HELLBOY WEEK - Heroscape Hellboy

A Brief History of Time - Followed by Heroscape

Before there was Tannhäuser, there was Heroscape. And before that, many others. I have been gaming and writing about games for years. Many, many years. After Candy Land and Uncle Wiggly came Green Ghost, Monopoly and Man From Uncle. Somewhere along the way my friends and I were making and playing our own games and then discovering Richthofen's War and later, Car Wars. Then came AD&D. That opened my eyes to roleplaying and I before I knew it I was refereeing Champions! and Call of Cthulhu campaigns. I wrote my own adventures and soon enough I was getting published in Space Gamer, Autoduel Quarterly and Different Worlds. I wrote a Car Wars adventure supplement. I painted armies for Warhammer 40K (1st Edition) and for the role-playing games I was running.

Along the way I graduated college, got married, and moved to Hollywood. Literally. A crappy apartment. Then came work and more work.

I stopped gaming for a long time. Then along came Magic: The Gathering. I played that a lot and bought a lot of cards. Star Trek and Star Wars followed. I bought a few packs of Mage Knight figures, but never played. Then HeroClix came out and I bought a bunch of it and played it a bunch of times. It was good, but not great. But I loved the figures.

Around the same time I got high speed internet. Somehow through search engines or just following links I discovered HeroScape. When I saw the custom 'Scape figures on the now defunct heroscape.net I really got interested. There was the famous Talos by Aratak and more importantly Aliens by Annerios. The Alien Warriors and Queen got me to see Heroscape's potential for expansion and that got my creative juices going. The more I read the more I knew I would buy it. The expandability and room for creative additions were calling me with their siren's song. There were characters (Savage Dragon) that I wanted to do for 'Clix, but doing custom dials seemed too hard. But just making a card for Heroscpe seemed easier.

I started making HeroScape customs before I had even bought the game. I knew I was going to buy in, but it was a bit pricey for me at the time. Then came the famous Toys R US Buy One Get One Free sale. I dove in; bought 2 Master Sets and a bunch of expansion packs. My kids were just old enough to play.

I continued with customs, and cranked out quite a few - even getting one in the Hall of Fame.

My history with customs for Hellboy and the BPRD goes back to 2003 when WizKids released the Indy HeroClix set that included Hellboy, Lobster Johnson, and Rasputin. I got the figures and after HeroScape came out I started thinking about how to make customs of them. I really wanted to do Abe and Liz.

I was looking around for suitable HeroClix to convert when I discovered the Gatcha vending machine figures supporting the first Hellboy movie. I used the Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman Gatcha figures and HeroClix for Hellboy, Lobster, and the Agents.









These early BPRD cards reflect the movie versions of the characters (especially Abe and Liz), while my later versions more closely represent the characters as portrayed in the Dark Horse comic books.

I added Rasputin, the mad monk. He keeps your team alive and himself, too. The figure is from Indy Heroclix and should run you several pennies plus a buck or two shipping.



Then in Spring 2007 WizKids released the Hellboy and the BPRD Action Pack for HeroClix.

This time I went all out and created a BPRD Box set that was featured in Issue 7 of the awesome Heroscape online magazine, The Codex.











Here are the Marvel Heroscape cards for the BPRD team. My earlier BPRD cards reflected the movie versions of the characters (especially Abe and Liz), while these more closely represent the characters as portrayed in the Dark Horse comic books.









And Hellboy as he was when summoned to Earth against his will. Imagine if Utgar would have would gotten ahold of the wee demon...



There you have it. Check out more of my HeroScape customs like Terminator, Aliens, Doc Savage and many others.



© 2008 W. Peter Miller


That this material is posted here for your own personal, non-commercial use. My custom additions to Heroscape are not created by, distributed, or endorsed by Hasbro. HEROSCAPE and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro. © 2006 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved.