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Players: 2
Playing Time:
Unlimited
I was setting up a battlefield on our living room floor to
play one of the
simpler Heroscape games: Attack at Dawn. My son Kevin had wandered
away since it was taking me so long and I was getting a little tired myself. Surrounded
by a vast array of battlefield tiles in different shapes and colors, I struggled to
assemble what was actually a large 3-D jigsaw puzzle. That part alone took me 30
minutes.
I leaned back to take a break. Then I glanced at the multitude
of action
figures, cards, and three instruction booklets scattered before me.
“Yikes!” I said as I flipped through one. “There’s too much here. I’ll never learn all
these rules!”
A faint voice reached my ears. “Never fear, good sir. I
will assist you.”
I spun around. I thought I was alone.
Who…what…?
Then I noticed him. One of the tiny action figures was looking
up at me. He
brandished a heavy sword and shield, and wore a Viking outfit of shiny
armor
and a helmet topped with wings.
“Yes, it is I, Thorgrim the
Viking Champion. My card.” With his sword he
nudged an odd six-sided card toward
me. I picked it up.
“Hmm. Says here you’re from Earth, are human, and
have a defensive aura.
That’s good, I guess. So how do you play this
game?”
“Once the battlefield has been readied, simply position the
specified figures
as they appear in the Game Scenario charts. For example, I stand
here.” He walked to a spot near the front, stopped, and looked at me once more. “When
all of us are in place, you may begin.”
“Okay. Then
what?”
“You and your opponent roll the dice. The one who rolls the most
skulls goes
first.”
“Charming.”
“Each player chooses a
card that corresponds to their characters. Then they move the figure. My card, as you
can see, allows me to move five spaces.”
Thorgrim went on to explain
that each card had numbers for range, attack and
defense. If Thorgrim’s range was
1, then he needed to be adjacent to an enemy player before he could attack. The player
attacking rolls a specified number of attack dice. If he rolls two skulls, the opponent
must block the attack with two or more skulls; if not, the attack is successful. The
player who can remove all his opponent’s figures this way wins the
game.
“Which will be my side, since I’m in the Good Army,” concluded
Thorgrim.
“We’ll see about that. Now, if there’s nothing else, we’d
like to get started. Thanks, Thorgrim.”
“My pleasure, sir.” The small
figure froze into his original battle stance,
and I called Kevin into the
room.
Ten-year-old Kevin enjoyed the game more than I did; later, he
made his own
battlefield without much trouble. For my part I found the constant
rolling of
dice and card-checking to be wearying. The game has its charms, though.
Bottom line: Heroscape is a challenging game to set up and play, best suited
for
pre-teen kids with lots of time and patience.
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