I still have my original version! I hate the fact that one of the largest toy companies in the world decided that they needed a crowd funding campaign for a board game. And it’s ridiculously expensive!!
Yeah, because it would've made perfect sense to try and spend the resources to resurrect a dead game for a generation that likely knew nothing about it, and try to rely on some magical rush of newcomers to make their money back...oh, wait...
The one thing you had to learn about the board game sphere is that a LOT of companies use Kickstarter as a platform for pre-orders, rather than an actual crowdfunding platform.
I still remember my brother rage-quitting playing the game with me over the definition of the word 'adjacent' because I wouldn't let him attack diagonally with a broadsword. I even showed him in the rules what weapons allow diagonal attacks and offered to let him go back and redo his movement, but he just stormed off even though he knew he was wrong. I was like 8 or 9 and he was like 16 or 17 at the time lol
it happens! try giving it a fresh start. what teenager wants to be corrected by a little kid, especially their own sibling? ;) I learned the definition of "adjacent" from HeroQuest!
If you are on one square, there's 8 adjacent squares around you. Sorry, but the confusing and ambiguous bit about this is the HQ rules, not the meaning of the word in reality.
@@needfoolthings lol that was actually part of the problem. I even said to him, "Look, I know what the word 'adjacent' means, but in the context of this game it means something else." He just literally had an autistic meltdown over it. I think the same thing happened in Monopoly a couple years earlier when I sent him to Jail and told him he didn't get to collect $200 for passing 'Go' because you don't pass 'Go' when you go to jail. He used to punch me in the arm really hard when I would destroy him in Mutant League Football for "Not playing like a real team." He was like 20 at the time and I was 12.
Very much the same for me, it's absolutely one of those videos that I never fail to watch when it pops up on my feed. I hadn't gotten around to checking out that upload, yet, but I've very much meant to.
16:00 As a freelance illustrator who has done a dreadful amount of (at my request) uncredited redrawing jobs, I can attest that it is one of the most dreadful jobs you can ask for in the illustration industry. The only job I've done that I hated more was a job I did where I went in and effectively shopped someone else's drawings to make them "sexier".
I found it very boring as the GM. Especially when my players figured out the breach and clear method of barbarian in front, and everyone conga-lining behind and blocking a doorway. Every dungeon became easy mode.
If you want a better D&D that focuses on roleplay, try Burning Wheel. If you want something that's a pure dungeon crawler like Hero Quest, try Torchbearer. D&D gets the most play, but it's kinda like the Monopoly of TTRPG's: everybody's heard of it, a lot of people have tried it, but it's a pretty weak example of the genre compared to a lot of the indie options.
The original version was £20, even allowing for inflation, the recentish availability of the game for £100 is tragically overpriced. At an 80's mass market board game price, it was a fantastic gateway drug into other fantasy tabletop games. It's NOT a game worth that kind of outlay. There's infintely better cheaper games and far better premium games at that price point.
Me, my brother and my Dad played the shit out of this when I was about 12. There was an Orc with a meat cleaver which my Dad used to call Dewhurst because that was the name of a local butchers 😅
Looking at the old HeroQuest models, you can see from the poses that they were designed by people used to pewter casting with all the raised arms and weapons as you see in every GW model of that era
The original dwarf was that pose on purpose. He was the iconic "White Dwarf" like the games Workshop magazine, that was their original iconic character and they still do Christmas and Halloween variants of the miniatures.
I’m curious to hear his full thoughts about it, because in his predictions video he got some things right such as the changed art style and female elf.
@@Ynffy wonder if he'll give a mention towards two more Hero Quest add on/expansion sets, Ogre Horde and the Elf Quest packs that appear not to be mentioned here.
If you want to fix bent miniatures without stressing them here's a tip: Get the mini, boil up a kettle, and run the hot water over the bent part. It should only take a few seconds to become very pliable and return to the shape it was cast in. If it does not return to the original shape then while it's still pliable hold it in the right shape and run it under cold water, this will prevent the whitening/stress.
Quick tip to fix bent plastic figure bits like weapons: Put some water in a bowl with ice, put some in a pot to boil. Once you have your boiling hot and ice cold water, using a tool of your choice, dip the figure in boiling water for a few seconds, no more than 10, then instantly into the ice water until it cools in a few seconds. It'll unbend itself to how it should be.
The best thing about having both a male and female Barbarian and Dwarf is that now you can let up to four players not be wizards or elves, but instead actually be the kind of tough front-line warrior that does better on this sort of adventure.
I do believe Games Workshop still holds the trademark or whatever for the Fimir, yes. They released a few resin miniatures for the "Fimirach" before the whole Age of Sigmar thing, and they did look like bigger, meaner versions of the HQ ones.
Yup, Fimir were invented by GW as a unique fantasy race specifically for Warhammer. From memory, they never really took off because the sculptors made the models too big (ogre-sized instead of human-sized as the designers intended), and it was just too expensive to collect a whole army of them.
@Eric M yea, a lot of original warhammer lore was spicy. While nothing like that ever truly bothers me I definitely thought it was always a bit toooooo far for a game trying to make money. Some things are changed for the better.
I work in a board games store and almost jumped out of the chair when i saw heroquest being listed. As a D&D nerd i absolutely love that this gets a new release
Still in the middle of watching but wanted to quickly mention that the "new" character sheets are the exact same ones we had in the original USA/Canada version of the game! :o
45:08 - clicked on this video expecting "Broad Sword" to be mentioned numerous times from quite early on. Cracked a beer and was going to drink every time it was mentioned. After about five minutes in I just gave up and starting drinking anyway. He knows people were waiting for that sound bite and left it until the end. The swine.
The soft plastic used for the pieces is very much like the soft plastic used in Reaper's Bones lineup. What I have learned working with those miniatures is that if you want to bend something without screwing it up (or unbending something, more commonly) what you could do is heat up some water (you don't need to get it to boiling, pretty hot is usually good enough) and dip the part you want to work on in the water, remove from water after a short time (duration depends on thickness of plastic you're trying to work with) and then bend whichever way you want. After cooling, it tends to hold. Just don't leave it in too long. There is such a thing as too soft, like when you leave indentations on where you grab it.
What I bloody love about this video is the chocolate coloured, velvet couch he’s set everything up on😂 Proper OG RU-vidr😆 Takes me right back to the 80s! Love it👌🏻
The Fimir are indeed an old Warhammer thing that they've more recently brought back to life in the 4th edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I've never entirely understood why they've been able to claim them as a Warhammer copyrighted thing when they're based on the Fomorians of Irish mythology, if I'm remembering the story correctly
Because it's in the name, that's why. It's also the reason GW renamed a whole bunch of races when they scrapped Warhammer Fantasy Battles for Age of Sigmar. Instead of Dwarves it's Duardin, instead of Orcs it's Orruks etc. You can't copyright concepts or traits, but you can copyright names.
@@zebn2253 I'm not brushed up on Irish mythology, but there was a rather distressing aspect to GW's Fimir that would make Hasbro want to give them a wide berth today. I won't go into detail, but it involved kidnapping human women.
The old Dwarf is from the cover of the GW magazines, in the upper left corner it would have him just standing there exactly like that. I always thought it was odd that GW put one of their most iconic characters at the time on a game that didn't 100% own.
The Fimir were GW's own design of monster, hence their omission from this version. The metal ones you could buy (and I did :P ) were made giant sized, apparently due to a miscommunication between the designers and the sculptors. Pics featuring Fimir showed them as man sized, like the ones on the game.
Fascinating idea the Fimir, based off Irish legends, kinda morphed into amazonian kidnapping beasts that... Ummm 🤔 had uncosenting relationships with the men. More thought went into them then a lot of fantasy beasts of the era
There is a site that lists the story of how GW created them. It describes them as a PR disaster waiting to happen! TBH, I used them in my D&D campaign for years - I just changed it so they laid eggs :p
Wonderful review. It really was a special game for me. My first adventure leading to Space Crusade, various Role Playing games and eventually, 40K. And thank you for mentioning the Bard and listing the link in your description. Nice work!
As someone with no nostalgia for the original, the new version looks like an across-the-board improvement. I love Warhammer stuff but I like that this is more its own thing now, more in line with D&D but still distinct.
I've played the original when I was young and I liked the designs. However, I actually prefer all of the new designs with this version. The only one thing I can agree on is that the mummy doesn't look as bulky and powerful as the old one, but that's really just a minor thing. I'm definitely going to look into picking up a set for myself when possible.
I have very fond memories of playing the original back in the day but I mostly like the redesigns with the exception of the skeletons and maybe the zombies. I wish the dwarf axe were 1/3 the size too.
The original designs had a Warhammer Fantasy air and indeed Advanced Heroquest made that more explicit. And GW did have at one point a spiritual successor of sorts that used the warhammer branding I think, but it was one of those "here one year and gone the next" games, like Bloodbowl and Gorkamorka.
The Wizard's fine... eventually. They get the most artifacts, giving them better defenses, weapons that can attack diagonally (though it's not as strong as the long sword that lets the others attack diagonally) and spell scrolls and magic rings that give them extra charges for their spells. But it takes several missions to accumulate the various artifacts a wizard needs to become fine. And with the fewest body points, and no armor until artifacts can be discovered for them, keeping the wizard ALIVE to get there can be difficult. Still, care and patience will serve the wizard well.
@@RoninCatholic Yep, it's even more so in D&D where starting wizards can barely do anything. The upside is that wizards power grows exponentially as they lvl up, which is why they can easily do game breaking shenanigans when they reached higher lvls. Fans made a tier list of how powerful/broken classes are, Wizards are tier 1 while fighters are tier 4 (I think barbarians are either tier 3 or 4).
@@SvengelskaBlondie Yes, presuming high level campaigns wizards in the long haul are the only class nearly as good as clerics and druids. Surpassing them in a couple areas, but lacking a few key tricks that you're only going to get out of the master healers. Clerics and druids also excel at low level play, though. Barely less physically tough than Fighters and Barbarians at the levels where that matters, barely if any less overpowered in their magical shenanigans at very high levels, and have access to HEALING SPELLS which D&D wizards are strangely and arbitrarily restricted from, which in turn helps bolster those other physical types during the time period where they're the ones that matter most. I've never actually seen a wizard above level 7 in person. Nor a paladin or ranger above level 8. Most campaigns I've been in have imploded after about three sessions, so even though we'd do super fast leveling (skipping experience point tallies and just making it one session = one adventure = one level up) we simply never ran into high levels. I still always liked wizards for reasons of style and flavor, despite mechanically underperforming to a ridiculous degree.
I loved HeroQuest as a kid. Me and my cousins used to come up with so many custom quests of our own, and countless days were spent playing this classic. I still have most of the original pieces, but they certainly show their age at this point, no matter how careful I've tried to be handling them. It makes me so happy that the game has resurfaced again, and seems to be doing great with all these expansions coming out. It'll take some time to get used to the name Zargon though, as well as the lack of Fimirs, which were my favorite monsters in the original game. Abominations do have a rather cool design though.
I paint miniatures, and occasionally take commissions, but if one of my clients asked me to paint this set up I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. It would take too much time cleaning the mould lines, correcting bent bases and weapons to warrant the time and effort. Avalon Hill should've gone hard plastic, especially for the price, which holds detail better and is easier to clean up. A no sale for this punter. Thanks for the review and comparison though, very much appreciated.
I have wanted a copy if HeroQuest for years now and the only reason that I haven't bought one is the absurd collectors price. So thanks for notifying me of the re-release. I just ordered it as a pre-release for January next year :D
So many hours playing this when I was young. That Character Sheet you showed with the Gold Coins, etc. was in the American version. That's the one I was used to seeing back when we bought this game brand new from Toys R Us. Wish I still had that bad boy...
I remember spending my saved christmas money on the adventure design kit without realising that it wasnt a stand alone game. I was devastated when i realised! But i did spend ages trying to design adventures for a game i didnt have until the next christmas my dad got me the actual game.
The American version had chaos spells, but they were rarely ever used (unless the DM went off-script). The character sheets with so much more on them were also in the American version. Very helpful back then for new players.
I had no clue the EU version had all the monsters at 1HP. That's so bizarre. I played HeroQuest about 500 times as a kid with my friend Gabe. When we were 11, we even started making our own quests and stuff. I didn't get into D&D until I was 13 but it felt so natural, so I never realized how much I had been indoctrinated by HeroQuest. The only thing they did was turn me into a nerd, really. Also, I'm going to have to disagree with you on all of the mini figures, haha. Even thought I have massive nostalgia for those little weirdos, I have to admit that every single one of the new ones is larger, better posed, has better detail, and simply have a far better design. The original seems childish and cartoony when you compare them and I would much rather have something scary and intimidating than cartoony.
Well the original HeroQuest was meant for kids to intoduce the to TTRPG, so that's why they were more childish and cartoony. I like the old ones better, exactly because they are more cartoony, but glad you like the new ones
@@g.alvarez3140 Yeah, it's one of those things where the new one looks how I imagined the old one did when I was a kid. FFVII Remake was able to do that same thing, for me.
Nobody is going to argue that the new ones have better detail. That is very obvious. But i'd say the only reason the old ones look a bit cartoony is because of the detail. They just had to make some things larger. The new ones completely left the realistic style and went over the top blizzard style. Not my thing at all.
I can't speak for the UK or other countries, but I'm from Spain and my old Hero Quest version (Spanish language, of course) has the USA rules and monsters with different "hit points"
I do like the old ones. The new ones are not more realistic than the old ones, simply just more "marvel-like action figures". It's only another type of exaggeration.
I googled this mid video because I thought it sounded cool and my nephews might like it and found two things: it is a lot more expensive than I thought ($125) and also Zargon has a Twitter
For the amount of miniatures in the box, it's not an unreasonable MSRP. It will probably go down in price availability when it is released. They always do.
If you want something along these lines at a more reasonable price point, I'd direct you to Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Then, if they liked that, you can drop the big boy bucks and pick up Gloomhaven. (Or Frosthaven, depending on when that comes out.)
I mean, it puzzles out to $3.60 per mini, so it's actually more than fair. Like, outside of Reaper Bones you can't buy miniatures that size for cheap. Most around that size are 7-10 USD. And it's a board game, so it comes with even more than just the miniatures. Honestly? I low key think the original when it was new was sold at a surprisingly low price. How do I know all this? Am just in the mini hobby.
I had just started high school when this came out. Funny enough, of all the supposed "family board games" out there, the only one our family ever played together was Hero Quest. Dad was always the DM, Mum the wizard, sister the elf, whilst I took on both the barbarian and dwarf...who always snuffed it, even when got him the "brode swode" (clearly, Gimli son of Gloin he was not!). I just got my copy of the reissue, and only regret I did not know about the kickstarter, as the Mythic Tier expansions for that look awesome. I do hope they come to retail! Also, I never saw the supposed prejudice against female players when I was younger, seeing as how my sister and I were both in a D&D group growing up, got our Mum to play Hero Quest; and heck, nearly half of my current gamer friends are women. Even my wife, who is NOT into Fantasy RPG at all, might be up for giving Hero Quest a go...just need to get the female barbarian for her to play! 😁
Okay, the modern version is actually truly amazing and worth the money :) I expected some easy cash grab based on nostalgia, but the final product is really good :)
The Mythic Tier came with an absolute crapload of stuff. It took quite a while to unbox, sort, etc everything. And they're apparently planning on coming out with more expansions. They already have a Knight character that should be available in a few days
Played the Amiga version of this game, used the pic of the board in the advertisements as a guidance to know where to go (in the game the map is not revealed until you go to a place for the first time).
The Amiga version also had this "great" feature where you could search a room multiple times. In the original game you either couldn't find anything or the GM straight told you that you can't do that (I forgot what it was). In the Amiga version you can search it as much as you like. You can't find anything after it was searched for the first time but you could trigger a bunch of random events, like missing the next turn or spawning a random mummy or skeleton behind you which immediately attacks you.
Re: The Poses If memory serves me right, the reason a lot of the minis in old Heroquest have that strange X-pose is down to manufacturing constraints. Basically, to get a miniature that both looked dynamic and could be cast as a single piece, sculptors had to put them in that X-Pose that is so prevalent among the Heroquest minis.
You're likely right about the art assets - I know at the very least the spell card back illustrations are by John blanche and all his work done during his tenure at GW remains in their possession.
Full marks on the Bard, everything else suffers a little in comparison. I don't think it's just that I'm an old curmudgeon who hates change - seeing them side by side I'm really starting to appreciate some of the design choices in the original miniatures. They obviously prioritised a certain easily identifiable silhouette, and giving the pieces appropriate heft and beefiness. I guess it's the old school Games Workshop style, but cleverly simplified down to something that works well in a board game and reads very clearly, but still has that classic look. Sure some of the poses are a bit simple and the detail could be improved but they really gave every piece a strong identity with bold, simple designs. Shame they don't have the likeness rights for anything, because I'd love to see essentially the same pieces in the classic style but with more detail, more poses, more options, maybe a nice paint job etc.
On the comparison of the minitures (especially the Gargoyle) you can see that even when the old ones look more basic on how they where sculpted, they have a lot more crisp details. For example the armour oft the Gargoyle or the sword is much more detailed. So yes, the new ones are more modern in the way they are designed, but they suffer from how production is done nowerdays with the cheap soft plastic that can'T hold as much details as hardplastic can. For example the face of the new Gargoyle look just awful in comparison to the details of the old one.
If the prices of old games has gone through the roof, I'm glad I re-bought most of my 1980s Traveller stuff back in the 1990s and 2000s.... not to mention Games Workshop pre-Warhammer games like Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Golden Heroes, MERP, Cosmic Encounter, original UK Call of Cthulhu etc... The Dr Who was component-heavy so I had to buy and combine two sets. Talisman 2nd edition was expensive though, even back then. Gary Chalk card (and board) artwork on that, too.
The only thing I know about HeroQuest is the unreleased NES game with a fantastic soundtrack written by Neil Baldwin. That being said, it's nice to see board games get "remastered", so to speak.
I remember we loved this game when i was a kid...playing it more times then i can count. I recently played the old HQ with my youngest son and the nostalgia came rushing back. I have to say i do love some the new models. But would i buy this one... i don't know, i miss the Fimirs and some of the enemies look a little weird. Thanks for this comparisson video, very clear and great review.
Ah, I remember playing HeroQuest and Basic Dungeons & Dragons in the early 2000s, because my dad owned them. They're both great, and I still wish I had access to it. Spells could actually be really useful, but you had to understand what situation each one was for.
I always loved how the Elf looked like Vigo the Carpathian. Fimirs were an old Warhammer monster, but GW has stepped away from them because their lore was all about R word. That dragon mini looks dope. Sadly, all the rest look way to D&D and not nearly HeroQuest enough. Very glad that Hasbro did this, since the fandom was basically rabid, but it's a bit bitter sweet.
It's interesting how Mummies have garnered this reputation in fantasy/supernatural media of being very tanky juggernauts who pack a wallop when in reality they're just very dusty preserved corpses.
Wow, you're not kidding about the EU version being "easier"...I played this a lot as a kid, and remember Chaos Warriors having 4 attack and defense, with 3 hp to boot.
Really excited for this to come in. Been wanting to play HeroQuest for a long time, and it's just..impossible to get the original complete for a good price. Everything new honestly looks great! Very different to get away from the Oldhammer stuff, and I get that a bit is a little overdesigned, but it's all pretty good. New Orcs look great and I do like the Dread Warriors and such. I will say though, as someone who does watch a fair bit of anime, the elf doesn't really feel as anime as you say, though she does stand out a little bit from the others. Oh, also! Around 45:57, that mini shown with the Bard, is that design not supposed to be Zargon/Morcar? It looks a lot like his art from the GM screen!
Having played Og Hero Quest as a kid, I'll still say visual improvements across the board, a lil paint will get the plastic furniture up to shape, even anime esque elf is good. Makes them feel ethereal or otherworldly as opposed to just snobby nosed folk with pointy ears. Rather I felt like each character was in a different art style, so still works. Didn't know they had remade this until I saw this. Very cool.
I don't mind the elf, but you're right it does stand out like crazy from how over designed she is. I genuinely hope they sell the stuff included from the Mythic Tier, some of those alternate minis are awesome today nothing on the 4 extra heroes. I'll always be happy I managed to grab a 99.9% complete set of the classic HeroQuest. The only thing missing is the two plastic beams that connect the two halves of the throne.
Nah I get what he means, the elf design is something I'd expect from a fantasy anime or Asian RPG. You could really just drop those designs into generic fantasy anime world and they wouldn't look out of place.
Yeah. I might not have a ton of nostalgia for old fantasy art, but there is a wonderful charm to it that just isn't in modern fantasy art. Like neither is inherently better than the other but there was just more character in the old art. Less polish making it more memorable I guess.
I still have my original American HeroQuest set x3...I bought 2 extra full sets from Toys R Us on Clearance for $10 each...I didn't keep the extra boxes though and just added the extra boards and miniatures to my one box set...and have 2 each of the more common expansion sets...got those for $5 each...
My brothers and I used to play games where the spells had to be acted out in real when cast. Nothing ever got clean again when somebody cast "Veil of Mist" with a handful of talcum powder.
Hero Quest is one of those games that I didn't get to play often but that I would very often pull out of the shelf to look at the models, design adventure maps, etc... For some reason the game had really stuck in my mind as a kid and it was only years later that I learned about Warhammer. My favorite model was definitely the chaos warrior and to this day I absolutely love the aesthetics of the Warhammer chaos warriors (none of that Age of Sigmar bullcrap). I never got to own the Space Hulk board game but the numerous ads for it in the comics I read made sure to make me lust after it very much.
I've got a complete set of the early version with darker figures from when it first came out here. The manual is english and we got a translated manual on laser printed paper. I really like the look of this new version. They did a nice job.
I was a military brat and moved around a lot and spent one Christmas staying with my grandparents between deployments when I was about 6. My dad had got this game for me and my brother, as it had just released, and we had never seen anything like it and were instantly enthralled by it, being avid fantasy game and movie lovers. We played it to death, had the Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch King expansions although there were more, including US exclusive ones that were character-centric we never got in the UK. Along with stuff like Space Crusade, Battlemasters, Dark World and a plethora of other tabletop-lite style RPG board games, we would mix and match the gaming pieces to create our own adventures. Better, carefree times to be sure.
Man!!!!! I had this for Christmas when it came out. I was 9 years old, my older brother was into D&D but my whole family used to sit down on Sunday nights and play this. Just looking at the box gives me shiver hahahaha.
Loved Heroquest as a kid, it was technically my brothers game even though I was the one that played it the most but my parents ended up selling it in a garage sale for probably a few bucks which really pissed me off. I'd probably buy a copy if it wasn't so expensive for a board game and if I knew my kids would actually be interested in playing it.
So cool that I came across this video. I grew up in the States and received Hero Quest when it first came out as a Christmas present. My brother and I played it non stop growing up. I actually still have my set, except the box is massively taped up after all these years. But I still have all the pieces.
I feel like jez Goodwin was probably involved with the artwork for heroquest since he basically designed the majors of Warhammer and I'm sure he's the guy who came up with the most popularly known iteration of space marines.