Well, we’ve had our new Heroscape sets (called “Age of Annihilation”) for a few weeks now, and my middle child and I have been playing several games. I think at this point I’ve played, or played against, every figure in the new wave except the dragon. (Xenithrax, like pretty much all dragons, is tricky to fit into smaller armies due to her cost.) I thought it might be worthwhile to give my initial impressions on the new units. (If you’re not a Heroscape player or fan, this may be less interesting for you. Sorry ‘bout that.)
The Polar Bears
The Frostclaw paladins and their hero, Knight Irene, are some great looking minis. Anthropomorphic armored polar bears with metal clawgloves? Just bad-ass. They also have a fun trade-off during the game: they’re either very slow with decent attack, or have decent speed and crappy attack, and, unlike most squads, you can make that choice on a figure-by-figure basis. You can play the Frostclaws with Knight Irene, or choose any of 6 other champions to bond with. You can put them into an army with Sir Dupuis to boost his attack, with Concan to boost the bears, or with Sir Gilbert (who can also be their champion) to get some movement boosts. Not to mention that Knight Irene is valiant, so she can hang out with the minutemen. Lots of cool options.
But, of course, most of those units didn’t really need the help (especially the minutemen). And the Frostclaws introduce a new, weird rule: they’re the first ever common unit with multiple life points. Apparently, you’re supposed to put the wound marker on the map beside the figure, and then you’re supposed to move the wound marker whenever you move the figure, and also make sure that you don’t mix up wound markers when the figures are adjacent to each other, and it’s just a hot mess. With the result that most people (e.g. when I’ve watched people using them on the Internet) just put the wound markers on the polar bears’ heads, like a little hat. In our house we call it “the helmet of shame.” It’s kinda ... dumb. Sorry. Also, when I ran them, I ran them with the wizards and familars, so I didn’t get as much out of them as I might have if I’d paired them with any of those exciting Jandar units I mentioned above. But I don’t really do Jandar units that often (and plus I was trying to use as many new units as possible). So, I dunno ... I was a bit underwhelmed, overall.
But, they do look cool. Really ... fucking ... cool.
The Pirates
There have never been pirates in Heroscape before, and it was always considered a major omission. Now all of a sudden we have 7 different units: an admiral, two captains, two pirate heroes, and two unique pirate squads (4 members each). This is moderately cool, and I was looking forward to playing them. I think in general they did not disappoint, although some of the individual units may underwhelm.
First of all, we decided to forgo using Admiral EJ-1M the first time around, and this was definitely a mistake. On the second play-through, I did take him, and I thought he was pretty damned awesome. His first power lets you fool your opponent with your order marker placement, which is always fun, but it’s that Boarding Party special attack that really makes the unit. And the four-armed robot mini makes a pretty imposing figure on the board.
The knaves of the Silver Scimitar are your main pirate squad: they get to pick a captain and then bond with either that captain or any pirate hero,* disengage for those sneaky guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, and an extra attack die to encourage them to do just that. It’s a bit too bad that it’s a unique squa
The rest of the units are a mixed bag. Fia Bonny the Void Siren is probably the better captain; Bok-Bur-Na, the Marro captain, looks cool enough, but I found him a bit underwhelming in play. Fia is ostensibly a human, though I guess she’s wearing some sort of space armor, ’cause she looks way weirder (and cooler) than your standard human. I suppose Bok-Bur-Na’s powerset is more useful, but he’s also significantly more expensive, so I still say Fia is the better choice. (And there’s no point in taking both because of the way the Knaves’ bonding power is worded.) Meanwhile, your other choice for a pirate squad, the exiles of the Sundered Sea are, according to their card, also a pack of mongrels, but their sculpts look way more consistent. Having some range (even if it’s only 3 times per game) is nice, but Stealthy is not as useful as First Assault in my opinion, and they have no bonding, so I wasn’t as impressed with them as with the Knaves.
Finally, the two pirate hero options are Dorim the Bulkhead Brawler and Killian Vane III. Dorim has a cool sculpt, but he has one power that’s literally useless unless you’re bonding with him, and he costs 100 points, so I wasn’t really sure he was worth it at the end of the day. Killian is more affordable, adds an area-of-effect special attack, and he looks like a proper bad-ass pirate. Having only a single power is slightly disappointing, but overall I thought he was a decent choice if you want to run a pirate army.
The Revna Heroes
At several points in Heroscape’s history, two (or three) units are designed together, but somehow they end up not getting released together. With the results that, when the first unit appears, everyone scratches their head and says “hunh?” And then eventually the other units show up and everybody goes “ooooh ... now I see.” And here’s another case that falls in this unfortunate bucket.
The problem with Misaerx is that there are no other Revna warrior heroes. Which makes one of her powers utterly useless. The other one, Life Drain, is a tough sell on a figure with only 4 life: in many cases, you’ll never get a chance to use it before you’re wiped out. At 50 points, she’s almost cheap enough to be considered a filler, but even then there are better options at 50 (Me-Burq-Sa, Tarns, Eldgrim + Marcu, etc). So I don’t see a lot of utility for her until we have a few more options to fill out this faction.
It’s also worth noting that I also fail to see the value of adding yet another general. (The “generals” are basically just a way to group units into vaguely coded groups, like “the really good guys,” “the nature guys,” “the really bad guys,” “the military guys,” etc.) We originally had 5 generals, which seemed like plenty, and then we added another one, which also seemed like plenty, and then we added another one, which was starting to seem like overkill, and now Revna is the newest (and eighth) general. Did we need this? I’m trying to keep an open mind, but so far it appears to be yet another flavor of “the bad guys,” which isn’t even adding anything fresh or unusual. Not a fan so far.
The Evil Kyrie
There are two new Utgar (a.k.a. evil) kyrie: Loviatäk and a new, evil version of Raelin. These are perfect to combine with an existing unit, the minions of Utgar, which are already beasts. Minions only have two weaknesses: they’re slow, and they’re expensive. These two ladies are not helping with the cost, but, if you take both with your minions, they do help with the speed. Not to mention that Loviatäk makes the minions even more deadly by letting them reroll dice that don’t show skulls (and, remember: every skull from a minion counts as two skulls). Combine that with Raelin sitting there lowering your defense dice and you’re just screwed. Before this new wave, your only choice for Utgar kyrie were Taelord (useful but expensive) and Runa (not particularly useful). Raelin and Loviatäk are not only way more useful, but both are cheaper than either of the previously extant options. I played against this army, and, let me tell you: it was pretty terrifying. Once you take out at least one of the red ladies it gets a bit easier, but it’s tough going up until that point.
The Wizards and Familiars
The most awesome thing about this new faction is that all the figures are just crazy awesome looking. Ewashia is a cool blue squid lady, and Raakchott looks like a plant-based wendigo. Ewashia’s power to drop water tiles (three times per game) keeps her useful on every map; Raakchott’s powerset is hard to use, but it can be kind of cool. The two familiars, Kita and Onshu, are cute as hell, but also alien-looking, which is fun. Neither add a huge amount of power on the battlefield, but they’re cheap, and the Command Familiar power means you’re not wasting an order marker on them (at least until all your wizards are wiped out), so that’s fine.
I really enjoyed playing this faction, and I hope it gets expanded in the future. There are currently no medium beasts at all in the game, and the only other small beast is a community custom, Otar (which I did use in my army). There plenty of other wizards in the game, of course, but none of them have the Command Familiar power. So I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with this faction in future waves.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, I’m pretty happy with this new wave of Heroscape. They didn’t all hit it out of the park, but that’s always the case. And of course some people will disagree with my assessments, and that’s reasonable. But I think that, on the whole, if you were a fan of Heroscape back in the day, you should absolutely get these new sets. And, if you’re new to the game, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the update.* Interestingly, this bonding power lacks the typical “After revealing an order marker” language, which means it could eventually end up becoming ‘Scape’s second ever double-bonding chain.
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