November 2 2020
Over the summer, I started working on an update to Heroes of the Heragul which factors in everything I’ve learned from running events and teaching players Legends of Kalidasia. By chance, this update ended up being completed by the end of 2020 and has a planned release not too far after the 10th anniversary of the game. Rise of the Surakari was released back in August of 2010, so labeling this update as the 10th anniversary edition just made sense.
Officially, this will be rules version 2.2.0. Therefore, it is not an entirely new game. In fact, most of Heroes of the Heragul still remains unchanged. Nearly everything that is part of the current starter set is still valid and compatible. My goal was to smooth out some of the most difficult parts of the game, make fighters play a more consistent role in battle, reduce the impact of “double strikes”, and clean up some of the tokens on the field. While exactly what has changed will be laid out a little later, lets take a quick overview at each of these points:
Since Heroes of the Heragul was released, the part of the game I struggled with the most was the movement rules. I wanted to create a unique experience for Kalidasia, but the system also had to be easy to grasp for new players. While I think created a cool system with the template based movements, it was really difficult for new players to figure out. Performing basic maneuvers was just as detailed and complex as crazy s-curves.
For the 10th anniversary edition, I created a new movement system that captures most of the tactics and flexibility of the template system, but it much simpler to execute.
These two items are related to each other as by changing one game mechanic affects the other. A double strike is where a warship would get the last move of a turn, inflict damage on a target, and then also get the first activation of the next turn. This allowed for two full attacks before retaliation, which in Heroes of the Heragul could be deadly. While this can possibly still happen, a change to sensor points makes it more of a risk.
There is no longer a sensor phase. Now, a warship only generates sensor points when it starts its activation. Therefore, if you want the two sensor points from the Virgo Missile Boat in your backfield, you will need to activate that warship before activating your front line ship. This will make the decision about which warship to activate first more difficult since the “obvious choice” no longer has the sensor points available to support all of its attacks.
How this cleans things up is that a warship tends to use most of its own sensor points in its own attack. Since sensor points are only getting placed at a rate that is slightly more than they are being used, there will be fewer tokens on the board to follow along with warship movement.
Fighters in Heroes of the Heragul had the potential to deliver to a critical strike during the battle, but often times, squadrons of fighters canceled each other out. This resulted them mostly having little impact on the warship combat. Now, after fighters are eliminated from the game, they have a decent change of being respawned into battle, but they can and only be spawned under certain placement conditions. This will create a mini-area of control aspect that can allow a players to truly gain fighter superiority over the enemy.
The new rules will be released for free in the near future. Shortly after that, it will be integrated into the various download codes that come with print copies of the game and with the digital version of the game over at Wargame Vault. Finally, a print version will replace the current rulebook available in the Heroes of the Heragul starter set. Check back with this site for when each of those events occur.
