Review #1: Heroscape Marvel: The Conflict Begins

Overview: I randomly went on a trip to Wal-Mart one fine evening. It was very unplanned. I was safe in my room late at night when I suddenly wanted to go out into the dark, cold, scary, dangerous world and head to the Wally World. Upon arriving, I walked the usual aisle to see if anything new had appeared. There were no new Mighty Muggs of interest. There were no Transformers Animated figures I wanted. I then meandered to the game section of the Toy Department. Sadly, the game section has far too many “popular” titles. I like to find the obscure stuff.

My search gave unto me Heroscape Marvel: The Conflict Begins. It is based on Heroscape, a game designed by Craig Van Ness, Rob Daviau, and Stephen Baker of Hasbro Games. It is a miniatures board game that is so close to an Role Playing Game I can almost smell the sweat of that stereotypical fat guy who plays nothing but hot elf chicks (I’ve played with a type like that before and it was rather disturbing).

The set up was the most difficult, really. I was having trouble getting the pieces together at first. The breakaway section of a wall that the Marvel version comes with kept falling over on me. The more you play, the easier the setup is. But I still can’t get the breakaway section to stand on the first try.

There are two landscape builds that you can choose from in The Conflict Begins, each with several scenarios that you can play. Players choose which side of the scenario they want to play. The choices are primarily good guys versus bad guys, but some scenarios change it up like the one where it is Hulk versus everyone else. The scenarios my roommate and I played were the Team Good versus Team Bad ones for both landscape options. I chose the good guys and he opted for the bad.

Now either I REALLY suck at this type of game play, or the baddies are extremely over powered. Two of them (Dr. Doom and Red Skull) have the ability to take over and manipulate an enemy on their turn. My roommate loved taking over the Hulk with Red Skull. These powers have restrictions, of course, but it is still a bit on the heavy side with someone like the Hulk on the other team. Also, Thanos has the ability to return from defeat if the player rolls a certain number on his turn.

The individual powers offered by each character are very specific to the comics, which makes this game intriguing. For example, if the Hulk is injured he can add the amount of damage he has taken to his attack roll. This reflects Hulks ability to grow stronger when angered. Spider-Man has his patented Spider Sense that allows him to dodge attacks if he rolls above a certain number.

Mechanics: Mechanics are rather simple to understand and practice. Each character has a Movement score, a Range score that is used to calculate how many squares away an enemy can be for them to use their Attack score, and a Defense score.

When you make an attack, you roll an amount of dice equal to your Attack score. The amount of skulls that appear count as your attack. The defending character then rolls an amount of dice equal to their Defense score. The amount of shields that appear count as the character’s defense. The two numbers are compared and if the attack is higher, then the difference is subtracted from the defending character’s health. If the defense is higher, nothing happens.

Of course, the different powers of the characters as mentioned before throw in an X-factor into the mix. Red Skull has low stats but his ability to control the mind of anyone he can see once per turn makes up for more than that. Captain America can boost the morale of allies around him by adding +1 to their Attack and Defense. A useful power is Iron Man’s ability to attack twice in a round.

Movement over elevation is easy as well and reflects moving up and down rather effectively. You count a move upward as a movement and then that elevation space as another movement. Going down costs only one movement. Good ol’gravity.

Physical Aspects: You need a large flat surface for this game. Be it on a table, a large coffee table, or even the floor, these landscape builds take up quite a bit of room. We used the floor ourselves, but since I am old and busted (read: 22) my back was killing me and I could never get used to sitting “Indian Style”. [Short rant: Did you know that our PC world is telling kids to call that style of sitting Criss-Cross or something to that effect? Maybe the Indians invented that kind of sitting? Ever thought of that? Wouldn’t calling it that be paying tribute to a great sitting nation of people? (After much research ala Wikipedia, they did not invent it as it is apparent in multiple cultures, but I doubt the ones that set up this PC crap knew it)]

The landscape pieces are sturdy enough but I can see myself breaking them rather easily at some point as I try to piece them together or take them back apart. The breakaway wall section that comes with this set was also quite a pain to set into place, as I stated earlier. The wall itself sits neatly on the board, but the breakaway section doesn’t fit perfectly in the hole that it is supposed to reside causing some technical difficulties. The wall adds time to the setup I would rather use for playing the game. Luckily, most of the scenarios did not require the wall.

The wall, however, does add that extra element to the playing field. It has two spaces in a higher elevation that characters can use to their advantage, creates a good defense position, and can add that extra element of comic book hero excitement if someone punches out the breakaway section.

The figures are very well designed and painted. The Hulk looks rather fearsome himself. You also get a good sense of scale when you see the Hulk and Abomination towering over the other characters. There are a few paint issues but it only really deals with how small the figures are. There is no real way around that for mass produced games such as this.

Summary: As stated before, I find this type of mainstream board game to be something of an gateway drug into Role Playing. I am not complaining at all. Role Playing is a largely misunderstood and ignored portion of non-digital gaming. Overall, this is a very fun game with well designed physical aspects and easy to learn mechanics. Lovers of both Heroscape and the Marvel Universe will definitely fall in love with this game.