Hasbro Aims to Bring Heroscape Back with Crowdfunding

Heroscape: Age of Annihilation in all of its plastic glory. Image: Avalon Hill/Hasbro

 

Everyone remembers Heroscape, the miniatures skirmish game where you build your own battlefield using stackable tiles. While I never played the game, I did admire the idea behind it and the gutsy approach of blending a multitude of genres into a single game. From a marketing standpoint, that was a brilliant idea, as you could incorporate heroes (and creatures) from various time periods and themes into your battles. The game had something for everyone, and the presentation was over the top. When you purchased this game, you were getting a large assortment of pre-painted miniatures, and a huge assortment of tiles and terrain to build any sort of battlefield you could dream of. I cannot recall what the game cost in stores back then, but the production cost of such a game had to make Milton Bradley wince a little. 

 

 

The game must have been a success, as it spawned several waves of expansions. The basic set, Rise of the Valkyrie, included everything from samurais to Vikings, secret agents, world war 2 soldiers, a dragon, and even a lizard dude riding a dinosaur. The expansions added to this by offering more characters from seemingly random (yet cool) genres. One expansion even offered Marvel characters such as Captain America, Spider-man, The Hulk, and Thanos (among others). So with the success of the HeroQuest remake, Hasbro is going to roll the dice with Heroscape, and we're excited to see what they do with this rendition.  

Original Heroscape Dragon figure

Hasbro has recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on their Hasbro Pulse service, which, if the project is successful, will make Heroscape: Age of Annihilation: Vanguard Edition available for shipping around Fall 2023. Crowdfunding for this project will be available from October 1, 2022, to 11:59pm ET on November 15, 2022. 

With Heroscape: Age of Annihilation, you return to the war-torn planet of Valhalla, where dynastic rulers known as Valkyries battle for control of mystical fountains that grant great powers. The fountains can either bring about terrifying visions of global destruction or save the world, depending on how they are used. Warriors from across time and space gather to do battle for power and glory, with this world's fate hanging in the balance. 

Heroscape: Age of Annihilation's storyline reminds me of a good 80's action movie plot. It's just there to serve a reason for the bloodshed and carnage to commence, which is fine with me. A game as modular and imaginative as this doesn't really need volumes of lore anyway. In fact, a lack of hardline lore means that the miniature sculptors and game designers are free to bring to life whatever crazy ideas they have. Want to play a battle using a giant alien snake/centipede with machine guns? Of course you do. What about commanding a group of zombie pirates? Yes! This game is made for people who want to play a miniature wargame but cannot decide what sort of genre to play and collect. I guess I shouldn't assume that Hasbro isn't going to provide deep storytelling, but the game looks more like a "wouldn't this be cool?" kind of game than a meticulously coordinated setting with characters meeting a specific vibe.

Image: Avalon Hill/Hasbro

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy announcements involving this game is the backward (and forward) compatibility. If you are a long-time player of Heroscape, this will be more like an expansion than a rehash of the same game. The extensibility of the game is remarkable, as its loosey-goosey lore opens the door for just about any sort of theme. 

One minor concern I have with the game is the lack of pre-painted miniatures. From what I can tell, the miniatures will be colorized based on faction and will not be pre-painted out of the box (like the original). This is a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether individual players enjoys painting miniatures. The positive is, these miniatures appear to be sculpted at a much higher quality than the original game, which would be enticing for miniature painters. But this would also intimidate or put off players who would rather use pre-painted miniatures as featured in the original game. Overall, I think this is a minor concern, as most players could probably care less as long as the game is fun. 

Image: Avalon Hill/Hasbro

So, if you're interested in funding this ambitious project, check out Hasbro Pulse here. Funding this project costs $249.99, which may be steep for some folks, but with everything you receive in this lot, this is a fair deal as far as market prices go for high-quality miniature tabletop games of this size. Toy and Tee will be covering the developments of this exciting game in the future, so be sure to follow us for our take on this interesting project.

 

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Note: The views contained within this article represents the author's views alone, and may or may not represent other's views within Toy and Tee. We're all different here, and celebrate diversity of perspectives.