Magic The Gathering Board Game based on Heroscape.

[Chako]

A little bit of a backstory is needed here. Last June, I was perusing the local Value Village when I spied a massive 3D miniature figurine game box for $9.99. It was a Heroscape master set "Rise of the Valkyrie". I opened the box in the store and after carefully reading the manual, noted that there were a lot of extra land, and an extra 10 figures on top of the base set. At the time I knew nothing of Heroscape, but at that price i new it was a deal. I bought it with the idea of gifting it to a great student that I knew was into this sort of thing big time. Before giving him the massive box, I googled Heroscape and noted that Milton Bradly discontinued it back in 2010. Man was he over the moon when I gave it to him. I was a bit taken aback that the same set minus the extras sold for around 3 to 400 bucks online! No wonder he was happy. Either way, I started to research the game system and thought it was a neat system. During my research, I found out that Milton Bradly used the same gaming system for their Magic the Gathering board games...at least the older set/system. I am given to understand they have discontinued this system for another that resembles Catan the board game. I will add, I have tried the card game before and found it was not to my liking. I have 2 friends who are into it big time and tried to get me on board with it many years ago. They are so into it that they run one of the only card game stores in this city...tournaments and all.

Thus, when I spied a Magic the Gathering: "Arena of the Planeswalkers" on sale for 15 bucks out of town, I couldn't resist. Looking on Amazon told me there was 1 expansion and another master set out there. I tore my city apart and couldn't find them...not a surprise. I did order both sets off of Amazon, and both of them came in today. That would be "Shadows Over Innistrad" which is another master set, and the expansion "Battle for Zendikar" for the first master set. From what I see, that is all they are doing with this game. They have dropped this back in 2016 I think and have just came out with a totally different game. From what I gather, not many Magic The Gathering card folks liked this game as it played more like Heroscape with a Magic the Gathering twist then it did the card game. I think I have enough here to have a lot of fun for quite some time.

Photo time:

Here is the first master set, Arena of the Planeswalkers. You get 5 Planeswalkers in not that bad colour. Each Planeswalker gets 2 army each. This game comes with 6 large cardboard tiles that make the board game, you also get 2 3 raised tiles and a few other raised tiles. Nothing like the fully interlocking tile system of Heroscape, but I much appreciate the simplicity of this board game over that of Heroscape, or at least what I saw when I gave that set away. Also, only the Plainswalkers are painted. The other pieces are not.



The only expansion to the above game, Battle for Zendikar does not offer any new gaming tiles. What it does offer is a multi coloured Plainswalker, and a few big monsters along with a few more armies.



The other master set is Shadows Over Innistrad. This set offers 4 more  base game tiles along with more interlocking raised tiles and towers. 4 more Plainswalkers are on tap. One will even turn into a werewolf...which sounds interesting. More dice, more armies are all good additions.



And a photo of all 3 sets...



Now all I need to do is learn the rules and try to get a few other folks interested in playing a game or two. Anyone else have any experience with either Heroscape or Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers board games?

[pfrsantos]

I recently got to play Descent. I believe it's pretty similar, also with minis and a RPG feel to it.

 

[Chako]

That games has a D&D feel to it. Yes, somewhat similar.

[Mercury]

As a HUGE fan of Magic the Gathering, I can confirm that most  ALL Magic players dismissed these games shortly after they were released.  I've never played them myself because all my fun money gets tied up in building and improving my MTG decks for Commander(best format btw).  Magic is an incredibly expensive hobby if you are serious about it.

That said, I'd never really even seen what these board games were all about.  I've recently gotten my children and (reluctantly) my wife into D&D and this game looks like a cheap way to get some miniatures at the very least.  I'm going to give it a shot and see if my family likes the game play.

The other game you were referring to is  Explorers of Ixalan, and it's the newest format of board game from Wizards revolving around the MTG canon.  It is pretty much Catan meets Magic the Gathering, and I'm working on securing a copy. 

Anyways, thanks for the images, they've convinced me to finally pick up this debacle of a game!  Who knows, my wife may like it better than D&D, which wouldn't be hard because she hates roleplaying!

[Vidar]

Magic is an incredibly expensive hobby if you are serious about it.

We used to play a fair bit of Magic while I was still at University. Around the time of 3rd or 4th edition. The cards got stashed away in a box for years until I had this major tidy up project some years ago and stumbled on them again. To my surprise Magic was still live and kicking, just in other parts of the world. So next time I was travelling I brought along about 100 cards I figured would be most worthwhile to bring and sell. Posted them for sale at a local Magic FB group at my destination - "Nothing new. Just some old cards if anyone is interested". They were I ended up with roughly USD 3000, and someone who actually plays get to enjoy them. Win win I figured. It sure had gotten more expensive though!

[Mercury]

Magic is an incredibly expensive hobby if you are serious about it.

We used to play a fair bit of Magic while I was still at University. Around the time of 3rd or 4th edition. The cards got stashed away in a box for years until I had this major tidy up project some years ago and stumbled on them again. To my surprise Magic was still live and kicking, just in other parts of the world. So next time I was travelling I brought along about 100 cards I figured would be most worthwhile to bring and sell. Posted them for sale at a local Magic FB group at my destination - "Nothing new. Just some old cards if anyone is interested". They were I ended up with roughly USD 3000, and someone who actually plays get to enjoy them. Win win I figured. It sure had gotten more expensive though!

Oh yea cards from that Era are incredibly expensive!!  I played back then too, and I have been kicking myself for years now that I lost my decks from 3rd and 4th edition.  I was a dumb kid and I didn't know better!

[Vidar]

According to some list price the card would have been almost the double at a dealer. So the buyer was quite pleased. Me too as it was a total bonus, and it would have taken time and effort to flog off those cards individually to highest bidders anyway. I had actual work to do instead

What was interesting was that some cards were still good (dual lands and such), while some which used to be valuable was next to worthless. On the flip side others which kind of smurfed before didn't smurf anymore and was now worth a lot. I guess new cards added since then, or changing rules, caused those changes.

[Mercury]

According to some list price the card would have been almost the double at a dealer. So the buyer was quite pleased. Me too as it was a total bonus, and it would have taken time and effort to flog off those cards individually to highest bidders anyway. I had actual work to do instead

What was interesting was that some cards were still good (dual lands and such), while some which used to be valuable was next to worthless. On the flip side others which kind of smurfed before didn't smurf anymore and was now worth a lot. I guess new cards added since then, or changing rules, caused those changes.

The secondary market for Magic cards is a temperamental beast.  Card values fluctuate based on several factors, the first and foremost(at least for modern cards) being how much play they seen in popular formats.  Cards like "Karn Liberated" and "Ugin, the Spirit Dragon" are both mythic rares that see play in a very popular deck in Modern, but they also see play in EDH so they hold their $50 plus price tag. 

Cards like "Bazaar of Baghdad" see very little play in anything but vintage, but they're rare so they are stupid expensive.  Like around $1,000 per card. 

Dual lands are and forever will be expensive.  They will never be reprinted(at least not by name, they're on the reserved list) and they are incredibly good  for any deck in their colors.  If you have any, hang on to them!

I have my collection entered into my profile on tappedout.net, in the form of deck lists.  I track my values and always have my cards sleeved, regardless of whether or not they are in a deck.  One thing I really love about this game is that if I ever came upon hard times, I could sell all these cards and survive!

[Chako]

My good friends who own a computer shop here got into Magic the Gathering big time. They are now the only place that does tournaments, etc. I must say, she spends a lot of time sorting boxes and boxes of cards, etc.

[Mercury]

My good friends who own a computer shop here got into Magic the Gathering big time. They are now the only place that does tournaments, etc. I must say, she spends a lot of time sorting boxes and boxes of cards, etc.

Yep, it's time consuming.  My collection is only around 6 or 7 thousand cards, and most of that is bulk that isn't worth anything.  My constructed decks are where all the money is.   I have between 12 and 16 decks built at any given time, depending on what I'm running in each deck some might be partially disassembled temporarily.  Just building a new deck takes hours of research and play-testing.  I'm fortunate that I got well organized about a year ago, so I don't spend all that much time sorting.

My wife on the other hand, devotes about an hour a week on Magic, and that is usually when she is playing against me.  We are getting a dog soon so we are having to pick up all our cards and place them higher up in the house.  Poor wifey just spent 3 days straight organizing her cards because she just had random stacks and boxes full, but no organization.