Age of Annihilation, Avalon Hill’s reboot of the classic 2004 HeroScape board game, could well get any number of weird and wonderful IP-crossover expansions, with DnD likely first in line, the publisher tells Wargamer – provided its Hasbro Pulse funding campaign gets off the ground.
Chris Nadeau, head of design and development at Avalon Hill, tells Wargamer HeroScape is “very scalable” in terms of potential expansions, particularly crossovers with other IPs.
Given Avalon Hill and Dungeons and Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast are both part of Hasbro (and the original 2004 HeroScape got D&D content), DnD seems a logical early expansion for Age of Annihilation.
“DnD is probably the easiest one to potentially bring in a future release for the game, but the sky is probably the limit”, says Nadeau.
“The beauty of HeroScape in particular is the lore is kind of a ‘kitchen sink’ narrative – that every warrior, creature, villain, monster across time and space is drawn to this planet to do battle,” he adds.
“It means that, going forward, we can probably introduce just about any IP into the universe of HeroScape, and strangely, from a lore standpoint, that makes a lot of sense.”
Nadeau points to the original HeroScape’s Marvel edition – in which “Marvel superheroes were actually converted into HeroScape characters” – to demonstrate how malleable the game is.
“We’re doing it across the the whole Hasbro portfolio,” he says, nodding to recent crossover releases like the MTG Warhammer 40k Universes Beyond decks.
“Even the toy brands love this idea of taking two different fan bases and bringing them together for a moment; there’s no reason to assume Avalon Hill wouldn’t consider those opportunities as well.”
But we shouldn’t expect any of these IP crossovers to arrive very soon, says Nadeau.
First, he says, “we want to get HeroScape, you know, up and running.”
Doing that requires Avalon Hill to hit its Hasbro Pulse funding target of 8000 pledges for the fully-loaded, $250 “Vanguard Edition” launch box (netting them approximately $2 million).
At press time – just over four weeks into the game’s six-week campaign, with 13 full days left for pledges – HeroScape: Age of Annihilation has 3,132 backers.