Some introduction is in order. I had never heard of Heroscape before but it turns out it is a simplified war game. You can buy the Master Set for $39.99 which includes a large, three-dimensional terrain board (in hexes at different elevations), 30 miniatures, rules and several scenarios to fight it out with a friend. It is made by Hasbro and kept in the "Kid Games" section of their website. It sounds like a game I would have loved when I was little, but which might be less complex than typical wargames played by adults. A look at the stat cards reveals that it is not terribly dissimilar from Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering but with movement stats and the chance to play on a 3D board. In fact it looks like Ogre Battle on a tabletop! Okay, fair enough.
However as I said this review is of the miniatures themselves. Rather than shelling out nearly $40 for the board game I picked up several of the "Small" expansion sets. These are priced at $12.99 each and include 7 miniatures apiece. They also include two stackable 2-hex terrain tiles to add on to your board (4 hexes total) and stat cards for all the miniatures. There are also "Large" expansion sets which include more terrain hexes, more battle scenarios, and 3 extra-large miniatures for the price of $19.99. I did not buy any "Large" expansion sets as, again, I was primarily mining the game for its minis.
The minis themselves are awesome. Physically they are made of flexible plastics, painted, and attached to round bases so they stand with no difficulty. The figures are of an appropriate size to represent Small or Medium D&D creatures on a 1" square grid or hex grid.
I bought two sets, one from the Thora's Vengeance line called "Deathstalkers" (awesome robot rats, plus female elven warriors with medieval weapons) and one from the Defenders of Kinsland line called "10th Regiment Foot" (male human musketeers plus a some dogs). I chose these particular sets because I am running an Iron Kingdoms game so having mechnical creatures and guys with guns makes sense for my mini's collection. However I should specify that the Heroscape line includes a huge and diverse assortment of figurines, many with a strong Fantasy feel including templars, archers, archetypal monsters, mythic beasts and so forth. There are also a variety of robots and cyborgs, people with wings (both angelic and demonic in appearance), ninja, samurai, gunmen and so forth. I just did a quick count on the Hasbro web site and it looks like there are nearly 90 Small expansion sets availahble, most or all of which include 7 mini's. You can imagine there is quite an assortment available.
Of course a mini line cannot be judged by variety alone. Once I got home I cracked (well, tore) open the plastic packaging which is every bit as annoying now as it was when I bought action figures back when I was 8 or 9 years old. I would have thought that someone could have innovated better packaging in the last 20 years but I guess not. Anyway, I gleefully if clumsily extricated my new warriors and put them to the test.
If you're anything like me then your main concern with cool-looking mini's, whether painted by your own hand or someone else, is whether the paint will chip or rub off. My group is not gentle on minis, forsaking any kind of foam-lined storage for heaps on the table or cramming them into someone's dice bag for transport. In order to see whether the Heroscape mini's would stand up to rigorous use I devised two tests.
Test #1: The Nail. Does the paint wear off when rubbed and scraped with my finger nail? NO! The paint is impervious to the human nail.
Test #2: The Grapple. Does the paint wear off when I rigorously rub and scrape two of the mini's together? NO! The mini's cannot harm each other!
Also on the question of durability, they seem to rebound from being bent. I was worried that the musketeer's guns were bent when they were crammed into the packaging but they straightened out just fine and stayed straight. Bending heads, swords and legs seemed to cause no lasting problem. They should hold up to *normal* wear and tear (meaning I won't vouch for what your toddler can do to them).
Those are three darn good points in my book. There are other things to consider however. Remember, these are PRE PAINTED minis. How is the paint job?
The colours are well chosen and the figures exhibit appropriate shading. The painting is good but not precise. Occasionally on small areas like the top of a boot or the buckle of a belt you will see colour spillage, i.e. colour from the nearby area got onto the next area over. You'd really only notice this on close inspection, not from across the table while the mini's are on the map. However the Dungeons & Dragons Heroes line of mini's does not have this failing as far as I can see, and by comparison the Heroscape mini's look a little less crisp and perfect from a distance. You could fool me into believing the Heroscape mini's are painted by hand, based on some of the minor colour mistakes, even though I am sure they are done by machine somehow. Still, this is a very small problem and the quality is still better than most people can manage when hand-painting their own mini's.
Last I think we should talk about the design of the sculptures themselves. The poses are well chosen and do not seem unnatural. The gear is realistic enough that you don't have to worry about it being too "anime" with swords too big to wield. This also means that bent or broken weapons are unlikely. However the faces I think are often poorly done. I would say that out of all the humanoid figurines I looked at on the shelf I can't think of a single one who could be called handsome or pretty. That's fine on an orc mercenary but even the female elven warriors renowned for their agility exhibit an approximate Charisma score of 6. Between squared off facial features, angry expressions and unusual hair styles the figures often have have a primitive neanderthal look. I feel the level of artistry on these figures is just not up to the same level of quality as the Dungeons & Dragons Heroes line which I also looked at.
The price however is right. At $12.99 for 7 figures you are paying less than $2.00 per mini and I challenge you to find a better value than that. Even unpainted mini's cost more than that and these mini's come fully painted. In addition to the mini's you can probably find some use for the plastic 3D hexes that come along as terrain. I might use them to elevate Large creatures or to represent obstacles on the map for my D&D games. they are stackable so you can make tall structures out of them.
Last it should be mentioned that these mini's come with stat cards for their use in the Heroscape game. While worthless to me, the cards are bright and well laid out with fair quality artwork. They are octagonal in shape (almost snowflake shaped) and printed on durable cardstock of some sort that seems to be reasonably moisture resistant. We used them as coasters for drinks at my game and they work great! They are however packaged between two pieces of carboard backing the minis in their plastic case, invisible from the outside. Small print on the back warns the buyer that they are under the cardboard, but I can imagine children ripping through the cardboard eager for their new action figures only to discover they have torn up the stat cards. It seems like bad design - if you care about the stat cards. Which I don't.
Overall I gave the mini's a 3 for Style. A diverse assortment of colourful figurines in many styles and genres certainly meets the standards of a mini's line and is not deficient in any way. "Painting outside of the lines" slightly, along with often unattractive faces, cost the Heroscape expansion sets from getting a higher score.
For Substance I heartily award the mini's a 5. You truly get a lot of bang for your buck, netting more figures-per-dollar than any other product line I've see, plus terrain features and (for those actually playing the game) stat cards. The figures are as durable as their more expensive competitors. I can't imagine getting more content at the list price.
I intend to purchase more Heroscape mini's to round out my collection of fantasy, early modern and steampunk figures, only going to other brands if needed to get some monster Heroscape doesn't offer. Those who want truly beautiful mini's might do better to look at the Dungeons and Dragons product lines and of course there will always be those gamers who want to paint their own metal mini's. For pre-painted plastic mini's however I do not think you will find a better value than the Heroscape products, and highly recommend them.
