HeroQuest is Silly | A lighthearted Look at 10 Little Details that Make a HeroQuest Fan Smile 

Like he heard the heroes trudging down the corridor and just had time to stuff it in his shoe. Either that or he was in the process of creating a makeshift weapon.

You would think if you were going to become a professional adventurer, you would at least learn how to swing a short sword.

​@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Dors it even make a difference to the wearer if you stab with a dagger or with a short sword? Its not "fighting" at all. Imagine how a fighter would professionally fight with a dagger whereas a mage would just try to stab with it because that is how mages fight. To reflect this in the game each weapon simply should be less effective in the hands of the mage. And probably more effective in the hands of the Barbarian then stated on the card. But then we are of course in the realm of homebrewing more complex rules ...

Roll to move is something I have discussed in other videos when I was specifically talking about rules that people don't like, which wasn't the direction I was going for this particular video. I don't find roll and move silly or amusing, and I actually think it's necessary inside of combat situations for this game (although outside of combat I used unthreatened movement). And drinking potions when you are dead isn't a think in the 1989 and 1990 European editions. You just straight up die if you run out of body points. The barbarian is from a North tribe and probably made his own sword, just as he made his own clothes. It makes sense for the warrior to have the chonky sword. The funniest thing about the genie for me is that it's stupidly strong, but when you use it, if you want to, you can just ask him to be a manservant and get the door for you.

I've recently played through hero quest with my dad for a nostalgia trip (now on Kellers keep) and using the companion app so he can be some heroes too and its much harder and better with multi wound enemies. But as such I've found the genie to be a real let down, they almost always whiff their rolls and maybe take 1 wound, 2 max. Maybe I should start just having them get the door! 😂

Phenomenal cosmic power... mind your step, Sir.

roll to move is one of the most basic parts of a board game. yes, there are prominent exceptions to this basic "rule" fixed (per piece) movement in chess or variable movement in checkers, candy land has you draw cards to move, and in "the Game of Life" you spin a wheel. a lot of kid games you flick a spinner to pick your number. the barbarian spending all of his money on a nice sword makes sense to me. there werewolf you speak of appeared in 1992 (which had a tile and also the plastic giant wolf figure). genies come out of bottles/lamps. the last minute heal saving thing was introduced in the North American rules (1990) and is equivalent to similar concepts in video games. it's all a matter of perspective. the whole game is "silly" but it's fun and memorable, so it lives on...!

But in Europe we had to wait until 2023 and a new edition of the game to get a werewolf, which I believe is what ThatAnimeSnob was referring to.

That's a lot of HeroQuest to get through. You have hours of fun ahead. I hope you and your group really enjoy it.

We need some "moss," "dead rat," "bones," and "pebbles" cards to add to the deck.

Obviously you haven't been to realistic dungeons. They aren't beneath castles, they are the city's underbelly. Atlanta, Miami, Durham, New York, Charlotte, etc.... all dungeons filled with monsters of different sorts. Hard drugs turn people into zombies. Starvation turns people into skeletons. Warlocks are politician oath breakers. Cultists are statist dragon worshippers.

Ha. That's brilliant. But now I want a real troll hero character. I always enjoyed being the troll in Talisman.

The furniture is awesome. It's table presence has always been one of those things that made HeroQuest stand out. There's a reason so many big dungeon crawler includes furniture these days!

Being able to pass through walls is definitely situational, but can be very helpful. In my last Mage of the Mirror playthrough, having the cloak that allowed the elf to pass through a wall saved his life and turned around what would have been a very short (bloody and painful) playthrough.

I found the spell very useful when I played Rescue Ragnar quest for the first time! The dwarf vibrated through the wall right onto Ragnar's cell and was able to pincer attack the guarding orc and abomination/fimir with barbarian entering via regular means. Great fun.

Thanks, I'm glad you found it fun. I know it's a bit of a silly video, but I like to find new ways to look at games, and this felt like a refreshing change as I tend to get a bit misty eyed about classic HeroQuest! I know what you mean about the abominations. They are the literal example of fish out of water. They have a very strong B-movie vibe that I find very funny. They are like something out of Zaat!

Seeing a lot of love for the "nothing" card in the comments. Quite rightly so.

That makes a lot of sense. Zargon is definitely the Big Brother sort.

The art on the nothing card is great.

Yeah, HeroQuest is a true classic, and Avalon Hill have done a great job with the new edition.

I can definitely look at doing something similar for Space Crusade.

Orcs and goblins never struck me as the types to organise their weapons in racks.

Yeah, the NA treasure deck had a completely different composition to the European one, and unfortunately that means no Nothing card in Hasbro's new edition either. I hope they add one in an expansion eventually.

Thanks for watching.

The adventurers should just wait by the door until the monster have smoked themselves out.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Ohh! Maybe it was an abandened dwarf strong hold! They would have hidden the smoke output.

I wonder if it was deemed too uninteresting to have a card that doesn't lead to some kind of event or prize. I like the fact that not every search will turn up a treasure, a trap, or a monster.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring You are probably right, but I agree with you, I like having not every search end with “something.”

Exactly. I think the occasional "nothing" adds to the atmosphere. It's like finding an empty corridor in Advanced Heroquest.

It's fascinating how different the original European release was compared to the NA version. Both have their good points, and I'm glad that Hasbro have taken some of the ideas from each of them for the new version.

There is a lot of love for the nothing card here in the comments. I would love to see Avalon Hill introduce it at some point.

Agrax is liquid talent.

Ha. Yes. I have visions of them knowing which slabs to avoid standing on and gingerly tiptoeing around them in the middle of a battle. Surely a giveaway for the heroes who are watching!

The orcs need to start carrying can openers. I think the champion status was too easy to gain, really. Over the 14-quest core campaign, you could die three times and still end up with a champion by the time the campaign ended. It's definitely a concept that they could have done a lot more with. I think it would have been a great addition.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I see you played rather differently from us. We usually split up and went whatever way, all hoping to 'win' over the others. The attrition rate on heroes were quite a bit higher than when you act as a team.😄

@@EriktheRed2023 Nah. I’ve talked in many videos about how the Euro version of the game was designed to be more competitive with heroes even casting spells on each other. That’s why the monsters are so squishy, they are more like speed bumps during a race. We always used to compete for loot and glory but death was rarely a concern.

It isn't the greatest icon ever devised. Probably one of the most memorable though... so, maybe it is the greatest..?

That's not a closet, that's a time capsule. That's such a cool collection of stuff. I sold all of my stuff like Masters of the Universe and my Falcon a long time ago, and sometimes I get a little twinge of regret. But then I think to myself, "what would I do with it if I still had it?" It would definitely be stuck in the attic.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring That's exactly what I think when I see youtube videos of people restoring vintage Falcons or Killer Whales and lovingly displaying all that stuff. Mine just sits in boxes decaying and I really don't have a desire to to restore the stuff and show it off. I have plenty of things to work on and display already. Even the Masters stuff, which is super cool, would be much better cared for in some collectors hands. As far as HQ, and Battlemasters, which I forgot is there too, it's mostly the box size and storing them that keeps me from moving them to my place. It also gives me something to look at when I visit. Maybe I'll be snowed in up there one Christmas.

I like to think that my Masters of the Universe toys either ended up with a really excited kid who played with them until they fell to pieces, or a collector who has preserved them lovingly. Either way, they would have had a better life than I would have given them! With Battlemasters, you could always just throw a mattress on it and keep it as a bed in the guest room. I've thought numerous times about picking up a copy from eBay because I think my kids would adore it, but it really is a ridiculous space hog for what the game is.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring It's not that much larger than heroquest. It's just a real crush concern without building some corner upports and keeping it on top of a stack of other games. I do have a box of about 30 of the newish Star Wars Retro Collection reissue figures of the SW, Empire, and just released Return dudes. Plus the first two bounty hunter sets from amazon, and the figures from the two boardgames stored on their cards for display at some point. The plastic boxes I got to protect each sealed figure ran $150.00 for 50 of them....

Really? I haven't seen a copy of Battlemasters in real life for a very long time, but I remember it being much wider and longer. Maybe I was just a lot smaller then...

That's actually pretty funny. Your hero loses a body part every time they are injured. God knows what they are cutting off the barbarian to get to 8, though!

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring or what's lacking on the poor wizard..! If you count each leg and arm as 1, does that make him headless??

That would explain his forgetfulness.

Or the wizard

That was definitely an issue in the original 1989 game, but MB did recognise that and when they made some revisions for the 1990 second printing of the European version of the game they added a Cloak of Protection and Bracers, both of which could only be purchased by the wizard.

Well, he could still the Quarterstaff, Tool Kit, and some extra Daggers for throwing. Yes, that is 350 gold, but those 25 gp daggers add-up! Unless, you are playing the UK version, in which case he can buy the Quarterstaff, Tool Kit, Bracers and Cloak of Protection, for a total of 900 gp. Although, the neat part about the UK rules is that stocks were limited and the Wizard could buy-up the most coveted items and sell them to fellow heroes for profit or favor. Damn game was really cut-throat!

However, the bracers and the cloak of protection didn't exist until 1990. They weren't in the 1989 edition. Also, while equipment was limited by the number of cards, that was only the case until the Adventure Design Kit was released, when that ruling was changed. Which is a shame, because withholding items was always a fun thing to do.

Someone else said it's a topknot, which makes it even funnier!

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring To cramp for me to see the top not. I tried to think maybe its a couple of cupcakes but they are not shaped right. Maybe a Fez but there are two of them.

4 - it’s a fez!

Need to petition Avalon Hill to add it in an expansion pack. Maybe a cheese wheel, too. I feel heroes should always have the chance to find a cheese wheel.

Ha. Yeah. The barbarian squeezing into Borin's Armour during our quest was quite a mental picture. I imagine the alchemist in Kellar's Keep being like the shopkeeper in Resident Evil 4, randomly turning up in a long coat in the most ridiculous situations to make a fast buck. And absolutely - I'm only poking fun at the game because I love it so much. Every game has silly things, but few of those games are important enough for me to spend much time thinking about what those silly things are, let alone making a video about them.

realism and convenience = silliness, basically. they don't say that borin's armor's magical power allows it to be adjustable. we could imagine that the two characters aren't that different in size, despite the exaggerated artwork (the Barbarian is a giant while the dwarf is knee-high to a grasshopper). you guys are inspiring me to do my own video!

You do know we're just playing around here and having fun here, right?

I always assumed that there was a travelling merchant who the heroes could buy goods from, even in remote locations (just like the Resident Evil 4 video game).

@@Rocket1377 Resident Evil 4 is my go-to explanation for any time heroes have access to shops in weird locations. That guy was hilarious.

Yeah, that advert was amazing. The kids clearly didn't really know how the game worked.

Christopher Lee did the voice over for that advert, didn't he? Awesome stuff.

@@Rocket1377 That's one of those things I've never seen officially confirmed. It sure sounds like him, and everybody always says it's him, but I've never seen anything official to say so. Christopher Lee was (is) a legend, and would have a go at pretty much anything, so it's definitely possible.

I don't think the idea of champions was really a gameplay element in the NA rules. There's a throwaway line in the introduction of the quest book that says if you complete the whole campaign you will be acclaimed as champions of the realm, but it's arguably just fluff as I don't believe it's ever reiterated what that means in the rules, and I don't believe that title is ever used for any purpose. To the best of my knowledge it isn't required to hire mercs in The Frozen Horror, for example. In the Euro expansion Wizards of Morcar it does indeed say that the mercs will work for a great champion as long as they get paid. I don't think that was necessarily what they were thinking when they first introduced the champion rule as Wizards was four expansions after the core set came out. It was possibly an attempt to give the title a purpose, but after so long since the core adventure it could also just be argued as fluffy rules language. After all, if you have churned through the core game, Kellar's Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, and Against the Ogre Horde, you are going to be considered a champion regardless. The problem with The Fire Mage is that he is in a dungeon filled with enemies that aren't immune to fire magic and the wizard loses a lot of his combat potency. Plus, you lose the courage spell. I've never actually bothered to play The Dark Company. I didn't have it as a kid, and while I have all the rules and the mission downloaded, I've never got around to it.

I actually just went back and checked the Wizards of Morcar rules and they do capitalise the word "Champion" when talking about the mercs, which does lend weight to the idea you need that title to recruit them. That's a good catch. But having said that, it's not really an issue. The only way to lose the title is to steal Prince Magnus's gold (as far as I recall), and even then there are easy ways around it such as having one hero steal all the gold so the other three can become champions, or "retiring" the naughty heroes, but having them pass all of their equipment to their suspiciously similar replacements. Those replacements only need to complete three missions to get their champion status. But of course, now I'm being purposefully silly, and in reality I would just rule that by the time they reach Wizards of Morcar the heroes have done enough good to expunge any misdemeanours. And anyway, if a hero died during Wizards of Morcar, I would still allow the replacement to hire mercs anyway. I'm a nice Morcar. I must say, I do really like the fact they added a moral choice for the heroes - steal the money or become champions. It's just a shame they didn't do more with it, and they removed that element from the NA version completely and just wouldn't allow the heroes to do the bad thing.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring First I must say I am not so familiar with the lore (I wasn't so lucky to play this game back in the days. I just got my hands recently on it. Still I bought all 1989 versions (base, kellars keep, return of the witch lord, Against the ogre hord and the wizard of Morcar, Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror are insane expensive ;_; ). I am happy, when my players have fun. When we first tried the Master Edition everyone started a new character and the mage player rightfully complained this was madness. Special rules and the problem of having a huge dungeon with respawning monsters makes this quest impossible with normal rules. Even with 1 body point for the creatures. The Problem with characters dying in the sense of real loss, you have to sort of repeat the former missions. Certain equip is essential in terms of beating the expansions etc. Maybe a really good Team could sort of manage Kellars keep, because the main goal can be achieved by ignoring rooms unless you have to. Fun fact at the end. I smile, when my heroes are having several weapons and other stuff with them. The rules allow for access and switching immediately to another "weapon set". It is stupid, but funny.

I'm sure you're already aware, but do note that Wizards of Morcar and Against the Ogre Horde were designed for the European rules set, while Mage of the Mirror and Frozen Horror were designed for the North American rules set, so whichever rules you use, you will have to do some customisation work to use all those expansions (or use some of the custom conversions other people have come up with). Do remember that as long as the monsters don't nick a dead heroes stuff, another hero can pick it up, so as long as you don't have a total party kill you should be able to save any equipment that's rarer (note that this was not clarified in the 1989 UK rules but was in the revised UK rules of the 1990 edition). If the heroes lose quest items like the spirit blade, the Morcar/Zargon player should seed those treasures into the mission so when the heroes attempt it again they can find them. This was clarified in the 1989 North American rules set, and is necessary to ensure the heroes can complete the core game should they lose essential items. In my video on different HeroQuest rules I talk about the heroes being able to swap their weapon loadouts at any time. Lots of people have come up with different houserules about that. I allow my heroes to carry whatever they want, and they can change their weapon loadout on their turn for a free action, but once they have made an attack with a particular weapon, they are not allowed to change that weapon until their following turn.

HeroQuest is superb. My number 5 game of all time. Zargon was the American name for the villain. In the UK he was called Morcar and as I was talking about the original UK edition I used the Morcar name.

I think only being able to use spells once is an important part of the game - it's a small resource management element and gives you just a little bit more to think about. It also becomes less of an issue once you get artefacts that let you reuse spells and the spell scrolls that act as additional copies of the spells. I use the unthreatened movement rule from Avalon Hill, which means rolling for movement when there are monsters around to help simulate the chaos of combat, but having a fixed movement of 4 spaces per dice you normally roll when there are no monsters around. I find that works really well.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I like that movement rule, might try that. With the spell thing this is what I use the mind points for. Each time you cast a spell you roll a number of hit dice, each skull loses a mind point. Get to zero and your mind collapses. The scrolls give you free casts.

@@ftumptch86 That’s a neat idea.

Yes. Some more than others, with Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord adding the least and Mage of the Mirror and Frozen Horror adding the most. I've covered the expansions in depth on the channel so you can see exactly what each one adds.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring thanks will check em out. Just purchased a complete US 1990 version (to go with my UK 1990 box set). Looking forward to trialling the US rule set. Haven’t dabbled in sourcing the original expansions… 💵

Have fun. Despite growing up with the European rules, I do much prefer the US rules now.

There's nothing wrong with being silly, despite what my kids say about me.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring im 44!!!!!!!

So am I in a couple of months.

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring have kids?

Thanks, I'm glad you thought so.

By Imperial decree, all fireplaces must have the Emperors face on it.

Unfortunately. I do miss the nothing card.

Ha. It's a recipe for success.

Ha. Yeah. There was no "nothing" card in the original NA edition, so Hasbro didn't incorporate it into the new edition. Maybe one day...