Heroscape: Battle for the Wellspring review – Hours of fun that are nearly infinitely replayable

Heroscape: Battle for the Wellspring is the perfect entry point for those who are new to the game of Heroscape. Heroscape is a miniature game; this box supports 2 players. I played through a few scenarios once with my main gaming group and again with a few younger players. The game is fun, and this is the perfect introduction to Heroscape. The community provides tons of scenario ideas. With all that being said, Heroscape runs into some issues with the scenario book that really takes the steam out of the game.

Cracking Open the Box

Inside the box, you get: 

• 6 Highly-Detailed, Fully-Assembled Unpainted Miniatures
• 31 Hex Tile Terrain Pieces
• 2 Laur Jungle Trees
• 6 Combat Dice
• 1 20-sided die
• 8 Order Markers
• 15 Wound Markers
• 3 Black Powder Markers
• 1 Glyph
• 6 Army Cards
• 1 Rulebook
• 1 Scenario Guide

The miniatures are great! They hold up nicely and are fun to play with. I played a few rounds with younger kids, and they were dropped quite a few times and didn’t break or snap. The paint job is fantastic. I haven’t painted miniatures in a long time, so I was happy to see that they were painted nicely. There is no storage for them, though, and I did worry about the figures and the trees bending inside the box after constant play, though it hasn’t happened yet. 

The hex tiles are extremely cool. They snap in place easily enough and will hold up if you have to move everything around. You also get Wellspring Water, a new tile that is extremely pretty to look at. The tiles are super sturdy and are fun to play with. With the tiles included in the box, you can make a relatively big play space, but don’t expect it to be massive. The minis and the smaller tiles fit nicely onto the bigger pieces and make building your play area a breeze. You can stack tiles onto each other, too, to give you some elevation. The painting is nice for what it is and gets the detail across just fine. 

The trees included in the box are fantastic. The top of the tree is a separate piece that you have to clip on, and it's easy enough to take apart. If you’re using the box as storage, the trees become obnoxious because they can make packing the box a bit of a hassle if you didn’t pack them up correctly. But I love the way they look, the painting is awesome, and I will eventually buy more foliage because this adds another layer of depth to the playspace that I have become obsessed with. 

Scenarios and Rules

There are a few different scenarios in the booklet, and they’re alright. There are some issues with the instructions themselves, though. The first map has a few of the hex colors wrong, so I went and grabbed the updated PDF from Renegades' website. I like the way that the scenarios are laid out, but I wish something were done about the blank space. The book feels bigger and longer than it has to be because of the way the colored portions of the scenario book are laid out. 

Heroscape’s rules are super simple, but there are a lot of them. To keep it simple, your turn can be boiled down to three rules. First, choose an army card. Second, move the figures on your army card. Third, attack with figures on your army card. The rulebook further explains these steps expertly. I was able to teach a 9-year-old how to play this game with no issues. As for formatting, I love the way the rulebook is laid out. There are specific sections in yellow boxes that show you examples and break down the rules further. 

Final Thoughts 

Heroscape: Battle for the Wellspring is a fun introduction to the world of Heroscape and successfully got my group and me hooked. We had a lot of fun with the scenarios presented in the scenario booklet, but as it stands, I couldn’t bring myself to be interested in the world or lore. I don’t fault the game for that, though. I was just more interested in battling. The lack of quality assurance is obnoxious, though. The first time I opened the box, I was not somewhere with easy access to downloading the updated PDF, so we were left figuring it out on our own.