As stated in my other review, I got this with the Toys r' Us two for one deal, along with Battleball. After opening Battleball and feeling a bit disappointed, I was hoping for something better in HeroScape. Let me just say that I got what I hoped for.
Opening up the box you find plastic galore! Hooray! The process of getting everything out of the plastic and set up for play takes a good half hour, which is not bad. You then have to build a scenario. For your first time through this, it may seem intimidating and lengthy, but after a while it won't take you long at all to build scenarios.
The game comes with two rulesets, a basic game and a master game. The basic game is a very quick introduction to get you playing after spending the first hour setting up. It is very easy to learn and can be unbalanced. The master game, while the rulebook looks intimidating at 12 pages, is really just additions to rules you already know from the basic game, and a lot of those 12 pages are example pictures.
The game also comes with a Scenario Booklet, so that you can have a step-by-step building guide to create levels. After you play this a few times, you won't want this booklet because you will come up with your own creative ideas. The game comes with many, many terrain hexes, which leads to a deep level of customization.
The miniatures in this game are very well done, like those of a more advanced miniature war game.
Now onto gameplay (I will run through the basics): Each scenario has a diferent goal, ranging from trying to defeat all enemies to trying to hold a position on the map for a turn. Using the units assigned to you, you must use careful planning and a bit of luck to achieve the goal. Each character on your team has four stats: Attack, Range, Defense, and Move. As the names might suggest, move is how many spaces that unit(s) can move, defense is the number of defense dice you roll when defending, attack is the same thing, and range is how far away your opponent can be and still be vulnerable to your attack. On your turn you move all the characters depicted on one of your army cards. They then can attack if possible. When attacking, you must check for line of sight (you get behind the character and draw an imaginary line toward the enemy), then you check range to see if you can attack it. You then roll attack/defense dice to determine the outcome. If more attack dice have skulls, the enemy is killed. If more defense dice have shields, no damage is done.
The advanced game expands on these rules, and does a nice job. If you are thinking about getting this game, get it, it is worth your money. The only concern I have with this game is that is is dice-heavy.
HeroScape gets a 4 out of 5.
