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Dakka isn't the target audience -- and it's not shipped to Europe, either. ): Heroscapers.com has supported the game with fan content since it ended, so they're the ones with pent-up demand.

"$250 seems like a lot, but when you think about what you are getting it is comparable to old Heroscape. You get almost an old master set's worth of terrain (sparkly water has been confirmed), plus two expansions (jungle and "castle"), plus several waves worth of figures.

Well, thank goodness for that sparkly water. (No, really. I have it and it's way better than the non-sparkly stuff!) The plastic terrain also upped the price of HS (more expensive than a board), so it's about $2 per plastic piece, when including terrain and miniatures. Miniature quality is better than old HS, but not as good as hobbyists here would like.

I still haven't played my sets yet, of course.

https://www.heroscapers.com/community/blog.php?b=3159#comments

Plasticrack comes down to $1 apiece for miniatures, boardgame hexes, and terrain.

71 miniatures
74 hex tile terrain pieces
68 Laur wall terrain pieces
3 Laur tree pieces
6 Laur underbrush pieces

EDIT: "Free" shipping. Standard if you're competing against OLGS, but bahgain vs. KS projects.

Ball-o-Bugs? In.



Gerbil in a blimp? In.



Bears with harpoons? In.



Sorry DUN and Awaken Realms, but I'm leaning towards backing this big pile of stupid.

> I'm biased because my favorite Overwatch design/character is the hamster riding his mecha ball.

Haslab UK HS spotted! No EU seen, though. ):
https://uk.hasbropulse.com/collections/haslab/products/heroscape-age-of-annihilation-vangaurd-edition
"£249.99 including VAT and free delivery"

No gerbil inna ball (: but one in a walking tin can with a skull on it!

> Is anyone taking pre-orders for Australia?

Europe TBA! Join the Discord or look out on HeroScapers.com.

> Well JUST buying it for the harpoon bears is an exaggeration but you get the point.

Harpoons! Point! I can't BEAR it.

> I realize it's not a fair comparison, but compared to Heroquest which delivered the original goods in full and allot more, this feels like getting less for more.

Besides prepaints, I think the cost of HeroScape's plastic game tiles sent it to the chopping block. They're certainly more expensive than a game board. Just imagine if HeroQuest rooms were plastic game tiles that you attached to each other, and how much that would have cost. Many posts about the pledge mention the miniatures, not the terrain, not the game tiles. Only the hardcore, like HeroScapers, are even mentioning the value *to them* of the game tiles (eg. desire for a tiles-only pledge).

Fair doesn't matter. Value matters. And, while value is subjective, businesses profit only when they maximize value to the most consumers for the least cost. This doesn't just apply to HeroScape, but HeroQuest as well. Hasbro still has many fondly remembered game properties from its Avalon Hill acquisition that haven't even had a chance through crowdfunding. Thank goodness MMP licensed (Advanced) Squad Leader...!

 Eilif wrote:
I'm suspicious of the idea that the tiles are as big a cost as folks think. As has been discussed many times here, the big cost of plastics is in purchasing new tooling. These are pieces that have been tooled already, and -as I didn't notice any flaws in the AOTP tiles, the tooling is likely still in good shape. Plus, the paint on the tiles is one-color, likely done automatically sprayed with a stencil. More expensive overall than a game board, but not unreasonable.

I do wonder why they didn't go with a hybrid board using the AOTP-style cardboard for the ground level and then lots of plastics (but far fewer than the current set) for various elevation above that. The set could have significantly less tiles overall, and still allow players MORE elevation in the game if using cardboard base layer.

Buried somewhere on HeroScapers was a mention that the tile tools were lost, but the CAD files were found. Still at 8000 backers, that's $2M, which should pay for new tools. Mebbe I'll backtrack (: and say that when HS was cancelled, oil costs were high so the game tiles would be more expensive. Or just throwing up another Monopoly game would have greater profit margin than HS. I also thought about the board and plastic, but that would have turned off the hardcores, who are also buying the game for additional tiles. 10 years means cracked tiles, and OH BOY SPARKLY WATER.

Well, whatever. HS is up from 1300 to 1450 since I checked about yesterday. Here come the harpoon bears!

Walls are gud to better block line of sight. Otherwise, you'd have to build a wall of tiles to keep everything from hitting the big guy.

Trees are cheap because stupid jungle expansion costs $150+ for a bunch of aquarium trees.

Eh, buy it or don't. Lots of erstwhile HS fans don't like unpainted, don't like lack of historical units (because controversies), etc. etc.

fwiw, Before Hasbro realized D&D's brand, they were ready to jettison the line. Why did they buy WotC because of... Pokemon Which Nintendo later didn't renew with WotC. Which put D&D in trouble. (And when WotC was bought, the D&D electronic license was sold!)

Good news is that, yep, D&D *now* evidently isn't hurting. : https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/17/hasbro-doubles-down-on-dungeons-and-dragons/

> Not that it matters if this project succeeds or fails, Magic is what's keeping Hasbro in the black these days.

What I've noticed is that, if a company has multiple product lines, it keeps the ones that make money, and drops the ones that don't. Obviously, that means fans of the less popular lines are disappointed, but it also means that it's "better" to purchase a product line if it's the only one a company has. Conversely, once a company starts having the reputation of dropping product lines, customers will assume a DOA product, and this may become self-fulfilling. FFG was pretty well know to drop product lines, so when its RuneWhatever miniatures line came out (and didn't distinguish itself from the other miniature army games), reaction, including on Dakka, was one of "wait and see", eventually resulting in the game's cancellation.

Hasbro *has* licensed games out before, such as the Pit card game to Winning Moves. But obviously a card game has a lower cost than a miniatures game line. Too bad Hasbro didn't work something out with WizKids, a company that's released prepainted miniatures. Although their random miniatures model probably wouldn't be well-received by customers, and WK might not be interested in fixed packs of prepaints. Dunno.

Updated colors!

https://hasbropulse.com/blogs/avalon-hill/heroscape-figures-color-study-update?sf172238351=1

I haven't followed Haslab other than HeroQuest and HeroScape, but, since the shipping crisis months ago, crowdfunding has certainly dropped, especially with high inflation and the recession. Also, Amazon and other retailers are pushing the retail sales into October, adding more competition to what little budget consumers have for luxuries.

HeroScape returning?

Renegade:
https://renegadegamestudios.com/heroscape-news

left from Heroscapers.com :

Pre-Order from https://renegadegamestudios.com/heroscape/ and use promo code WELCOME10 (1st order) or WELCOMEBACK10 (if you ordered from Renegade before) for 10% off ($34 off if you get 1 of each including painted)

Some speculation here, but...

Unfortunately, HS was a product of its time, and that meant that petroleum prices and prepainted costs were affordable to the hobby gamer.

Part of the HS failure was the lack of prepaints, and nowadays, for quite a while, the only way you could get prepaints is through random packs (where the quality of the prepaints for the commons was cheaper than the rares, so you were paying for the rare prepaints by buying the commons) or prepainted figure lines, which, outside of WizKids, are only by small companies, such as Renegade.

Is Krosmaster still around? ( I think that was one of the last gasps of prepaints sold in fixed sets b/c the sculpts were designed around stencil-painting, which I presume is cheaper than hand painting?

EDIT: HeroScapers.com's thread of designer news and comments about the new release : https://www.heroscapers.com/community/showthread.php?t=62464

> Yeah, I know. I'm asking about comparisons between Hasbro's Heroscape and Wizkids products and why one is viable but the other isn't.

My own guess is that Hasbro has many more product lines than WizKids, so focuses on the product lines that are the "most profitable". Never mind that "least profitable" on the Hasbro books would still be profitable by hobby game standards. They were even ready to sell off D&D at one point, iirc, and bought WotC for Pokemon, not even Magic. Hasbro is also a publicly traded company, so is more beholden to stockholders than hobby gamers. With WizKids owned by NECA/Topps, what product lines WK chooses to support might be influenced by their owners, depending on how much meddling the owners would do.

AFAIK, For blind boxes, the commons cost less to produce (eg. cheaper paintjobs), so it's the buyers going after the rares who are supporting the model. "Force buying", as someone on this Reddit thread puts it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/52ydyg/how_are_prepainted_miniatures_made_why_does_it/

Random guess for fixed sets is that they're only releasing the most popular figures? Also, since WK and Pathfinder does prepaints anyway, it costs them less to put out a fixed set than were they to do it from the start, like HC would?

I think I mentioned it before, but if I hadn't, Krosmaster seems to have died, but it sold fixed prepaints. I think the sculpts, unlike many miniature sculpts, were designed to be stencil-painted possibly by factory (like many toys), rather than brush-painted by hand (like hobby game prepaints).

USA link. $225 pre-order.
https://www.hasbropulse.com/product/heroscape-age-of-annihilation-master-set-premium-painted-edition/HPK5500000

I'm not sure which thread on HeroScapers.com is best to read, so here's the News subforum: https://www.heroscapers.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=22

Handpainted (?) prepaints ARE expensive and priced themselves out of the hobby market long ago. At best, Archon has some prepainted terrain, but terrain's easier to paint than figures, and Hero Forge has custom prepaints that aren't cheap. I did play the 1990's Toy Wars ruleset, so dunno why rulesets using inexpensive toys and action figures aren't more popular...!