Sunday, July 14, 2019

SoCal 'Scapers Summer Gameday, 2019


This weekend we had a Heroscape gameday.  Now, you probably remember that every year we do a Heroscape tournament, and this year will no doubt be no exception.  But, at the end of the tourney, when we’re saying our farewells, we always promise that we’ll get together more than once a year, and maybe have just a casual gameday or two some other time during the year.  We always say that ... but we (almost) never do.  In fact, I would say that, in the decade or so that I’ve been going to SoCal Heroscape tournaments, we’ve managed to get together for a non-tourney event about twice.  We just suck at getting organized.

But we finally managed it, yesterday at a local game store called Paper Hero’s Games.  I and all three of my children, plus the middle one’s best friend, made the (moderately short) trek down and met up with 2 other regular tourney-goers, and we just happened to run into a new person who used to play but hadn’t in a long time.  Brave soul that he was, he came up to us and asked if he could join, so we set him up with an army (I have a tendency to overdo when it comes to bringing ready-to-play armies, so I had 25 or so) and threw him into the mix.  It was a great time, and I personally loved the venue more than other places we’ve tried, although I do admit that it was a tad crowded.  Squeezing into your seat was tricky, and finding a place to put all our stuff was a logistical puzzle, and it certainly was loud.  But the tables were free, the store management was friendly, they didn’t care that we brought outside food and drinks, didn’t give me crap when I finally ditched my shoes, and even asked if it was okay if they took back the table we had unceremoniously absconded with to put our overflow crap on—he asked us if it was okay to use his table that we weren’t even supposed to be using!  I was super-impressed with the friendly staff and hope to go back sometime.

The games were good too.  We only got in about 3 games a piece, but it was a lot of fun, and I think the kids had a good time.  We bought some stuff we really didn’t need (more to support the store than anything else), palled around with our fellow ‘Scapers, and one of our oldest Heroscape friends agreed to trade me a beautifully painted Gothlok for an unpainted one and few bucks.  I wish I’d had a chance to try out even more of my weird army ideas, but my littlest one and I did get to play a bizarre army consisting of Harley Quinn (because that’s her favorite comic book character), Scarecrow and Creeper (who, with their insane personalities, bond with Harley), a passel of Nottingham Brigands for range, and good ol’ Marcu Esenwein to fill out the last 20 points.  (This army, by the way, is not a particularly good one, but it was super-fun to play.)  All in all, a great time, and I hope we get to do it more often.

Next week, something more substantial.