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Requires: 2 master sets, 2 lava sets, 1 castle set 1 ice set
1 player. 550 point army all from one alignment and without any soulborg. 8-11 rounds. Setup on frozen river in front of the temple.
Story: The soulborg guards have rusted into place, but will still fire on tresspassers in order to protect the temple and its long vanished worshipers. Lava men have occupied the dormant temple, and will defend their territory. They are considered to be on the side of the Soulborg defenders for the purpose of this game. The player is controlling an elite force sent in to recover a valuable artifact from the center of the temple, and need to deactivate it before it explodes.
Special rules: The human player orders his unit cards. Each turn,
each human unit acts in that order, without use of order markers.
Then, the defender acts, according to a fairly simple
deterministic algorithm (see below).
At the end of each player turn, advance the turn token. If it
advances 8 times, the player immediately loses. If a
player unit is occupying the top of the pillar in the center of
the temple at the end of the player turn, do not advance
the turn counter. Instead, earn a victory point. The third
victory point wins the game.
Units cannot fly over the snowy top of the entrance, although they
may fly through the gaps if they fit. Dragons usually can't get
inside, but Kyrie usually can.
The defenders are considered to have just three army cards: one
common squad card for the 3 lavamen, one unique squad card for the
8 zettian guards, and one unique hero card for the 5 deathwalkers.
This means that "crippling gaze" and "mindshackle" can be quite
effective.
Defender Algorithm: Left and Right instructions are from the perspective of the human player.
The entrance:
Construction of the temple interior:
Theory: The player is at a severe point disadvantage (about 2:1) but can usually win with a well chosen army. The defender does not bring all of his forces to bear right away, will not move even if outranged, and fires in a predictable fashion. Also, since you know you will be fighting almost entirely soulborg, you can choose your army units appropriately -- attacks that involve the d20 instead of attack dice are good, as are attacks that prevent defense dice from being rolled. Mindshackling is a real gamble, even more so than usual. Remember that all your units have to be from the same alignment -- vydar, ullar, utgar, einar, vallar -- and cannot contain any soulborg.