar
Race: Human
Rank: Unique Hero
Class: Swordsman (Champion perhaps?)
Personality: Bitter
Size: Medium 5
Life: 6
Move: 5
Range: 1
Attack: 3
Defense: 4
Point Value: 140 perhaps?

Abilities:
Double Attack: Allows Wylfred to attack twice.
Power of the Plume: After taking a turn with Wylfred, you may select a Unique Hero you control and place 2 Plume Markers on their Army Card and remove all Wound and Negation Markers from it. At the end of a round, remove a Plume marker from all Army Cards you control that have at least 1 on them. If a figure has its final Plume Marker removed, it is destroyed. Figures with at least 1 Plume marker add 1 to their move and 2 to their attack and defense.

Swiss Army Falchion

At a melee friendly tournament, the big red Mount could be pretty useful. He's basically a "Swiss Army Knife," capable of doing many different things but certainly not a master at any of them. In a room full of melee units, you may not regret taking him.

At the tourney, I used him alongside Grimnak, Nerak, Ornak, Marcu and 4 teams worth of Blade Gruts. Army has a real 'Nak' to it, heh.

A few of the armies featured units who Brunak was quite happy to see including Zombies of Morindan, Roman Legionnaires, Samurai, and some Greenscale Warriors backed by Zogross Hardscale. I also brought Brunak to help combat against possible "FireStorms," who would've been tough for my Orcs to fight. Overall, Brunak's Blood Hungry Special Attack had plenty of viable options.

The primary reason to bring a Swiss Army Knife is to have the ability to cover a lot of different bases at once, and Brunak does that to some extent in my Orcs build. He does give a small advantage against the units mentioned above, but perhaps there is another reason to bring this Mount into combat? The Orcs Build as is already takes many of the advantages that Brunak normally offers (outside of Lava Resistance), but can usually perish to powerful ranged builds or units with higher stats and equal attrition levels. I chose Brunak, as opposed to another Orc Champion Tornak to both hide a few weaknesses and to power up the capabilities of the Gruts. Without Brunak, my army would only have 1 way to fight off evil things like massed commons in the form of an only average endurance unit, Grimnak. I'm not saying that Brunak is more survivable than Grimnak (in fact, he was killed in turn of Minions of Utgar strikes), but he does give the army a longer time for power-attacks. Tornak couldn't have done that, and Tornak's Orc Warrior Enhancement would've been a bit too unwieldy to try to use along with Grimnak's as I imagine Ornak would've been moving both at the same via Red Flag of Fury.

Speaking of Ornak, Brunak can actually Carry Brunak closer to the battlefield so that Red Flag of Fury is much easier to pull off. Sure 8 spaces is a long range, but once the battle starts, you don't want to lose turns with Grimnak just so you can move your flag-boy up a few spaces. I can understand moving Nerak with the Gruts (3 attack with a 9 space threat-range isn't too bad, especially if the rest of your Gruts benefit from the move), but Ornak is just too wimpy. His meager attack boost is nice to have, but as the Blade Gruts only feature a basic 2 attack dice, I don't see the Utgar Symbols helping much.

If you don't feel like moving Ornak (perhaps you don't see Red Flag of Fury being worth a damn this game...), I had the option to move up Marcu or a Blade Grut so that I could get a Glyph in a single turn (or in the Blade Grut's case 2 turns). Depending on the Glyph, this is actually a viable move. I used this to somewhat decent effect in the first game I played at the tournament, but because I lost that game I'm not sure you need to be taking my advice... Yeah, that was my attempt at humor.

When using Brunak, your going to have to remember that his big muscles only give him 3 hit points. He does have a nice 7 defense though, so let's focus on that for a second. Focused on it? Great. When using Brunak as a big hammer (his other role, the main one being a giant pony), its O.K. to charge him into a bunch of low attack squad figures. Bonus points if said figures have low defense for Blood Hungry Special Attack to kick in a few times. The goal for this is to paint a big red 'X' on Brunak so that your other heroes (Grimnak mainly), don't get swarmed so quickly. That 7 defense should give Brunak a turn or two to take out as much as he can, and if you can get him on height, he becomes a massive 8 Defense hero who's lost life won't ultimately make you lose. But, if you've been using Ornak to move Grimnak and Bruank on every single Turn 1, then your opponent might think otherwise. Of course, if your Power attacks do what they are supposed to (that is, eliminate all enemies ASAP), then you won't have to worry about trying to pull out tricky tactics with unsophisticated orcs.

Hopefully, this Swiss Army Falchion can serve you well in the future if you play him with Gruts anyways. 'Scape On

The Mercenary Samurai

As some folks know, I happen to love the board game Shogun (or Samurai Swords depending on when you've gotten the game). I also hold the belief that Shogun helped to "design" a few of 'Scape's units. As we know though, HeroScape never had any Ronin.

Thus,

The custom uses 3 Samurai figures (I like using the Tagawa Samurai for this purpose).

The Kokugura Ronin take many of the mechanics from Shogun's Ronin and implements them into 'Scape in a powerful way. In Shogun, players had to hire Ronin and could place them anywhere on the board which is a powerful force. At the same time, there was the chance that all of the Ronin would be "sold out", thus players would bid on use of them. That is basically incorporated into Payment Delivered.

Now let's look at the parts of the card that is all HeroScape. Among the first things you'll notice is that this squad doesn't have 6+ move like the other Unique Samurai Squads. Sure the Kozuke only have a base move of 5, but they still have their Charging Assault, and yes the Ronin are technically not Samurai (the class states Ronin), but Ronin are still as Samurai (in fact, they were Samurai before they became Ronin!). The question is why are they only moving at average speed? Well, that is because they are already able to move excessively fast thanks to their primary Payment Delivered Special Power. When used in sync with The Job Is Done, these guys can move all over the place in a few rounds. I'm not going to get too involved with strategy here (this isn't the main design post after all), so all of this can easily change in time. And of course, as they have training as Samurai, they know how to use the infamous CounterStrike.

'Scape On.

Terrain Throwdown!

The Map, the Board, the Battlefield... All these things could be used to effectively describe the in-game area for when we play some HeroScape. Some folks just build according to the idea of competitive play, others because a map looks nice, and some try to combine both theories into one.

But, is there any value to simply having two people randomly toss terrain together for a quick game or two? Maybe. This thread of mine, on heroscapers.com suggests the idea of having two preset piles of terrain to make a map with. After trying this with a rookie, I found out that it doesn't work very well. I think that a few more limitations are needed, perhaps the builders need to be a bit more equal in skill?

I'm still all for the idea that if there are more than just 2 people playing, then we can build any ol' board and hope for the best.

'Scape On.

Superheroes and redcoats and skinless space aliens!

A tournament report from the Mad Titan IV

The rules for this tournament were a little different; armies start at 600 points, and after each game, you drop 50 points from your army. Starting at 600, going to 550, then 500, etc., ending at 350.I decided to build my army around a core of 350, and add 250 points of units from there. Since Marvel was allowed, I decided to use one of those heroes.....Captain America. Raelin makes everything better, and Marro Warriors are decent shooters for 50 points.

Then, I needed 250 points to drop over the course of the day. After going over the available options, I decided on the 10th Regiment of Foot, because they're awesome. (Also, I don't have enough 4th to be able to use them instead.) My army for the event: Captain America, Raelin, Marro Warriors, 3 squads of 10th Regiment, and a Drow Chainfighter.

Game 1

The first game of the day, I was playing against fellow HS-er Hsskor (who happens to be my brother). He was using Braxas, 4 squads of Greenscales, and Cyprien at 600 points. The map was Hellsgate.

Braxas, Cyprien, Grimnak, Silver Surfer.....those were some of the figures I was really worried about. And here were two of them in the same army. Which was actually fortunate, because order markers were poorly split between the two.

My favorite opening for most games is with Raelin, placing her on height. I used the same move here, because even if the big heroes on the other side weren't going to roll dice, the Greenscales certainly would. I sent the 10th out next, hoping to eliminate Braxas before her chronic bad breath eliminated Captain America. Cyprien moved forward and used chilling touch on Raelin, rolled a 20, and moved on to Captain America. I used the 10th to take both glyphs, which were Attack +1 and Kelda.

Since I had my 10th on height while holding the attack glyph, the rest of the game was mostly a cleanup operation. Cyprien was attempting Chilling Touch on Cap, but had little success with it. My 10th brought down Braxas and Cyprien, and the remaining Greenscales didn't have much of a chance against my 10th.Dropping one squad of 10th to attrition.

Game 2

My next game was against Shedim Kabal on a map (built from SotM and FotA) that I don't remember the name of. I've met him once before, at a tournament in IL. Last time, we pulled a map that heavily favored my army; it happened again this tournament. His army had Tor-Kul-Na, 2 squads of Stingers, 2 squads of Nagrub, and 3 squads of Dividers. The map we were playing on neutralized Tor-Kul-Na, and the Stingers were the largest threat to my army. If I killed them and then held the high ground, I'd win the game with little trouble.

I opened like last game, placing Raelin on height; it may have not worked very well last time, but this game the extra defense would help. My 10th took both glyphs, (a dud and Wind,) then started to climb the towers. 10th are already favored to win against Stingers, and me beating him to the high ground kept this game from being very exciting.

I'm hoping that the map is a little more balanced next time I play Shedim Kabal.

Dropping the Chainfighter to attrition.

Game 3

This time I was paired up against vegetarian18 on a BftU/TT map, who was running 2x Black Wyrmlings, 3x Red Wyrmlings, and #x Phantom Knights. The only part I was worried about was the pair of Black Wyrmlings, the only units that really pose a threat to Captain America here.

I moved my 10th out first, hoping to take the wyrmlings out. The Phantom Knights wouldn't be very useful here, especially against the Captain. My 10th land on the nearest glyph to me, which is the glyph of Wind (no flying). This game, it's actually helpful, making his Phantom Knights a little slower. Until, of course, he lands on the glyph of Move +2, boosting his PKs to move 8. At least they don't get Disengage.

I try to hold down the Wind glyph, but his PKs are too darn fast, and always get height on the glyph. He makes a couple of attacks against Cap, but counterstrike pulls through both times. After those two attacks, he doesn't try for Cap again the rest of the game. He does manage to bring down Raelin and quite a few of my 10th.

I end up winning this game after a few more round. Captain America is probably the worst matchup for Phantom Knights; if he brought more Black Wyrmlings, he'd have had better chances against Marvel figures.

Dropping a squad of 10th to attrition.

Game 4

Up against Eternalthanos86, with 2x 10th, Marcus Decimus Gallus, Raelin, and Kaemon Awa. The map is Stygian Rift.

This army should make for an interesting match; my army really close to his, sort of. Captain America does a lot of the things that Kaemon and Marcus do, and if I don't do something stupid, it should be pretty close.

He wins first initiative, moving Raelin to a perch on height. I put my Raelin on the mirror perch, and he moves his 10th up for the glyphs. I stick Cap into shadow within Raelin's aura, and he puts his 10th onto the glyph on the far side from Cap. He pulls....the Attack +1 glyph. Right after I comment about how I'm hope that's not what he's going to get. Now the game is looking nasty for me; 2 squads of 10th having height on my units AND an attack glyph? I already saw this today, and now I'm on the receiving end of it. Ouch.

Well, my lone squad of 10th can't do much against the much much scarier 10th on height with glyph support, and my OM placement is less than optimal here. I move my 10th onto the other glyph, landing....a dud.

Between me having a poor position and making it worse with a few blunders, my chances of winning weren't so great. I do end up losing, but only after making him haul out Kaemon. (That counts for something, right?)

Dropping the last squad of 10th to attrition. My army is now down to 350.

Game 5

I'm fighting on a C3G map this time; Grundy's Grave. I'm up against Jaslow, who's wielding Charos, 2x 4th, and Eldgrim. I know that Captain America and Charos are close to evenly matched, and if I can fire on his Charos from height with Marro adjacent to Cap, he won't last a whole long time. Shield Throw & high defense will keep Cap around against the 4th, unless they land a glyph of Attack +1. My luck can't be THAT bad, right?

The starting zones are close enough to the high ground that I don't have to move Raelin at all, so I open by moving my Marro towards the two glyphs closest to me. Charos lands on the glyph opposite me, getting +8 initiative. My Marro get....a dud. His 4th move towards the middle of the map, shooting at Raelin from height. She manages to hang around long enough to gain even ground with the 4th, dying soon after. The 4th grab the glyph of Defense +1, putting their defense up to 4.

The 4th manage to put 3 wounds onto Cap before having their numbers reduced to ineffectiveness. Then Charos moves in and takes height on the good Captain. Disengaging with Captain America and moving over to height on the other end of the middle, Cap takes a fourth wound. Charos flies over, engages Cap, and takes a shot at him, finishing off the Captain. Without Cap, my remaining Marro Warrior doesn't last long.

Losing no units to attrition.

Game 6

Mohicans! I love these dudes. I've never been very good with them, though. Lord Pyre has Cyprien, Marcu, and 3x Mohican River Tribesmen. We're playing on Shrine of Mo-Ne-Ka, a really, really, really cool map. I wasn't hoping to run into Cyprien a second time. Cap can't kill him fast enough to stay safe from Chilling Touch, and I don't have any 10th here to save the day.

He wins initiative and moves his MRT along the back of the ruin. I move Raelin in the same direction, followed by Cap and the Marro Warriors. He rolled his Concealment once against my combined assault of Shield Throw/Marro gun-thingamabobs, losing all of his Mohicans. I, of course, lose Raelin. As usual. Of course, now the trouble is taking Cyprien out. I've got Cap on top of the ruin, some Marro hiding behind it, and Cyprien is circling around below. I send Cap up, Shield Throw Cyprien, and......fail miserably. Cyprien swoops in, rolls Chilling Touch, and puts two wounds on Cap; then, attacking, Cap manages to counterstrike a wound on the Vampire. Of course, Cap falls to Cyprien after a few more OMs, and the remaining Marro warriors can't keep enough wounds on to matter.I lose this game, while my opponent still has Cyprien and Marcu alive.

Thoughts

I won the first three games, and lost the last three. The difference in my army between those two points was having 2 or more squads of 10th. Cap is much too vulnerable to Cyprien and Black Wyrmlings, and needs squaddies around to save the day. The attack/defense bonus is handy, letting the 10th throw out some crazy rolls, but Marcus and Raelin can do that job better than Cap for fewer points. A special attack is a handy thing to have, though.