Got a chance to play 4 games this weekend.  (yes we completely skipped a night of sleep)

Here are some thoughts and observations.

Our first game was 2500 points on a 6' x 3' table covered with Heroscape hexes.  ( and an absurd amount of terrain)

Waaay too many points for a first game, starting at 11pm.   

My opponent had a well crafted Dwarf army with 3 leaders, 2 infantry companies and 3 companies of crossbowman.

Opposing the stunties was an Orc horde. 3 Leaders, 2 shaman, a small company of bowman, 3 siege engines, a small skirmish company of spearmen, Footman and Boar riders.

The orcs won the intial cp roll, by a cruel miracle, and after deploying forces, raced archers and Boars to control  hills in the center of the board.

THe dwarves struggled mightily to get through the forest, reforming again and again, while the Orc siege engines suffered the same problem. (Move 1 is NOT an option any longer)

Racing to cut the dwarves in half the Orcs strung out their army, leaving units out of command range, but drawing first blood cutting down crossbowman with a devastating volley of arrows.

Subsequent turns resulted in a complete cp reversal, and the dwarves emerged from the rough in tight formation, shattering the orc bowmen, adn healing wounded crossbowmen.
Leading the charge were 3 summoned Iron Gollems. (300 pt monsters) ( with extend x2 for two turns with no upkeep)

Realizing the danger of these monstrosities, orc spearmen attacked the sumoner and then charged. Lasting a surpisingly long time, and making morale check after morale check while waiting for reinforcements.

As the reinforcements moved up, the dwarves supplimented their cp advantage magically, and decisively flanked the orc infantry.

A trio of Sumoned ogres reached the dwarves, and managed to tie up one of the Gollems, but by now three orc units were destroyed.

At this point the surviving orcs fled the field.

Our observations:  the spell summon can be vastly abusive. Our new rule is that each factor Summon gets a 100 point monster, so a summon x3 for 6 mp is needed for a 300 point monster. Also only one summoned creature per caster is now permitted.

Man are command points important.  I had 4d10, my opponent had 6d12. He also had 6d12 magic points and the command point spell.

Healing spells are probably too cheap. 2 mp +1mp per extra hit is much cheaper than strike ( 2mp for a d6 attack)

Overall the game system is as fun as we had hoped, but Missle attacks are very very kludgey.   Having 2-3 ranks, and different hit penalties for los made every ranged attack a lot more work.