Heroscape Game Night 
My family is very into cooperative games. Our two all time favorites are Lord of the Rings and Escape from the Death Star. I was very excited to see that someone had made cooperative rules for the miniatures game Heroscape. I've had Heroscape for over a year now but we just played our first games this week. First Casandra and I played against each other in the introductory scenario of the Master Set.
For our second game I used the excellent Heroscape Automated Battle Rules to have Casandra and I play together against the automated opponent. We played the defenders in the Defend the Breach scenario. Our teams were Me with Syvarris (100 points, double ranged attack) and Raelin (80 points, defensive aura) and Casandra with Dund (110 point, crippling gaze) and Izumi Saurai (60 points, counter strike (great!)). Our opponents were Enemy 1 with Deathwalker 9000 (140 points, explosion attack) and Zettian Guards (70 points, extra attack targeting) and Enemy 2 with Brunak (110 points, blood hungry attack) and Ne-Gok-Sa (90 points, mind shackle) and Marro Warriors (50 points, water clone). The scenario called for us to stop the enemy from getting all the way to our side of the board for 8 rounds.
The game opened with the enemies have some bad luck with the random movement rolls. They were set to sweep across the board but ended up moving sideways or backwards for the first few rounds. Meanwhile Syvarris, my elf sniper with 9 range and double attack, took the highest ground on our side of the battlefield with Raelin behind him to improve his horrible 2 defense. All of Casandra's figures has range 1 so they hid behind to ruins of the shattered wall while the enemy came closer. In round 4 there was finally action as the enemy ranged attacks started coming while my Elf attacked back. There were very few casualties by Round 8 so we won the scenario. We kept playing to see what would happen and it ended up very close. By round 12 each side had three figures left and then in round 13 it was just me with Syvarris and one life left against the nearly indestructible DeathWalker 9000 with it's one life. It got the initiative and killed me - but our reinforcements were right there to clean up.
We had a great time. We can mix up the teams and play that scenario a lot. I would change the rules to have it so the figures are always moving forward - it really doesn't make sense any other way for this scenario. The automatic rules are excellent and we had a really great time playing together for a change.
