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Casters of Valhalla

https://castersofvalhalla.wixsite.c...try-24-the-competitive-heroscape-buying-guide

I walk through how to get started playing competitive classic Scape, laying out the important figures every collection needs. I also compare the top 11 armies in terms of strength, affordability, and flexibility.

Great episode! I wish I had this a year and a half ago when my brother and I got back in to Heroscape. It was great to hear you list all the figures that should be priority buy regardless, then go through full armies that were more or less optimized for competitive play.

I was really pleased to hear you go down the list because I already own the figures, in the quantities that you suggested, without having this cast as a resource. The main reason I was so pleased was because when I decided to start collecting multiples of commons squads I used all of the COV’s previous casts as an outline on what I should buy first. I started with Heavies, then Knights, Romans, etc. all the way down to the most expensive Melee bonding units, The Dwarves. I was lucky enough to get a great deal on an authentic squad and have some really awesome 3D prints done by a fellow Scaper.

This cast has been an invaluable resource in my attempts to create more competitive armies as well as improving my overall skill as a Scaper. Thank you Mike, Ken and all the other great hosts! Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks so much for the kind words! It's been cool to watch you and your brother journey into the game. I wish I had made this sooner; I'd been planning on creating it a few years ago, but better late than never.

Thank you, I’m honored to have you follow our progress in the game. We still have so much to learn and experience to gain but it’s been great to get feedback from seasoned Heroscape Veterans.

The casts have been a great help and I have my favorite ones saved to my phone so I can listen to them whenever I want. I listen mostly at work where the hours of Heroscape commentary the cast provides make the time at work go by a little faster and a lot more enjoyable. I can confidently say that I’m one of the Cast’s number one listeners. I’ve heard every cast at least once and I’ve listened to my favorites multiple times. I’ve listened to the Melee bonding casts upwards of 5 separate times already.

This upcoming battle between my brother and I should be of particular interest to you. We are playing on a WoS inducted map and I’m using all of my knowledge gained from the cast to pilot Heavies/Grimnak/Nerak/MW/Heirloom into Q-9/WoA/PK. Our parameters were 520pts 20 figs and I had to use MW in my build and my brother Alex had to use Q-9 in his build. Hope you can check it out Sunday and give us your extremely informed opinion.
 
Your brother and those WoA… Is he secretly preparing to play against me or something?

Haha right? He has told me in the past that they are some of his favorite units. I think he picked up on the fact that because of the cast, I put a lot of value in Melee Bonding. I knew that without being able to use rats, WoA would be his next choice to bring with Q-9. Grimnak’s Chomp and Heirlooms Force Orb had the WoA shaking in their boots.
 
Listening to Entry 10 Melee Bonding for probably the 7th time and I literally caught something I never picked up before. It was brought up by Nathan when he asked you @OEAO if Nerak’s buff is priority for the Heavies or Grimnak and you didn’t hesitate to say Grimnak.
In past games using Heavies I always tried to optimize Neraks buff for the heavies. Thinking about it now he is pretty much an investment of 50pts to ensure Grimnak stays alive most of the battle, I know that’s not completely true but it ties directly into something else you have said about the Heavies army previously. I’m paraphrasing but it went something like “If Grimnak stays alive the whole battle, your chances of winning greatly increase”
When I come at it with that approach, it definitely seems less overwhelming for me. I always second guessed myself and when placing Nerak because I always wanted to protect the most Heavies as possible. Several times my Nerak got sniped because he was too close to all of the action. If I focus on protecting Grimnak, Nerak should stay alive longer by default because ideally there should be a horde of Orcs between the enemy and Grimnak which goes double (ideally) for Nerak.
 
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Listening to Entry 10 Melee Bonding for probably the 7th time and I literally caught something I never picked up before. It was brought up by Nathan when he asked you @OEAO if Nerak’s buff is priority for the Heavies or Grimnak and you didn’t hesitate to say Grimnak.
In past games using Heavies I always tried to optimize Neraks buff for the heavies. Thinking about it now he is pretty much an investment of 50pts to ensure Grimnak stays alive most of the battle, I know that’s not completely true but it ties directly into something else you have said about the Heavies army previously. I’m paraphrasing but it went something like “If Grimnak stays alive the whole battle, your chances of winning greatly increase”
When I come at it with that approach, it definitely seems less overwhelming for me. I always second guessed myself and when placing Nerak because I always wanted to protect the most Heavies as possible. Several times my Nerak got sniped because he was too close to all of the action. If I focus on protecting Grimnak, Nerak should stay alive longer by default because ideally there should be a horde of Orcs between the enemy and Grimnak which goes double (ideally) for Nerak.
This is definitely true. Nice job playing Grimnak in your latest battle video- your protection of him with the Gruts was very good! I would have liked to see Nerak move on to the closest 2-hex grass level 3 right outside your starting zone on OM 3, as that would have protected both Grimnak and the Gruts for the first half of the battle. Nerak's buff on the Gruts is also really nice, as if your brother had just focused on killing Gruts instead of splitting attacks between Gruts and Grimnak, you wouldn't have been able to kill Q9.

I would also recommend that he save the PKs until the endgame in that matchup- he should've rode Warriors of Ashra for as long as possible, then switched to either PKs or Q9. Splitting OMs like that is pretty ineffective in cheese matchups- you're better off getting value with whatever you're currently using.
 
Listening to Entry 10 Melee Bonding for probably the 7th time and I literally caught something I never picked up before. It was brought up by Nathan when he asked you @OEAO if Nerak’s buff is priority for the Heavies or Grimnak and you didn’t hesitate to say Grimnak.
In past games using Heavies I always tried to optimize Neraks buff for the heavies. Thinking about it now he is pretty much an investment of 50pts to ensure Grimnak stays alive most of the battle, I know that’s not completely true but it ties directly into something else you have said about the Heavies army previously. I’m paraphrasing but it went something like “If Grimnak stays alive the whole battle, your chances of winning greatly increase”
When I come at it with that approach, it definitely seems less overwhelming for me. I always second guessed myself and when placing Nerak because I always wanted to protect the most Heavies as possible. Several times my Nerak got sniped because he was too close to all of the action. If I focus on protecting Grimnak, Nerak should stay alive longer by default because ideally there should be a horde of Orcs between the enemy and Grimnak which goes double (ideally) for Nerak.
This is definitely true. Nice job playing Grimnak in your latest battle video- your protection of him with the Gruts was very good! I would have liked to see Nerak move on to the closest 2-hex grass level 3 right outside your starting zone on OM 3, as that would have protected both Grimnak and the Gruts for the first half of the battle. Nerak's buff on the Gruts is also really nice, as if your brother had just focused on killing Gruts instead of splitting attacks between Gruts and Grimnak, you wouldn't have been able to kill Q9.

I would also recommend that he save the PKs until the endgame in that matchup- he should've rode Warriors of Ashra for as long as possible, then switched to either PKs or Q9. Splitting OMs like that is pretty ineffective in cheese matchups- you're better off getting value with whatever you're currently using.

Thank you for the feedback. I’m trying to get my brother on the forums but he hasn’t made an account yet. I’ll let him know the pointers you gave him about the battle.
I got super nervous towards the end of the battle because I knew Q-9 had the clean up potential to wipe out my Heavies. Luckily he focused a bunch of attacks on Grimnak. When I eventually moved Nerak up I felt better but I was still worried about Q-9 because I couldn’t get good hits on him with the Heavies. I knew if I just kept attacking Q-9 with as many Heavies as I could, he would eventually whiff and get killed but at the same time I was worried about running out of Heavies. That could have been mitigated if I brought Nerak up earlier but I’m going to work on getting better at that. I kept thinking about the word “can-opener” that you throw around in the podcast and how I desperately needed one at the end there haha. Luckily I have a chance to get more practice with them because in the next battle I’m going to be using that Heavy Grut army against the Rats/Kaemon/Krug/Hydra army my brother had a couple weeks ago. We will be battling on Ticalla Sunrise for the first time so it should be really interesting!
 
Double Post

Hello,

OEAO is currently driving so he entrusted me to send this out so y'all have a couple extra days to fill it out. I'll get a final scoreboard set up eventually.

SCAPECON BET LINK

~Dysole, informationally
 
HoundsRule and I will be streaming HeroScape on Mondays, starting August 29! Not sure yet whether it will be weekly or bi-weekly. We’ll probably be starting at around 1 PM eastern, and I’ll be teaching him how to play the top-tier armies! He’s a great player, but he has never really played with any of the top-tier armies before (he prefers units like the Marrden Hounds, shockingly).

https://twitch.tv/emery4848
 
Good episode. Looking forward to Avalon Hill making up for some of that.
 
I am thoroughly enjoying this and I thank you all for taking the time to put your thoughts together. Just hearing 2 hours of map talk from two of the great cartographers alone is well worth the listen, but with rankings and in a multi-part series?! I'm also really happy to see the inclusion of the panel's own maps and an eye toward historic importance. Nice work guys, I'm looking forward to more!
 
I am thoroughly enjoying this and I thank you all for taking the time to put your thoughts together. Just hearing 2 hours of map talk from two of the great cartographers alone is well worth the listen, but with rankings and in a multi-part series?! I'm also really happy to see the inclusion of the panel's own maps and an eye toward historic importance. Nice work guys, I'm looking forward to more!
Thanks for listening- glad you enjoyed it! It was certainly a fun one to record.
 
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I need to listen to this with my computer open so I can browse through maps to see which they are talking about, as I only recognize a few OG ones by name.
 
Here’s our overall top 10 not counting our individual top 10s:
Origin
Ascension
Platypus
Frostmire
Invasion
Trouble Once Lurked Beneath
Fulcrum
The Jabberwock
Can’t See the Jungle
Dry Season

Curious to see where these fall after next episode…
 
Is it possible we could get an episode diving into VC at some point in the future? Intro to what it’s about, some of the more popular/powerful units, maybe a bit of discussion on the top power level ranked ones like Quahon and Incendiborgs, etc? I feel like that would be a cool resource for people to get directed to to learn about VC in audio form; I know it’s been, not hard exactly, but more awkward to trawl through forum threads than a podcast introduction episode would have been for me.
 
Got from 50 to 15 or so on my 5 hours of driving to and from the Maryland Event yesterday. Very fun listen even though there were quite a few map names I didn't recognize and couldn't immediately look up. I'm probably going to have to listen again in front of a computer, lol.

Biggest take aways:

No one knows how to pronounce Typhon's name.
6-hex glacier hate.
 
Is it possible we could get an episode diving into VC at some point in the future? Intro to what it’s about, some of the more popular/powerful units, maybe a bit of discussion on the top power level ranked ones like Quahon and Incendiborgs, etc? I feel like that would be a cool resource for people to get directed to to learn about VC in audio form; I know it’s been, not hard exactly, but more awkward to trawl through forum threads than a podcast introduction episode would have been for me.

Second this!
 
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