Sasha and Ariel Experience ... Heroscape!

Sasha: Hey, what's this?
Ariel: It's a game! It's called "Heroscape!"
Sasha: Hero ... wait, isn't that the game MSG has a whole closet full of stuff for but we've never played?
Ariel: Yes, but now there's new Heroscape, and he ordered some of it because he was excited since they haven't made it in forever, and it came and I decided I would open it for him.
Sasha: Oohhhh ... are you sure that was a good idea?
Ariel: Yeah ... I know he would probably have wanted to open it himself, but it came while he was at work, and I have this great plan about it and I had to open it to do the plan.
Sasha: What's the plan?
Ariel: We'll learn how to play! And then we'll surprise him with us knowing how to play one of his favorite games and he'll be super happy to have someone to play with but not even have to teach us how.
Sasha: I dunno, Aers. It looks pretty complicated. How long do you think it will take us to learn?
Ariel: Mmm ... not sure. But to give us enough time, I kind of hid the package when it was delivered, so that gives us a little more breathing room.
Sasha: ...
Ariel: What?
Sasha: Don't you think if he's expecting the package that he'll get annoyed or even stressed and worried when it doesn't show up?
Ariel: That's why we have to learn fast! But if we hear him complaining, we can say, "Dang, that sucks, but that's what happens when you rely on a company that whoever runs it just got broken up with."
Sasha: Uh ... ?
Ariel: It's called "Fed Ex." Like, the person's ex is living high on the hog, probably from getting half their company in the split, so then they renamed it "Fed Ex" from whatever it was before because all the money goes to keeping their ex fed.
Sasha: I'm sorry I asked.
Ariel: But I guess it's better than that other company, You Pee, sssssss. Like, calling your company "You Pee" was bad enough, but why did they have to include the sound effect?
Sasha: Yeah, uh ...
Ariel: ssssssssssss -- I mean, that's just gross.
Sasha: Where's the instruction manual? Let's just get to learning the game, okay?
Ariel: It's over there. It looked like a lot of rules and the game pieces looked super cool and fun and you get to build the board out of all these different-sized kinds of land, so I wanted to do that first. There's a smaller manual with diagrams of how to build the board. I figured that was a good way to ease into it instead of reading all those rules.
Sasha: Okay then. Here, let's have a look. "Introduction." Uhhh ... blah blah blah, blahbitty blah ... yeesh, this part isn't rules at all, just a bunch of story background. Skipping to the next page.
Ariel: Wait ... what if it's an interesting story? Or what if we need to know the story to know why some of the characters in the game are the way they are?
Sasha: Too bad, so sad. Look, you had your chance with the instruction book before I got here and instead you hogged the fun bit of building the board -- which looks really cool, by the way, good job. But if you got to skip the boring bits I do too.
Ariel: I guess that's fair.
Sasha: "Welcome to Heroscape ... blah blah blah ..." Aha! "Getting Ready to Play a Basic Game!" Sounds like a good place to start.
Ariel: Is that what we want to do? I know there's supposed to be a simple way to play and a fancier way to play. Don't you think MSG will want us to play the more complicated version?
Sasha: Well, flipping through this book, it looks like the Basic Game rules go from page 4 to ... page 8. And the "Master Game" rules go from page 9 to -- looks like the very end of the book, page 21.
Ariel: OMG, that's so many pages.
Sasha: I mean, it's only 12 pages and there are lots of pictures.
Ariel: No, I meant page 4 to page 8! That's ... hm, hm, hm, hm, hm ... 5 whole pages of rules!
Sasha: We've played rpg's with way more than 5 pages of rules.
Ariel: Yeah, but I didn't actually have to read them, I just learned whatever MSG and Claire taught us.
Sasha: You're not having to read them this time either. I'm reading them.
Ariel: Oh. Hey, you're right! Okay, go on.
Sasha: Thank you. So ... blah-blah-blah, we've got these cards, they show our armies, which can be heroes or squads.
Ariel: Wait. A card is an army? And an army can be one hero? That doesn't sound right.
Sasha: Maybe "Army Card" just means a card that's part of your army.
Ariel: I'm going to look at one of them and see. Yikes!
Sasha: What?
Ariel: Look how complicated this card for this one guy is! It's got like a whole page worth of rules about this dude on it!
Sasha: Uh ... so the book says each card's got two sides. Flip it over.
Ariel: Ohhhh. Whew! That looks lots better. Way less stuff to read, and also, the picture of the dude is a lot bigger so you can see it easier. Dang, he's kind of creepy looking. "Bok-Bur-Na." Is that his name? Or is it words in whatever alien language he speaks?
Sasha: I don't know, I'm trying to read these rules.
Ariel: What are these numbers for? Move, Range, Attack, and Defense.
Sasha: I don't know, because you're not letting me read.
Ariel: I bet Move is how much you can move.
Sasha: ...
Ariel: Okay, I'll be quiet.
Sasha: ...
Ariel: Was I right? Is Move how much you can move?
Sasha: Yes. You were right. Are we going to do that for every one of these numbers?
Ariel: No, I don't think the other ones look as easy. Like, is "Range" how far you can shoot? Or is it the number of different ranges you can shoot to? Cause in some games we've played there's a short range and a medium range and a long range, or in others there's adjacent range and close range and distant range and extreme range. So maybe a 3 for range could mean you can shoot in any of short or medium or long, or maybe it just means you can shoot 3 feet away or something.
Sasha: It would really be a lot quicker if you just let me read what each one means and tell you.
Ariel: Sorry.
Sasha: So Range is how many spaces away from you on the board you can shoot.
Ariel: I knew it!
Sasha: And Attack and Defense are how many dice you roll when attacking or defending.
Ariel: Oh, yeah, this way is lots better. I could've been going on all day trying to think of what those numbers were and I wouldn't have figured that out. What kind of dice are they? 4-sided, or 6-sided, or 8-sided, or ...
Sasha: It says you roll "Combat Dice." It doesn't say how many sides there are, but when you roll to attack, you want them to show skulls, and when you roll for defense, you want them to show shields.
Ariel: I want one that's got 20 sides and 19 of them are skulls and one is a shield. Then as long as I go first, I'll probably win because it's almost always going to come up with a skull.
Sasha: Well, look in the box and find them and let's see what they look like.
Ariel: Hmm. These must be them. Looks like they're cubes, which is like a 6-sider, but there are no numbers, just skulls and shields -- oh, and blanks. Let's see, this one has 3 skulls and a blank and 2 shields, and this one has 3 skulls and a blank and 2 shields, and this one --
Sasha: I think they're probably all the same.
Ariel: Well I'm checking anyway because if one of them's better I want that one.
Sasha: Fine.
Ariel: Hmm. Uh-huh ... uh-huh ... uh-huh ... yeah, they're all the same. So when do we roll them?
Sasha: Well first we roll them to see who takes the first turn. You roll 6 of them and whoever gets more skulls goes first. Then you just switch off taking turns.
Ariel: Great! That sounds easy! Ooh! And I rolled 5 skulls!
Sasha: We can't start yet, I've barely gotten to page 5 of the rules.
Ariel: Just read them while we're going.
Sasha: I don't know if that will work.
Ariel: Here, roll these dice.
Sasha: Whatever.
Ariel: Hah! That's only one skull! I totally creamed you. So I go first! What do I do?
Sasha: It says pick one of your army cards to take a turn with.
Ariel: Which ones are mine?
Sasha: I don't know, I haven't gotten that far in the book yet.
Ariel: Well, when I set up the board from the diagrams it had me put one group of guys over here, and another group of guys over here. This group's the one with that Book-Burny guy. He's got a couple of other mean-looking people with him. Then over there is a group with a weird octopus lady, and a horned dog critter, and some kinda owly bat-looking critter. I guess since I'm going first I'll let you pick which bunch to play.
Sasha: I'll pick the octopus lady and her pets.
Ariel: What! I wanted to pick them! I thought for sure you'd take the bad-ass looking ones!
Sasha: I thought about it, but then I thought, "Aers is not going to want to kill a cute horned dog thingy or a cute owl-looking thingy." So I figured if I took them you'd have a hard time deciding to shoot at them and that would give me an advantage.
Ariel: Boo! That's no fair at all.
Sasha: What can I say? You shouldn't have offered to let me pick.
Ariel: Sigh. Okay, so what do I do now that it's my turn? Pick one of my cards? And then what?
Sasha: You move the figure up to as many spaces as are in its Move value.
Ariel: Okay, my Book Burner dude can move 5, so I move him here.
Sasha: Well, you can't move him there because he has to climb up the side of that terrain. Each layer of terrain costs one space to climb up.
Ariel: Why didn't you tell me that?
Sasha: I just did tell you that. I would have told you before you moved, if you'd waited. 
Ariel: But I can't move nearly as far if I have to climb up stuff! Plus I want him to get up high so he can see your dudes better to shoot them. His Range is 5. Does being up higher make his Range better?
Sasha: I don't know, I haven't even finished reading all the moving rules.
Ariel: You're kidding. There are more moving rules?
Sasha: Yeah, like you can't move through your enemy's figures, or through those trees there, or through water --
Ariel: There isn't any water. The diagram for this board didn't tell me to use any.
Sasha: Good, then we can skip that rule for now. Other than that ... looks like the only other moving thing to know is that it doesn't cost any extra spaces to move down from up high.
Ariel: Okay, great. So this is where I move Burny. What now?
Sasha: Now it's the part of your turn where you can attack with him.
Ariel: Yes! What do I do?
Sasha: First you check the range. How many spaces is it to the figure you want to attack?
Ariel: Seven, because I want to attack your octo-lady. But my Range is only 5. Do I get more range for being up high?
Sasha: No ... but you do get to roll an extra attack die if your figure's base is higher than my figure's base.
Ariel: Except I don't because I can't reach you.
Sasha: Right.
Ariel: So now what do I do?
Sasha: That's it. Your turn is over.
Ariel: Boo! I barely got to do anything!
Sasha: Sorry. Now it's my turn. I'm moving my owl dude here. One, two, three, four, five. He's got Move 6, but I don't need to get any closer to you because he's also got Range 4. So I'm shooting your Burninator dude.
Ariel: This sucks.
Sasha: My Attack is 3, plus my base is higher than Burny's, so that adds an extra die for a total of 4.
Ariel: This sucks even more!
Sasha: So I'm going to roll 4 dice and then you roll however many dice your Defense says. If my total number of skulls beats your total number of shields, that kills your guy.
Ariel: Well, I've got 7 Defense at least, so I ought to beat you easy.
Sasha: Yeah, maybe so. I only roll 1 skull.
Ariel: Two shields! So there!
Sasha: You're safe.
Ariel: Now I get to take a turn with one of my other guys?
Sasha: If you want to. Or you can use the same guy again. You get to pick every turn.
Ariel: Ooh, awesome!
Sasha: I guess Owly is in trouble then, since you can climb up to that spot there and add an extra die to your attack on him.
Ariel: No, because you're right, he's too cute and I don't want to attack him first. I'm going to move over here instead and shoot down at your octo-person. I still get that extra die because she's all the way down there. Wait, what?! My Attack value sucks! It's only 2!
Sasha: But you do get to add 1 for being up high.
Ariel: Whee, a whole 3 dice. Oh! But I do roll 2 skulls. How many dice does Octo-shmockto get to roll?
Sasha: Mm ... 8.
Ariel: What! That's crazy! I'm never going to be able to kill you if you've got 8 dice!
Sasha: Definitely not this turn at least. I got 3 shields. My turn now. I'm climbing up to that tall spot you passed by so I get an extra die.
Ariel: Why don't you just fly? You're an owl. Or an owl-bat, or something. Look at those wings!
Sasha: There weren't any rules about flying, so I'm assuming I still have to climb.
Ariel: I hope there are rules about flying in the Master Game because it will sure be dumb if critters with wings can't use them to fly up places.
Sasha: I'm guessing that's where the flying rules are. Anyway, I get 4 dice again, and this time I roll ... another 1 skull.
Ariel: Whew! I get 2 shields again. Now I'm shooting Octo-person again with 3 dice ... 1 skull. Boo.
Sasha: That's 4 shields for me.
Ariel: But you only rolled 6 dice.
Sasha: We only have 6 dice.
Ariel: But your octo-gal is supposed to get 8, so you need to roll 2 more.
Sasha: I can't get negative shields, so I already beat the 1 skull you rolled. It's kind of wasting time if I roll more dice.
Ariel: Sure, but not as much time as we just wasted arguing about it.
Sasha: Fine. I roll 2 more dice and get no shields on them, but I still live because I already got 4.
Ariel: You don't have to rub it in.
Sasha: I -- whatever. It's my turn again, and Owly is going to beak you for a total of ... yes! 4 skulls!
Ariel: What? No fair! How did you get 4 skulls on 4 dice if only half the sides are skulls?
Sasha: Luck, baby. Roll your Defense.
Ariel: Bleh. Only 2 shields. Now Burny is dead. Well, this dude here is coming to get revenge. His name's Killin Veins with 3 i's.
Sasha: He has 3 eyes?
Ariel: No, look: i, i, i.
Sasha: That's roman numeral 3.
Ariel: Fine. Killin Veins 3, and he's got Range 4 so if I move him here I can shoot you with my, what do we got? Woohoo, 5 Attack dice! Kapow! That's 4 skulls!
Sasha: Yikes. I'm higher up than you are, though, so I get a total of 6 Defense dice ... dang, so close. I got 3 shields, but that's not enough.
Ariel: Yes! Eat it, Owly!
Sasha: Foo. And he was soooo cute, too.
Ariel: ... you don't have to say that.
Sasha: Sure I do, poor cutesy-hootsy Owly, flying up to heaven now because your guy blasted him to bits.
Ariel: Are you trying to make me not like this game?
Sasha: Sorry. Okay, my turn. My dog with the horns has Move 6, so he'll climb up as close to you as he can get, but his Range is 1, so that's all he can do.
Ariel: Yes! Killin Veins will climb up where he's on the same level as you and blast you! I roll 3 skulls!
Sasha: Oh no! My poor cute doggie!
Ariel: Quit that!
Sasha: He has 6 Defense, and I roll ... rats, only 2 shields. He goes, "Yipe! Yipe! Yipe -- urk!" and falls over dead with his legs up in the air.
Ariel: You're so mean.
Sasha: You're the one who killed him. Here comes Octo-lady. Her move is 5, so she can get to here.
Ariel: Can she reach me with all those tentacles? Those have got to have some Range, right?
Sasha: Nope, she's got a 1 just like poor Fido-horns did.
Ariel: Great -- then Killin Veins climbs up to the top of the hill here and goes ker-blammo with 6 dice for being higher up than her. 3 skulls!
Sasha: This could be it if I don't roll well with my 8 Defense ... agh. Only 2 shields.
Ariel: Yes! In your octo-face, Octo-lady! That means I win the whole game, right?
Sasha: I don't know. You're the one who read the scenario and put together the map. Maybe you were supposed to force me to surrender and now we both lose because you killed everyone.
Ariel: Oh. That better not be what it says! Where's that ... okay, whew. It just says we were supposed to kill each other off and whoever toasted the other player's dudes first is the winner. Which is me! I rule! I totally see why MSG likes this game now.
Sasha: You think? Because I'm guessing he plays it with the Master Game rules and isn't all that impressed with this Basic Game version.
Ariel: Dang. You're probably right. I bet he never even played this version.
Sasha: Yeah, knowing him he probably went straight to the more complicated rules. But if you think about it, that means now we know something about this game that he doesn't, which is that it's pretty fun even with just the Basic rules.
Ariel: Sigh. I guess we're going to have to work on learning the Master Game rules next though, if we really want my plan to work.
Sasha: Cheer up! I'm sure the Master rules aren't too much harder than these ones.
Ariel: That's because you didn't look at the other side of the army cards! Every one of them has all these different rules!
Sasha: Let me see here ... ooh! Owly gets to attack twice every turn in the Master version. And on Octo-lady's turn she can take an extra turn using one of her critters -- sweet! What can your guys do? 
Ariel: I don't know, I'm too tired to get into that tonight.
Sasha: Okay, well, maybe we can find out tomorrow!
Ariel and Sasha: Goodnight, everybody!