Heroscape against Samuel (Raquel)
 This post may be close to gibberish to those uninitiated into the Heroscape world, but it was a last stand story worth writing up.
 It really started last Friday when I realized how inexperienced I am at Heroscape. Just because I’m around people who talk about Heroscape doesn’t mean I actually know what I’m doing when I sit down at the board. (Imagine that…) So today when Samuel asked if I wanted to play Heroscape I decided I could use the practice.
 We played a 200 point game free-for-all to keep it short and simple. I went for the squad strategy, which worked okay, though next time I’ll have a better idea of which squads would be most effective. Suffice it to say that my nine-year-old nephew pared down my troops to a single Zettian guard who faced two Blade Gruts, an agent, and two samurai warriors.
 Let me say right here that I don’t like the samarai. They are, in fact, piggy annoying. Especially when your only figures with any range to speak of are Zettian guards with an attack roll of two dice and the samurai are closing in. That said, my Zettian guard singlehandedly defeated both Blade Gruts, the agent, and one of the samurai before the last samurai finally took him out.
 So, yes, I lost again. But this time I lost with style. That should count for something.
Losing with style is everything.
And the Izumi Samurai are very annoying. As you noted, the best way to take them out is by being very far away from them. Also, in a pinch, put some skirmishers in front of your ranged troops. That way the samurai will have to stop upon engaging your skirmishers, and then you can rain fiery death on them from afar.
What other troops did you take? And what was the terrain like?
I had Tarn Vikings and MacDirk warriors. Not terribly useful without heros, and most of them went before I got a chance to figure out any kind of samurai strategy.
Terrain was a fairly basic road going up a hill and across a bridge over water. The rest of the board was more or less flat with a couple of trees. I had my Zettian guards on a slight rise with height advantage over everything they could reach except the road and the space right in between them. (That space was where the last samurai settled, of course.)
Ah, see, with that much flat space, I definitely would have taken more ranged troops. Zettian Guard is good, but I’d have considered the Marro Warriors, the Krav Maga Agents, or the Microcorp Agents (depending on where your deployment was in relation to the water). The Airborne Elite might have been fun (with their Drop ability) to land behind the enemy…but maybe not.
In contrast, in our Friday game, I should have taken more flying units for mobility, because of the nature of the terrain (broken and “boggy”). The points that I spent on those zombies were wasted. It would have been much better for me to have purchased (say) Minions of Utgar (similar to the Sentinels that you purchased).
It really is all about the terrain.
Hmm…yes, it does sound like gibberish…interesting gibberish, though…