Heroscape’s new boxed is $250 and could jumpstart the decades-old game

Loved wargame for miniatures Heroscape A new, high-profile crowdfunding campaign is now available. All depends on the sale of an extravagant $249.99 box set. Heroscape: Age of AnnihilationThe game includes five factions and loads of custom scenery. It will only be produced if the campaign receives 8,000 pre-orders, but if it’s successful, Hasbro’s Avalon Hill imprint plans to bring the franchise back to life with additional releases.

Avalon Hill has enjoyed a successful relaunch. HeroQuestThe classic board game of dungeon crawling. The crowdfunding campaign was successful and the game has been reborn in similar manner. It now features multiple expansions, as well additional classes. Chris Nadeau (senior director of design & development, Avalon Hill), told Polygon the old game would still work once it was updated. HeroQuestLine found its feet Heroscape naturally became “the next target in the vault.”

Published for the first time in 2004 HeroscapeIt is an asymmetrical warfare game in which warlords called Valkyrie compete for the control of Valhalla. It is extremely asymmetrical with several fictional factions coming from different places and times. But the franchise is also known for its terrain — chunky, stackable plastic platforms that allow for dramatic landscapes. Fans who are dedicated to the franchise collect large amounts of tiles and then wheel them out to build sprawling terrains at home.

Contrary to the unexpected announcement HeroQuest, HeroScape has been teased to dedicated fans for a while now — especially through the recently established Avalon Hill Discord server.

“It wasn’t quite the cold open that HeroQuest had,” Nadeau said. “We know that the community has continued to play the game. Conventions and tournaments have continued in this community. They’ve stayed together as a community for years, and what we wanted to make sure that we did in a re-launch of the game is ensuring that their current collections, their current tournament meta, all of that would be completely viable official material going forward.”

It is a new HeroScapeOffering is completely compatible with previous sets. All terrain is made from the same digital files, so it can be used in any future productions. Compatible rules and hero cards as well as other materials for gameplay are included in the terrain.

“It’s tailor-made to let the existing fan community jump right in and feel like they’re picking up right where they left off,” Nadeau said.

This new collector’s edition is more than twice the size of the original 2004 launch. It includes more than seventy heroes — 76, if all of the campaign’s stretch goals are met — plus 74 base pieces of terrain and 68 new, modular wall tiles for making structures on the map. Remakes of sought-after jungle terrain pieces are also included.

“As far as the miniatures that are included, what we wanted to do going forward is we wanted the ability to tell richer stories and to build on the IP in a way that we could as Avalon Hill with all the things we do in terms of storytelling. So we’ve introduced five completely new factions to the game [representing]There are new species and planets. New factions. And new powers. These new features have not been seen in any other game. So it’s not a reissue […] Everything in this set is brand new, and that goes back to the idea that we wanted fans to feel like they were expanding their collection.”

Dryan Lifeborne Order has been added to the ranks. It is an elite group of magic-users that can only field a few very costly units. There’s also the Nemesis War Brood, a group of insectile fighters that graft armor and other technologies directly to their exoskeletons. Avalon Hill has also added the Clockwork Combine. This is a group militant woodland creatures. Squirrels, skunks and possums will insert via aerial recon vehicles with more agile jump troops to forward-deploy on the battlefield.

“One of them actually has a bipedal walker,” Nadeau said, “with a Gatling gun mounted on top of it.”

Buried in those new factions are some fan favorites, including the Kyrie — a winged angel-like faction native to the planet Valhalla. The goal, Nadeau said, is to fill out a faction that simply wasn’t given enough time to develop “back in the day.” There will also be additional characters drawn from the lore of the original game, but changed and evolved after years of conflict.

What next? Heroscape? Nadeau is extremely optimistic of the game’s potential.

Image: Avalon Hill/Hasbro

“What the team was doing in 2004 was they were sort of scraping entertainment trends, different genres that were coming up, and they would build different units based on different genres that were surfacing in pop culture at the time,” Nadeau said. “It created a very interesting brand that is insanely scalable. Any genre can be introduced into Valhalla’s battle. The opportunities going forward are almost endless.”

This kind of transparency is a hallmark Heroscape universe aligns well with Hasbro’s other gaming properties, like The Gathering: Magic and the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. These marquee franchises invested a lot in crossovers during the last few decades. Hasbro’s own IP, including Transformers and G.I. Joe and other characters would add to the fun. HeroscapeIn the near term, universe Meanwhile, Magic’s Universes Beyond initiative shows the way forward with external brands. Previous partnerships include Stranger Things, The Walking DeadStreet Fighter, Godzilla and Fortnite,While MagicThere are cards based upon the Warhammer 40,000 and Dr. Who universes.

This is the project you want to finance Heroscape: Age of Annihilation It runs through November 16th. Deliveries are expected to take place in the Fall of 2023.