Love is a Battlefield

Riddle me this...

Who would win in a fight between a dragon and a T-rex?

Could a squad of ninjas take out a giant hunter/killer robot with a well placed shuriken?

What would happen if a squad of World War II era paratroopers, machine guns a-blazing, charged downhill into the massed phalanx of a roman legion while a group of elven archers provided cover fire?

As an evil overlord, I have to ask myself these and other difficult questions all the time as I lay out my intricate battle plans leading up to global domination. If you also find a pressing need to know whether or not a group of wandering samurai could take down a hill giant (hint: the answer is "Not in a million years"), or if you just enjoy playing well-made miniatures games, then Heroscape, produced by Hasbro, may well be the game for you.

Some of the features that make Heroscape so awesome are an easy-to-learn rule system, incredibly well made interlocking terrain pieces that can be built into virtually any configuration, and well-painted figures representing characters pulled from many different settings, genres and historical periods, all brought together in a giant Valhalla-like setting.

It also helps that Heroscape is affordable. The basic game costs about $30 at Toys R Us, Walmart, or Target, and comes with everything you need to play it right out of the box. Expansion sets cost between $10 and $30 and come with additional terrain pieces, landscape features, figures, and optional rules and scenarios, and they help to keep the game interesting for a long, long time. Basically, you can invest as much money into it as you feel comfortable with.

Anyway, the reason I'm plugging this amazing game is because after a year or two of looking for someone who would play this incredible game with me, I finally found a group of people to game with on Sundays, which I'm really excited about. After all, it does get wearisome (and a bit pathetic) playing a combat simulation game against myself.

So until I raise the capital to produce my army of ninjas and dinosaurs (you wouldn't believe how much a stegosaurus goes for these days. I blame the price of gas.), I'll continue to amuse myself sending wave after wave of plastic figures to their doom on a battlefield of brightly painted hexes.

Because after all, practice makes perfect.