by foxfan
My almost-13-year-old son and I have been meeting occasionally with a good friend of mine to play games for a few years now. Several months ago, this friend gave a very cool looking game to my son. Well, we finally got around to playing it. This is an overview of our inaugural session of Heroscape Master Set: Rise of the Valkyrie.Scenario
Table of the Giants, the first scenario in the book
Teams
Me=the good guys (viking party); the kid=the bad guys (marrow party)
This is par for the course. If we're playing a good vs. evil sort of game, the kid is going to be the baddies. I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings: The Duel (and more often than not, at you, too, Descent: Journeys in the Dark).
The Setup
Wow! Setting up this game was so fun. The kid has played around with the landscape stuff so much in his room that it went much more quickly than I thought it would. I mean seriously, he was a blur of hexes and a cacophony of snapping sounds, so I just kept my hands back and safe as I watched in awe.
Ready to go!
GaMe pLaY!!!
---After setting up the gameboard and his own units, the kid helped me get all my units on the right hexes. Not that I needed help, he was just that excited and apparently I was taking too long. Again, I kept my hands back and safe.
---And then we clashed. Oh man did we ever clash. Having never played, we were quite studious of our unit cards and really over-thought every move. I had a hard time deciding whether I should split up my grouped unit (the low-level vikings), but decided to keep them together.
---The kid's marrow warriors have pretty decent movement, and he managed to keep his distance from my vikings and take the high ground. I thought I was going to take out his big figure before it make it up there, but whoa, I just ended up losing a couple units. Alas, though, I took out the big dude riding the animal (best part: I rolled one skull, he rolled no shields
Man I love it when that stuff happens & the kid gets ticked). But eventually he took the high ground, and my doom was imminent:
---I did manage to get the upper hand for a bit. I even drew his units off the other side of the high ground. For a moment it was even back down to 3 vs. 3!!! But the law of averages caught back up, and alas, the high ground paid off for the kid.
Evil watched with delight as the last champion of good fell by their leader's terrible blade . . . (okay, over the top, my bad)
And the Winner Is . . .
The Kid, as usual
Conclusion/Summary
This game is so epic. Half the fun was setting it up (well, fun for him to set it up, for me to watch). I really liked the game play as well. At first I was really surprised that units are killed with one hit, but it really works with this game. Build it, place units, fight---sounds like a good time to me!
We've played more since this inaugural session (heck, we immediately played another one that same night) and really love this game. We're looking forward to getting through all the scenarios and then going back through with Master play. I can't believe someone just game this to the kid!
Thanks for taking the time to read this.