Sir Dendrik
Active member
A Guide to "Free for All" Heroscape
I’ve been playing Heroscape since the 6th grade, when the game first hit the shelves. Since then I’ve played at least 500 games of Free for All Heroscape, usually with 4 players but some with as many as 8. I’ve learned the ins and outs of the format, and I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned.
I)Setup
A) Start Zones
1)Position:
It’s easy to screw up start zones in a Free for All game. They have to be near enough to the battle so there’s not endless turns spent trudging across the board, but also far enough from the battle that the start zone is going to get shot to ribbons before it ever sees an Order Marker.
Don’t think that your map has to be a square. You can have a starting zone that has a narrow (3 hex to prevent choke points) walkway to the battlefield, flanked by negative space. What you shouldn’t do is have a level 1 rim around the board that lets people forego the center of the board in order to zoom straight into the face of the player next to them. LOS blockers can be used as well, but those on the edges of the board tend to just take up space, and they’re easily replaced by negative space.
Paradoxically, if you put height in between start zones, making them trudge up a few levels before they can even begin to move toward the next closest starting zone, you can usually force the action to the center of the board, or at least make it so the loss of figures on that height cannot easily be replenished.
Here’s an example of a map:
Now, this is still going to require special rules to make these start zones work (see below), but it’s close. It’s a lot easier to pull this off with a 4 player map. Work to minimize the exposure of starting zones, but remember that players will be forging alliances and striking deals to protect their start zones as well, so often it’s enough just to get the ball rolling.
2) Size
In an 8 player game, having a 24 hex start zone for everyone is going to spell disaster for the game. Not only will it make the logistics of placing those start zones nearly impossible, it will encourage common squads. Squad turns take longer than hero turns, especially if players are being diligent with their placement, which means it might be a half hour between Player 1’s turn and Player 8’s. Hour and a half rounds are a quick way to make everyone lose interest.
Restrict start zone size to an appropriate size for the number of players. 24 hexes is fine for a 4 player game, but as you move past that it’s better to bring things down to about 7-10 hexes. This will restrict the use of squads, bring down the length of player’s turns, and keep everyone engaged in between turns.
3) Special Rules
In an 8 player game, you’re going to have to add special rules to make starting zones work. It just comes with the territory. Here are a few that have worked for me in the past:
“For the first round, you cannot attack the player to your left or right.”
“Players’ start zones are invulnerable for the first 3 rounds, but they must always move activated units out of the start zone.”
“[500 point game]Start with at least 250 points on the board, the rest in reserve. In between rounds you may place your entire reserve on the board. If your army is totally destroyed, you must place your reserve.” (Tactically, it’s better to stall reserves until later in the game. Make players aware of this.)
There are a thousand different little rules to take care of this problem. Use these or make up your own, and remember that you have the power to change things on the fly if they’re not working.
B) Drafting > Blind
Having everyone draft an army takes time, but really it only takes a lot of time if there are new players who don’t know the cards. If there are new players, have them pick things they like by looking at figures, and do some of the tactical leaps in planning for them just to keep things rolling. A few games in they’ll start to see what they want to use again, and branch out from there.
In general, drafting makes for better games. When people bring in Blind armies from their personal collections, it’s hard to be on the same page. One player may bring Q9 and Raelin, and another player make bring Deathwalkers en Masse, and another player may bring Q9 and Raelin. Blind armies introduce homogeneity into the game, especially if Raelin hasn’t been banned (which I highly recommend), and they make it harder for people to bring guns to gun fights and knives to knife fights.
It also means you don’t have to bring a blind army that can deal with every threat, but rather you can aim to deal with the threats you actually have in front of you. And no two draft armies are going to be the same game to game, even if you’re just using Rise of the Valkyrie figures.
C) Transport
Just a note because 4 player and up maps are huge, but to transport them I use 2 halves of a map on 2 white boards:
D) Go Crazy
Get out of that 1v1 Tournament mindset. Heroscape is meant to be a party.
Make up scenarios. Design a new glyph. Put some Neutral Creatures* on the board. Put treasure glyphs down to encourage heroes, and make up a clever trap. Give the Marro Hive 7 movement. Whatever will may the game more fun, that will make it memorable, that will cause an upset, do it. The human element will balance out whatever outlandish things you want to be in the game. Have fun, and make an experience.
*Neutral Creature: A unit that is on the board which any player may put Order Markers on. They will always give Leaving Engagement attacks. (I play that even players knocked out of the game can place Order Markers on them.)
II)Strategy
"Strategy without tactics is the most circuitous route to victory, but great tactics without a strategy is just the cacophony before defeat." ~Johngee
I’m not going to go over tactics, because they apply to all Heroscape games and deserve another article, and over and above tactics are a zero sum game in Free for All. You can train your whole life, learn everything there is to know about the game, draft Q9, Hydra, Raelin, 3xRats, but it’s not going to give you much of an edge if you don’t understand the strategy of the format.
A) The First Rule of Fighting…
“Don’t be there.”
In a perfect world, the best strategy in an 8 player game would be to sit back and watch the other 7 players demolish each other while your army remained completely unscathed. Then, when only 1 player was left, with dwindling forces, you could easily crush him. This will never happen, but you can learn from its principles.
The less you make yourself a target, the less battles you get caught up in, the more likely you will win when everything clears out. You want to keep your army intact as long as possible while the other players destroy each other. It’s an ideal that you will have a difficult time achieving, but if you can manage to glean some benefit from this principle you will come out ahead.
I had a friend who used to play the Krav Maga Agents last, and when he was reduced down to 1 agent he would retreat and hang out in his start zone until everyone else was finally reduced down to his size. Rather than being completely discounted from those games, he gave himself a fighting chance. If you can figure out your own way to put this idea to use, do it.
B) Alliances
Gang up on the strong.
Conversely, if you see someone who’s kept a sizeable army in his start zone while the rest of you have had your armies reduced by a sizeable amount, then you know that player is on the path to victory. So what do you do when one player is way ahead? Strike up some alliances, team up with the other players you’ve been tearing apart, and go rip that turtling mofo a new one.
Not to say that turtling is the only way to come out ahead: Whoever plays the best, strikes up the best alliances, etc. is going to come out ahead. But that does not mean they’re anywhere close to winning—it just means it’s time to bring the fight to them so they don’t march on to victory unchecked.
Alliances are a huge part of Free for All battles. You’re not just attacking whatever’s nearest to you: you’re weighing the strength of each players’ army and seeing who needs to be cut down to size. As soon as that player is cut down, a new leader will emerge soon enough, rinse and repeat.
It’s also to a players’ advantage to strike up alliances with players next to their start zones to protect their inert units from being hosed down, and to cut down the number of fronts you’re fighting on.
1)What’s In An Order Marker?
Imagine there’s one player with 400 points left, and the other 3 players have been reduced down to 100 points each. The 400 point player has more units than all of them combined, so there’s no chance the other 3 will beat him down, even with a 3 way alliance, right?
Wrong. If the other 3 gang up, which they should, they will have 3 units activated per round vs. the leader’s 1. Imagine those three players combined into 1 player with 9 active order markers at her disposal, activated one after another. I’d put my bets on that player even if it were a single squad of 10th Regiment of Foot vs. 3 squads of 4th Mass.
a) Let the Weak Live
Because of this principle of Order Marker value, it’s often a good idea to keep weaker players in the game. This is because that player can be used as a mercenary, so to speak, to help take down the leader later in the game. Basically, the more players there are the more fluid the balance of power becomes, and it prevents any one player from gaining a monopoly, which is an entirely different game.
And, of course, it’s better to keep players in the game as long as possible because then they’ll have more fun, but that’s a different issue.
2)Kill AJ While You Have the Chance
Who’s AJ, you ask? Whelp, you’re reading an article by him as we speak.
This is a strategy which organically rederives itself with whatever group I teach Heroscape to. Because I understand tactics so much better than the new players, having played since I was 12, I will often have a very strong showing in the games that I play. This has lead people to realize that even if I just have that 1 figure on the board and it’s got its upset value, it’s still better that they just kill me then, whatever other sound strategy may advise.
So in a game I played recently I had 2 life left Cyprien, another player had 2 Phantom Knights, and another played had 4 life left Alastair MacDirk with four 4th Mass. Normally I would propose an alliance with the Phantom Knight player to take out the clear lead, but I had been doing ridiculously well that game, as Cyprien was basically my only unit the whole game, aside from an Airborne Elite squad that died immediately, and I was still holding my own against four 500 point armies. So the Phantom Knight player knew that I would win, somehow someway, if he made the alliance, so he opted to just try to wipe me out and take his small chances with the valiant player, caught between a rock and a hard place.
Abstracting this rule: Kill the players who play well, as their units are worth more in their hands than they would be in a vacuum. Normally it’s better to keep the upset value, but in this case it’s better not to.
I’ll often strike alliances with players that have the clause that if it’s just the two of us on the board at the end of the game, then they win automatically. It’s helped edge out this tactic, but only applies if you’re more interested in fun than winning, and why would anyone ever want to do that?
C)Stages of Gameplay
Most Free for All games in which players are paying attention to the above strategies will go something like this:
1)Chaos
Players are rushing around, their start zones are getting mobbed, their start zones are being ignored, they’re attacking their own units because they don’t understand the game, they’re having units commit suicide off the edge of 4 high sand piles, they’re taking 5 leaving engagement attacks a turn so they can get to that particular Arrow Grut.
It’s chaos. And really, this is just the primordial ooze from which the game will be born. Right now not much matters, but very soon it will.
2)King of the Hill
Now’s about the time when players see that Billy is way ahead and needs to be teamed up on, and some meaningful alliances will arise. Maybe two strong players will ally and do a lot of damage to the other players, such that it seems those 2 strong players are invincible. But eventually, it will be clear who would win head to head between those players, and the weak players will have such dwindling forces that they can be ignored. Then their alliance breaks, and they’ll have left the other players alive to try for the upset if things don’t go right.
This is when the real gameplay starts, when the deals are struck, when people try to leverage their position and the cards they have at this point to try to win in the…
3)End Game
This is a separate phase because the type of units which are effective change a lot. Squads have all been broken, and the player with Sgt. Drake 1.0 stashed in his start zone can now go for the win. Alliances are formed and dissolved so rapidly that they become nearly meaningless, and everyone is trying to kill the players that do well against them so only the players they can plow through are left.
And in the end, one player rises to the top. Winning.
You cry, you cheer, but in the end you had such a good time that you don’t even care who won. That’s Heroscape at its finest.
III)Closing Remarks
Free for All games are by far the most form of Heroscape. The units in Heroscape, like it or not, are not balanced against one another, and I’d say at least 25% of casual double blind games are settled before players start the game, because armies are lopsided. Heroscape is a blast to play, and at the end of the day 1v1 or team games are still a blast, but Free for All games blend the tactics of the game, the army compositions, etc. into a masterpiece where everyone has the chance to win despite the power variance between units, while at the same time allowing players to display their tactical prowess.
I hope you have enjoyed this write up, and I hope you will try some Free for All matches in the future…!
I’ve been playing Heroscape since the 6th grade, when the game first hit the shelves. Since then I’ve played at least 500 games of Free for All Heroscape, usually with 4 players but some with as many as 8. I’ve learned the ins and outs of the format, and I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned.
I)Setup
A) Start Zones
1)Position:
It’s easy to screw up start zones in a Free for All game. They have to be near enough to the battle so there’s not endless turns spent trudging across the board, but also far enough from the battle that the start zone is going to get shot to ribbons before it ever sees an Order Marker.
Don’t think that your map has to be a square. You can have a starting zone that has a narrow (3 hex to prevent choke points) walkway to the battlefield, flanked by negative space. What you shouldn’t do is have a level 1 rim around the board that lets people forego the center of the board in order to zoom straight into the face of the player next to them. LOS blockers can be used as well, but those on the edges of the board tend to just take up space, and they’re easily replaced by negative space.
Paradoxically, if you put height in between start zones, making them trudge up a few levels before they can even begin to move toward the next closest starting zone, you can usually force the action to the center of the board, or at least make it so the loss of figures on that height cannot easily be replenished.
Here’s an example of a map:
Now, this is still going to require special rules to make these start zones work (see below), but it’s close. It’s a lot easier to pull this off with a 4 player map. Work to minimize the exposure of starting zones, but remember that players will be forging alliances and striking deals to protect their start zones as well, so often it’s enough just to get the ball rolling.
2) Size
In an 8 player game, having a 24 hex start zone for everyone is going to spell disaster for the game. Not only will it make the logistics of placing those start zones nearly impossible, it will encourage common squads. Squad turns take longer than hero turns, especially if players are being diligent with their placement, which means it might be a half hour between Player 1’s turn and Player 8’s. Hour and a half rounds are a quick way to make everyone lose interest.
Restrict start zone size to an appropriate size for the number of players. 24 hexes is fine for a 4 player game, but as you move past that it’s better to bring things down to about 7-10 hexes. This will restrict the use of squads, bring down the length of player’s turns, and keep everyone engaged in between turns.
3) Special Rules
In an 8 player game, you’re going to have to add special rules to make starting zones work. It just comes with the territory. Here are a few that have worked for me in the past:
“For the first round, you cannot attack the player to your left or right.”
“Players’ start zones are invulnerable for the first 3 rounds, but they must always move activated units out of the start zone.”
“[500 point game]Start with at least 250 points on the board, the rest in reserve. In between rounds you may place your entire reserve on the board. If your army is totally destroyed, you must place your reserve.” (Tactically, it’s better to stall reserves until later in the game. Make players aware of this.)
There are a thousand different little rules to take care of this problem. Use these or make up your own, and remember that you have the power to change things on the fly if they’re not working.
B) Drafting > Blind
Having everyone draft an army takes time, but really it only takes a lot of time if there are new players who don’t know the cards. If there are new players, have them pick things they like by looking at figures, and do some of the tactical leaps in planning for them just to keep things rolling. A few games in they’ll start to see what they want to use again, and branch out from there.
In general, drafting makes for better games. When people bring in Blind armies from their personal collections, it’s hard to be on the same page. One player may bring Q9 and Raelin, and another player make bring Deathwalkers en Masse, and another player may bring Q9 and Raelin. Blind armies introduce homogeneity into the game, especially if Raelin hasn’t been banned (which I highly recommend), and they make it harder for people to bring guns to gun fights and knives to knife fights.
It also means you don’t have to bring a blind army that can deal with every threat, but rather you can aim to deal with the threats you actually have in front of you. And no two draft armies are going to be the same game to game, even if you’re just using Rise of the Valkyrie figures.
C) Transport
Just a note because 4 player and up maps are huge, but to transport them I use 2 halves of a map on 2 white boards:
D) Go Crazy
Get out of that 1v1 Tournament mindset. Heroscape is meant to be a party.
Make up scenarios. Design a new glyph. Put some Neutral Creatures* on the board. Put treasure glyphs down to encourage heroes, and make up a clever trap. Give the Marro Hive 7 movement. Whatever will may the game more fun, that will make it memorable, that will cause an upset, do it. The human element will balance out whatever outlandish things you want to be in the game. Have fun, and make an experience.
*Neutral Creature: A unit that is on the board which any player may put Order Markers on. They will always give Leaving Engagement attacks. (I play that even players knocked out of the game can place Order Markers on them.)
II)Strategy
"Strategy without tactics is the most circuitous route to victory, but great tactics without a strategy is just the cacophony before defeat." ~Johngee
I’m not going to go over tactics, because they apply to all Heroscape games and deserve another article, and over and above tactics are a zero sum game in Free for All. You can train your whole life, learn everything there is to know about the game, draft Q9, Hydra, Raelin, 3xRats, but it’s not going to give you much of an edge if you don’t understand the strategy of the format.
A) The First Rule of Fighting…
“Don’t be there.”
In a perfect world, the best strategy in an 8 player game would be to sit back and watch the other 7 players demolish each other while your army remained completely unscathed. Then, when only 1 player was left, with dwindling forces, you could easily crush him. This will never happen, but you can learn from its principles.
The less you make yourself a target, the less battles you get caught up in, the more likely you will win when everything clears out. You want to keep your army intact as long as possible while the other players destroy each other. It’s an ideal that you will have a difficult time achieving, but if you can manage to glean some benefit from this principle you will come out ahead.
I had a friend who used to play the Krav Maga Agents last, and when he was reduced down to 1 agent he would retreat and hang out in his start zone until everyone else was finally reduced down to his size. Rather than being completely discounted from those games, he gave himself a fighting chance. If you can figure out your own way to put this idea to use, do it.
B) Alliances
Gang up on the strong.
Conversely, if you see someone who’s kept a sizeable army in his start zone while the rest of you have had your armies reduced by a sizeable amount, then you know that player is on the path to victory. So what do you do when one player is way ahead? Strike up some alliances, team up with the other players you’ve been tearing apart, and go rip that turtling mofo a new one.
Not to say that turtling is the only way to come out ahead: Whoever plays the best, strikes up the best alliances, etc. is going to come out ahead. But that does not mean they’re anywhere close to winning—it just means it’s time to bring the fight to them so they don’t march on to victory unchecked.
Alliances are a huge part of Free for All battles. You’re not just attacking whatever’s nearest to you: you’re weighing the strength of each players’ army and seeing who needs to be cut down to size. As soon as that player is cut down, a new leader will emerge soon enough, rinse and repeat.
It’s also to a players’ advantage to strike up alliances with players next to their start zones to protect their inert units from being hosed down, and to cut down the number of fronts you’re fighting on.
1)What’s In An Order Marker?
Imagine there’s one player with 400 points left, and the other 3 players have been reduced down to 100 points each. The 400 point player has more units than all of them combined, so there’s no chance the other 3 will beat him down, even with a 3 way alliance, right?
Wrong. If the other 3 gang up, which they should, they will have 3 units activated per round vs. the leader’s 1. Imagine those three players combined into 1 player with 9 active order markers at her disposal, activated one after another. I’d put my bets on that player even if it were a single squad of 10th Regiment of Foot vs. 3 squads of 4th Mass.
a) Let the Weak Live
Because of this principle of Order Marker value, it’s often a good idea to keep weaker players in the game. This is because that player can be used as a mercenary, so to speak, to help take down the leader later in the game. Basically, the more players there are the more fluid the balance of power becomes, and it prevents any one player from gaining a monopoly, which is an entirely different game.
And, of course, it’s better to keep players in the game as long as possible because then they’ll have more fun, but that’s a different issue.
2)Kill AJ While You Have the Chance
Who’s AJ, you ask? Whelp, you’re reading an article by him as we speak.
This is a strategy which organically rederives itself with whatever group I teach Heroscape to. Because I understand tactics so much better than the new players, having played since I was 12, I will often have a very strong showing in the games that I play. This has lead people to realize that even if I just have that 1 figure on the board and it’s got its upset value, it’s still better that they just kill me then, whatever other sound strategy may advise.
So in a game I played recently I had 2 life left Cyprien, another player had 2 Phantom Knights, and another played had 4 life left Alastair MacDirk with four 4th Mass. Normally I would propose an alliance with the Phantom Knight player to take out the clear lead, but I had been doing ridiculously well that game, as Cyprien was basically my only unit the whole game, aside from an Airborne Elite squad that died immediately, and I was still holding my own against four 500 point armies. So the Phantom Knight player knew that I would win, somehow someway, if he made the alliance, so he opted to just try to wipe me out and take his small chances with the valiant player, caught between a rock and a hard place.
Abstracting this rule: Kill the players who play well, as their units are worth more in their hands than they would be in a vacuum. Normally it’s better to keep the upset value, but in this case it’s better not to.
I’ll often strike alliances with players that have the clause that if it’s just the two of us on the board at the end of the game, then they win automatically. It’s helped edge out this tactic, but only applies if you’re more interested in fun than winning, and why would anyone ever want to do that?
C)Stages of Gameplay
Most Free for All games in which players are paying attention to the above strategies will go something like this:
1)Chaos
Players are rushing around, their start zones are getting mobbed, their start zones are being ignored, they’re attacking their own units because they don’t understand the game, they’re having units commit suicide off the edge of 4 high sand piles, they’re taking 5 leaving engagement attacks a turn so they can get to that particular Arrow Grut.
It’s chaos. And really, this is just the primordial ooze from which the game will be born. Right now not much matters, but very soon it will.
2)King of the Hill
Now’s about the time when players see that Billy is way ahead and needs to be teamed up on, and some meaningful alliances will arise. Maybe two strong players will ally and do a lot of damage to the other players, such that it seems those 2 strong players are invincible. But eventually, it will be clear who would win head to head between those players, and the weak players will have such dwindling forces that they can be ignored. Then their alliance breaks, and they’ll have left the other players alive to try for the upset if things don’t go right.
This is when the real gameplay starts, when the deals are struck, when people try to leverage their position and the cards they have at this point to try to win in the…
3)End Game
This is a separate phase because the type of units which are effective change a lot. Squads have all been broken, and the player with Sgt. Drake 1.0 stashed in his start zone can now go for the win. Alliances are formed and dissolved so rapidly that they become nearly meaningless, and everyone is trying to kill the players that do well against them so only the players they can plow through are left.
And in the end, one player rises to the top. Winning.
You cry, you cheer, but in the end you had such a good time that you don’t even care who won. That’s Heroscape at its finest.
III)Closing Remarks
Free for All games are by far the most form of Heroscape. The units in Heroscape, like it or not, are not balanced against one another, and I’d say at least 25% of casual double blind games are settled before players start the game, because armies are lopsided. Heroscape is a blast to play, and at the end of the day 1v1 or team games are still a blast, but Free for All games blend the tactics of the game, the army compositions, etc. into a masterpiece where everyone has the chance to win despite the power variance between units, while at the same time allowing players to display their tactical prowess.
I hope you have enjoyed this write up, and I hope you will try some Free for All matches in the future…!
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