OK Starting the petition for the Dwarf equivalent Of the Frozen Horror and Mage in the mirror!! Three starting solo missions for the dwarf followed by 8 more group!! And lets have a dwarven rune caster character!! Whos with meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
I believe Avalon Hill have suggested they want to move away from quests geared around a particular hero, but I do think the dwarf and the wizard do deserve the same treatment as the barbarian and elf.
Honestly, I thought that's what they were going to do when I heard there were only 7 quests in this expansion (or in its original format). I thought, for sure, they could just add 3 solo quests for the Dwarf, then maybe some new Dwarf-centric mechanics. Then they could do much the same for "Wizards of Morcar" (which I'm still convinced will get a re-release) and the Wizard Hero!
I said numerous times in the past that Ogre Horde would have been the perfect opportunity for a "dwarf quest." The fact they didn't do it does make me think it might not be on the cards anymore. Wizards of Zargon is definitely going to happen though. I don't doubt that for a second.
It would be nice to have Artifacts tied to the Dwarf and Wizard, more so that raise their Body Points by 2 points and Mind by 1, like that Barbarian's Amulet of the North and the Elf's Elven Bracers. I would love to see a Dwarf Quest with a Dwarf's Forge piece and other things to enhance the game, along with Dwarf-centric content. I would also love to see a "Wizards of Zargon" set that not just brings Wizards of Morcar under the current NA-based rules, but would also enhance the Wizard as a Wizard Quest set. With only five Quests in WoM, I can see them adding whole new quests to prop-up the Wizard and expand on magical elements, such as more magic-based puzzles and traps.
I'll be honest. It wasn't until I was editing this video that I realised there were two different shield tiles! However, as you can mix and match models from both factions in your team when playing the standalone game there is every chance you could need both shield types in your force.
In terms of quests, Kellar's Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, and Prophecy of Telor are the stand-outs for me. In terms of new components and fun features, this is certainly one of the better ones.
when i was a kid me and my friend would draft armies and use the whole board as one big battlefield so i was playing this mode back in the day on a larger scale.
Nice. I reckon you could scale up the arena rules to work on larger maps and mazes. Someone in the comments mentioned capture the flag, which sounds like it could be fun.
There are a few interesting ideas in this expansion that I would like to see expanded on. Unfortunately - and this is something I touch on in tomorrow's video - Avalon Hill do seem to introduce cool ideas and then immediately drop them again. I hope that isn't the case.
While I know the rules are a little simple, I love them anyways. I see how some of the issues are handled in other games, but they would only congest gameplay and added unneeded complexity to the game. I have played simple Arena fights in HQ before, but they really added rules that really works. While I dont have AtOH yet, I have been trying out the rules out based on photos I found floating online and they are great. Its way too early for me to pickout houserules yet, but damn I want to added to it! Above all, I really like being able to make little teams of otherwise nameless monsters with their own names and backstory.
It's HeroQuest, the rules were never going to be really nuanced and in-depth. I think what they did works well though, and adds just enough to the basic combat framework to stop it from floating away. And it's good to see Avalon Hill flexing their creative muscles with something new like this.
Thank you for the Rules clarifications with the tournament. me and my group have been wanting to rule something like quick skirmish run on days when we have a few mins to kill during game day. I wonder if the next expanion will have more rules or another Skirmish type mode, I really hope the rumors for the Jungles of delthrak are true. The jungle themed adventure seems exciting. I wonder if they come out with jungles of delthrak what monster will we be facing, and if there will be any new artifacts or traps. I'm crossing my fingers for lizard or snakepeople. while I'm ranting, I'm also wondering when they will come out with wizards of morcar and how they will update the adventure. Crossing my fingers for the female wizard!! I've been on the hunt for her cards and minis for months
Yes. It's not amazing. But it's nice to see something new being done with the system, and they certainly did more than I thought they would with the concept.
I'm glad you enjoy the playthroughs. Unfortunately they take two to three days to shoot and edit so they really are very labour intensive and there are periods where it can be difficult to fit them into the schedule. I do have plans for more though, so watch this space.
I never knew how to give one quest item to another hero, it always felt like cheating to me, so I never did it. But now, I let the heroes battle it out, winner takes all items from the looser. That gave me the chance to get rid of the wizard I never liked anyway. Now my warlock has all the good stuff my wizard possessed and it feels fair as well😅.
Ha. Well, Avalon Hill have published the official ruling for passing around artefacts, but beating a hero to death and just taking them is certainly a definitive way of handling the situation!
So after finally getting my hands on this expansion and looking at the loose rules for the 'points system' I'm honestly a bit confused by how to determine a hero's strongest attack value. Most are straightforward, but take the Rogue or Monk for instance. The Rogue has skills that allow them to do multiple attacks. Do I count the total dice rolls per turn, or their base attack for a single attack that they do more than once? and the Monk has Elemental styles that makes enemies take damage over multiple turns or roll additional dice on unarmed attacks. Which value to I take? Regardless, the point system doesn't seem to help create balanced games either way because taking into account ONLY attack strength can lead to wildly different amounts of Body Points per side, especially when playing with monsters.
It's very loosey goosey, and I think at some point someone will come up with something more balanced. You literally just take the strength of your single most powerful attack - so that would be how many dice you roll for ONE instance of that attack. It doesn't take into account if you can do that attack twice, or what damage might be applied subsequently, or even if you might be able to boost the attack with a potion or something. It's the number of dice for the single attack.
It's just HeroQuest combat with the chance to pick up trophies and an I-go-u-go activation system, so I don't see why you couldn't use it on any map layout. I would still probably keep the overall arena relatively small though, as the focus is moved to fighting rather than exploration.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring with a bit of creativity, perhaps some kind of “capture the flag” scenario or other objective-based team game could be fun? Really appreciate this HQ content btw, awesome stuff!
I don't know if you remember me, but a year or two ago I would comment on pretty much every cursed city vid giving my take on what the hell ahppened, and arguing with you about how many of the soulblight releases were originally CC planned expansions. Years later I've only just seen the podcast with Peachy that confirmed my suspicions all along! It was just so obvious at the time. So sad how it turned out, the potential was sky high!
I remember when Peachy left GW he was on a podcast where he was complaining about cutting all the details off Citadel miniatures to paint them quickly and he made some comments about Cursed City. Some of them didn't completely align with what I have been told by other people working within GW, for which there are various possible reasons. I do think GW clearly intended to make expansions for the game and support it - which was always my belief - and they fouled it up on launch, but I maintain the expansions we finally got weren't the ones initially planned. I don't see they ever initially planned a single release for a board game that would include most of the named characters that would be the backbone of a brand new AoS army. That was a retcon. We will never know 100 percent for certain all the ins and outs that happened with Cursed City, but we do know GW's handling of everything hurt the brand. We just have to hope one day they make a new Quest product and they handle it a lot better. Considering how things are going over there, though... I'm not convinced.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Wait, you still deny that ‘Radukar the Beast’ was not a model originally designed to be part of a CC expansion? Why would they even call him Radukar and have him an evolved version of an apparently unrelated warhammer quest game character? They wouldn’t change the sculpt just to pretend he was meant to be for CC, the sculpt would have made a long time prior to release, and he shares features with base Radukar. There were models that were sculpted and named for CC before they had the production issues, and this has been confirmed by multiple sources after the fact. Which sources do you have that contradict/deny this? It was so obvious at the time as to be dumbfounding to me that anyone could possibly deny that these models were initially planned to be part of CC expansions. Peachy explicitly states this in a podcast. This is one of those ones where one person just sees something so clearly and obviously that anyone denying that something is genuinely confusing. I don’t see how there could be an argument for named characters that fit the narrative of the game so perfectly could ever not be pre planned release for it? 2 vampire hunters dressed like CC Jelsen, randomly for Cities of Sigmar, alongside a handful of named vampire characters and the very man himself, Radukar, in a literal final boss version, wasn’t initially planned as … the final boss!?! I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from here or what the angle/implication is but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. I’d love to hear about the other sources though!
Honestly, I had this discussion to death years ago and covered it all at the time as it unfolded. I am certain I talked to numerous people about Peachy's comments when he left GW as well. Clearly expansions were planned - we knew this from how they promoted the game - and we knew they backpedaled frantically when they fouled it all up. All I maintain is the final form of the expansions is not what they initially intended. One of those expansions had something like four big named characters, all for use in a new army release. It's not how they approach the release of named heroes like that.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Ah, now that is a more nuanced view that you’re proposing there. I did go back and read some of the comments from back then and it was clear to me that the argument was definitely about whether or not a number of releases that came out with the Soulblight Gravelords were initially designed to be expansions for CC, and work with the army after they had initially been released for CC. I would agree, the pitiful expansions that were eventually dribbled out were almost certainly not the original plan, but rather an improvisation made after having already released the models in AoS. Perhaps the size and ambition for these expansions was such that some of the arguments made against this would have been answered (maybe they planned on releasing new tiles that made more sense of the larger bases?) I guess we may never know. But when the models were first unveiled, the initial reaction of ‘those look like scrapped CC expansions’, seem to be vindicated at this point.
Can't find an answer to this question anywhere.... So in the arena mode when there's only one player left... They get an additional attack or movement after every player on the opposing team's turn... Now how does that work in combination with the dual attack with heroic Brew rogue in war bear? So here's the scenario... In the arena there is one champion ogre... Warrior attacks ogre ogre attacks back... Now the next surviving hero takes a turn.... Ogre attacks warrior again.... Does the warrior get defense dice for this second attack?
It's a separate attack on a different hero's turn, so you would get to defend. If a hero faces more than one attack from a monster at the same time (Polar War Bear, for example) they can only defend against one of those attacks. If that same monster attacks later, after another hero has activated, the target would get one defence roll as normal because that attack was not made at the same time.
I know what you mean, but I think they wanted to preserve the original Ogre Horde quest line as it was originally presented, so rather than crowbar in three new full missions, they made this sort of mini-game prequel which effectively serves as three new missions. That way, if you don't like the skirmish mode, you can skip it completely without it impacting on the "real" quest line. Personally I think it's fun to see them trying new things and being a bit more creative.
The ongoing shade against the Orc Bard though 😂😂😂
I recommend not selecting him for your team. Just in case he gets hurt. You wouldn't want him to get hurt.
OK Starting the petition for the Dwarf equivalent Of the Frozen Horror and Mage in the mirror!! Three starting solo missions for the dwarf followed by 8 more group!! And lets have a dwarven rune caster character!! Whos with meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
I believe Avalon Hill have suggested they want to move away from quests geared around a particular hero, but I do think the dwarf and the wizard do deserve the same treatment as the barbarian and elf.
Honestly, I thought that's what they were going to do when I heard there were only 7 quests in this expansion (or in its original format). I thought, for sure, they could just add 3 solo quests for the Dwarf, then maybe some new Dwarf-centric mechanics.
Then they could do much the same for "Wizards of Morcar" (which I'm still convinced will get a re-release) and the Wizard Hero!
I said numerous times in the past that Ogre Horde would have been the perfect opportunity for a "dwarf quest." The fact they didn't do it does make me think it might not be on the cards anymore. Wizards of Zargon is definitely going to happen though. I don't doubt that for a second.
It would be nice to have Artifacts tied to the Dwarf and Wizard, more so that raise their Body Points by 2 points and Mind by 1, like that Barbarian's Amulet of the North and the Elf's Elven Bracers. I would love to see a Dwarf Quest with a Dwarf's Forge piece and other things to enhance the game, along with Dwarf-centric content. I would also love to see a "Wizards of Zargon" set that not just brings Wizards of Morcar under the current NA-based rules, but would also enhance the Wizard as a Wizard Quest set. With only five Quests in WoM, I can see them adding whole new quests to prop-up the Wizard and expand on magical elements, such as more magic-based puzzles and traps.
As Zargon I would totally use the white shield tokens for +2 movement. Take that, Heroes!
I'll be honest. It wasn't until I was editing this video that I realised there were two different shield tiles! However, as you can mix and match models from both factions in your team when playing the standalone game there is every chance you could need both shield types in your force.
This has been one of the better expansion packs for the game. Great models and material. Can't wait to see what they release next.
In terms of quests, Kellar's Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, and Prophecy of Telor are the stand-outs for me. In terms of new components and fun features, this is certainly one of the better ones.
when i was a kid me and my friend would draft armies and use the whole board as one big battlefield so i was playing this mode back in the day on a larger scale.
Nice. I reckon you could scale up the arena rules to work on larger maps and mazes. Someone in the comments mentioned capture the flag, which sounds like it could be fun.
Absolutely love the fact they are implementing abilities into official heroquest. Hopefully a full integration for new releases I agree man!
There are a few interesting ideas in this expansion that I would like to see expanded on. Unfortunately - and this is something I touch on in tomorrow's video - Avalon Hill do seem to introduce cool ideas and then immediately drop them again. I hope that isn't the case.
can see this being a perfect 3d print project to create a specific board and get the theme of it.
beer & pretzels type stuff
Would look great.
Flicking away the Orc Bard... brutally dismissive. LOL!
What? I let him play at 7:14
While I know the rules are a little simple, I love them anyways. I see how some of the issues are handled in other games, but they would only congest gameplay and added unneeded complexity to the game.
I have played simple Arena fights in HQ before, but they really added rules that really works. While I dont have AtOH yet, I have been trying out the rules out based on photos I found floating online and they are great. Its way too early for me to pickout houserules yet, but damn I want to added to it!
Above all, I really like being able to make little teams of otherwise nameless monsters with their own names and backstory.
It's HeroQuest, the rules were never going to be really nuanced and in-depth. I think what they did works well though, and adds just enough to the basic combat framework to stop it from floating away. And it's good to see Avalon Hill flexing their creative muscles with something new like this.
Thank you for the Rules clarifications with the tournament. me and my group have been wanting to rule something like quick skirmish run on days when we have a few mins to kill during game day. I wonder if the next expanion will have more rules or another Skirmish type mode, I really hope the rumors for the Jungles of delthrak are true. The jungle themed adventure seems exciting. I wonder if they come out with jungles of delthrak what monster will we be facing, and if there will be any new artifacts or traps. I'm crossing my fingers for lizard or snakepeople. while I'm ranting, I'm also wondering when they will come out with wizards of morcar and how they will update the adventure. Crossing my fingers for the female wizard!! I've been on the hunt for her cards and minis for months
I believe there were rumours the forest expansion would focus on abominations. I am looking forward to some definitive information on that front.
I have the original expansion, nice they added the Skirmish System to the Game upgrade.
It's a cool little bonus.
Love the Crackerbread reference! :)
It's one of my favourite Noel Fielding quotes.
Just made it before the first hour was up, so I'll throw in a quick comment - for the algorithm!
All hail the algorithm!
Well, this seems like a harmless bit of fun. Looking forward to trying it out, when my FLGS stocks AtOH.
Yes. It's not amazing. But it's nice to see something new being done with the system, and they certainly did more than I thought they would with the concept.
Great vid.
Thanks.
Not bad. If I ran this using D&D I'd probably set it in Athas.
Poor Bard! Looks like youll need a new figure for him 😂
5:35 🤣🤣🤣
What? What's so funny? Don't know what you're talking about. I'm just picking teams over here.
Man i miss your playtroughs... When able please consider doing a new one... A short one maybe...
I'm glad you enjoy the playthroughs. Unfortunately they take two to three days to shoot and edit so they really are very labour intensive and there are periods where it can be difficult to fit them into the schedule. I do have plans for more though, so watch this space.
I never knew how to give one quest item to another hero, it always felt like cheating to me, so I never did it.
But now, I let the heroes battle it out, winner takes all items from the looser.
That gave me the chance to get rid of the wizard I never liked anyway. Now my warlock has all the good stuff my wizard possessed and it feels fair as well😅.
Ha. Well, Avalon Hill have published the official ruling for passing around artefacts, but beating a hero to death and just taking them is certainly a definitive way of handling the situation!
So after finally getting my hands on this expansion and looking at the loose rules for the 'points system' I'm honestly a bit confused by how to determine a hero's strongest attack value. Most are straightforward, but take the Rogue or Monk for instance. The Rogue has skills that allow them to do multiple attacks. Do I count the total dice rolls per turn, or their base attack for a single attack that they do more than once? and the Monk has Elemental styles that makes enemies take damage over multiple turns or roll additional dice on unarmed attacks. Which value to I take?
Regardless, the point system doesn't seem to help create balanced games either way because taking into account ONLY attack strength can lead to wildly different amounts of Body Points per side, especially when playing with monsters.
It's very loosey goosey, and I think at some point someone will come up with something more balanced. You literally just take the strength of your single most powerful attack - so that would be how many dice you roll for ONE instance of that attack. It doesn't take into account if you can do that attack twice, or what damage might be applied subsequently, or even if you might be able to boost the attack with a potion or something. It's the number of dice for the single attack.
Is there any reason the skirmish mode couldn’t expand to a full board with rooms and doors for more tactical play?
It's just HeroQuest combat with the chance to pick up trophies and an I-go-u-go activation system, so I don't see why you couldn't use it on any map layout. I would still probably keep the overall arena relatively small though, as the focus is moved to fighting rather than exploration.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring with a bit of creativity, perhaps some kind of “capture the flag” scenario or other objective-based team game could be fun?
Really appreciate this HQ content btw, awesome stuff!
I think it could work well for something like that.
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you are enjoying the videos.
I don't know if you remember me, but a year or two ago I would comment on pretty much every cursed city vid giving my take on what the hell ahppened, and arguing with you about how many of the soulblight releases were originally CC planned expansions. Years later I've only just seen the podcast with Peachy that confirmed my suspicions all along! It was just so obvious at the time. So sad how it turned out, the potential was sky high!
I remember when Peachy left GW he was on a podcast where he was complaining about cutting all the details off Citadel miniatures to paint them quickly and he made some comments about Cursed City. Some of them didn't completely align with what I have been told by other people working within GW, for which there are various possible reasons. I do think GW clearly intended to make expansions for the game and support it - which was always my belief - and they fouled it up on launch, but I maintain the expansions we finally got weren't the ones initially planned. I don't see they ever initially planned a single release for a board game that would include most of the named characters that would be the backbone of a brand new AoS army. That was a retcon.
We will never know 100 percent for certain all the ins and outs that happened with Cursed City, but we do know GW's handling of everything hurt the brand. We just have to hope one day they make a new Quest product and they handle it a lot better. Considering how things are going over there, though... I'm not convinced.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Wait, you still deny that ‘Radukar the Beast’ was not a model originally designed to be part of a CC expansion? Why would they even call him Radukar and have him an evolved version of an apparently unrelated warhammer quest game character? They wouldn’t change the sculpt just to pretend he was meant to be for CC, the sculpt would have made a long time prior to release, and he shares features with base Radukar. There were models that were sculpted and named for CC before they had the production issues, and this has been confirmed by multiple sources after the fact.
Which sources do you have that contradict/deny this? It was so obvious at the time as to be dumbfounding to me that anyone could possibly deny that these models were initially planned to be part of CC expansions. Peachy explicitly states this in a podcast.
This is one of those ones where one person just sees something so clearly and obviously that anyone denying that something is genuinely confusing. I don’t see how there could be an argument for named characters that fit the narrative of the game so perfectly could ever not be pre planned release for it? 2 vampire hunters dressed like CC Jelsen, randomly for Cities of Sigmar, alongside a handful of named vampire characters and the very man himself, Radukar, in a literal final boss version, wasn’t initially planned as … the final boss!?! I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from here or what the angle/implication is but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. I’d love to hear about the other sources though!
Honestly, I had this discussion to death years ago and covered it all at the time as it unfolded. I am certain I talked to numerous people about Peachy's comments when he left GW as well. Clearly expansions were planned - we knew this from how they promoted the game - and we knew they backpedaled frantically when they fouled it all up. All I maintain is the final form of the expansions is not what they initially intended. One of those expansions had something like four big named characters, all for use in a new army release. It's not how they approach the release of named heroes like that.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Ah, now that is a more nuanced view that you’re proposing there. I did go back and read some of the comments from back then and it was clear to me that the argument was definitely about whether or not a number of releases that came out with the Soulblight Gravelords were initially designed to be expansions for CC, and work with the army after they had initially been released for CC. I would agree, the pitiful expansions that were eventually dribbled out were almost certainly not the original plan, but rather an improvisation made after having already released the models in AoS. Perhaps the size and ambition for these expansions was such that some of the arguments made against this would have been answered (maybe they planned on releasing new tiles that made more sense of the larger bases?) I guess we may never know. But when the models were first unveiled, the initial reaction of ‘those look like scrapped CC expansions’, seem to be vindicated at this point.
Talking about cc. Did we get an errata on the recent white dwarf articles?
Can't find an answer to this question anywhere.... So in the arena mode when there's only one player left... They get an additional attack or movement after every player on the opposing team's turn...
Now how does that work in combination with the dual attack with heroic Brew rogue in war bear?
So here's the scenario... In the arena there is one champion ogre... Warrior attacks ogre ogre attacks back... Now the next surviving hero takes a turn.... Ogre attacks warrior again.... Does the warrior get defense dice for this second attack?
It's a separate attack on a different hero's turn, so you would get to defend. If a hero faces more than one attack from a monster at the same time (Polar War Bear, for example) they can only defend against one of those attacks. If that same monster attacks later, after another hero has activated, the target would get one defence roll as normal because that attack was not made at the same time.
Doesn’t sound like something I would be interested in. I would have preferred new missions instead.
I know what you mean, but I think they wanted to preserve the original Ogre Horde quest line as it was originally presented, so rather than crowbar in three new full missions, they made this sort of mini-game prequel which effectively serves as three new missions. That way, if you don't like the skirmish mode, you can skip it completely without it impacting on the "real" quest line. Personally I think it's fun to see them trying new things and being a bit more creative.