HeroQuest: The Mage of the Mirror - Unboxing & Review | My Thoughts on Avalon Hill's New Expansion
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- Always Board Never Boring has finally received his copy of The Mage of the Mirror, the latest expansion from Avalon Hill's new edition of HeroQuest. In this video, he unboxes the expansion and shares his thoughts (in considerable depth).
Here are some time stamps:
00:00 Intro
01:00 Packaging
01:54 The quest
03:32 The elf
04:52 Enemies
08:45 Furniture
11:30 Tokens
13:44 Elf spells
15:22 Other cards (spoilers)
18:07 Final thoughts
#heroquest #mageofthemirror #hasbro
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You hit the nail on the head with how I feel about the MotM set. The issue with the tokens, like a lot of issues with the line, is due to them keeping so pure with the errors from the old line that they willfully keep the old errors, like the horribly miss-aligned trapdoors from the Kellar's Keep set, as they think it adds charm or something. As for why the Bow of Vindication lacks arrow tokens while the Sky Orb gets orb tokens is due to the fact that the original Bow of Vindication had no ammo-limit. Even back then, the bow was OP! It would have been nice to have counters for the limit-use artifacts and treasure (Ancient Staff, Cloak of Passage, etc.)
I do really love the additional. I though, at first, they added them in as the old game added too many furniture in the old Quest set, but I was wrong. AH wanted to ad some cool new furniture. I would also have loved to see the NPC represented with figures as they would also make for "more toys in the toy chest" for custom Quests.
Also, that is one damn sexy Archmage!
It's weird how they stuck so slavishly to the original release in some ways (even down to the posing and styling of most of the miniatures), and then deviated in others, like including the new furniture.
I didn't realise the bow originally had unlimited arrows. I know you only own it for a very short while, but even so, that is ridiculously overpowered.
I'm only a couple minutes in and the additional furniture is reason enough to buy.
It's much nicer than the stuff from the core set. Elves are fancy.
I've waited this for so long!
I just got this set last week and am excited about painting all the new plastic. I have the wolves and Ogres done and will start the elves next. I do wish there were Werewolf minis.
Werewolf miniatures would have been great.
now that you've gotten our expansions (FH, MOTM), it's about time we got yours! (Against the Ogre Horde, Wizards of Morcar, Dark Company, Adventure Design Kit, etc)
I can't believe they wouldn't update Horde an Wizards. I would love to see them do it.
This, so much this.
I need my Wizards of Zargon!
thanks for the great review i love watching all your heroquest reviews there awesome keep up the good work!
Thanks for watching. I’m so pleased you are enjoying the videos.
Great unboxing, I received mine just before Christmas & look forward to the App update so I can play…hopefully you will show a play through of Solo quest as no one on TH-cam has done this yet… keep HQ content coming I enjoy listening to your views on the game..
Thanks. One way or another I will be running the solo quests on the channel.
Nice review. The elf sword does look weird, both on the mini and card art! Wonder what they were thinking when they gave that the thumbs up!
Also agree about the plastic. Would have been cool to have werewolve minis of the heroes instead of tokens.
Hopefully the Orges in this box set are a "test" for the Orge Horde expansion (which was my fav expansion i got to play!)
The original Mage of the Mirror ogres were the same ones that turned up in Ogre Horde, so if they do redevelop Against the Ogre Horde I would expect these same ogres to make an appearance again. I can't see them using the health system from Ogre Horde though; that was a bit weird.
I'm looking forward to you playing through it! I only recently finished 3d printing this set, including minis for the werewolves, prospector, princess, and the two kidnapped elven ladies. I emailed you s word doc with the missing artefact card I had to make. It is a bit sad Avalon Hill didn't fix that oversight from the original.
The armour is just a flat +2 bonus to defend dice. It's surprising they didn't go the extra mile, but it just gets marked on the character sheet - there's no additional rules to reference - so it's not something I would miss. Thanks for thinking of me.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring If I remember correctly the story goes, that the people doing the expansions had a limited number of cards/overlays/minis etc they were allowed to use, and the guy doing the Mage of the Mirror hit his card limit, so the Elven chainmail was left out.
@@Archaeonomy Yeah. When they are printing cards they are in big sheets. They wouldn’t want to print another whole sheet for a single card. I believe there were 30 cards in the original expansion. 31 would have been a big issue.
I actually forgot about this piece of equipment. I'm guessing it is an artifact card. I think the main reason the NPC minis were left out, just like the original Sir Ragnor, is they are one time use only.
@@jasonsumma1530 if you search for "ye olde inn elven chainmail" you can find the card in US format. My card was adapted from that into the UK style. (and the picture altered to actually have chainmail - no idea what they were thinking there)
Whew... I'm on the fence on this one. One the one side the furniture is lovely, but I have no idea why we even need new furniture... Also they did change the Ogres, cutting their Body Points in half. Though I've never had a chance to play the original so maybe 10 body points was just far too much for reason, but I wish they would present the rules at least as is... Still all around, a very impressive package all things to considered.
It's entirely an aesthetic thing. You won't ever need four bookcases or two thrones. I never played the original version either, but it feels like enemies with 10 hit points and 4 defence would be a bit of a drag to fight. I don't know how many ogres you can bump into at any one time, but even if it's only two or three, that's 20 to 30 hit points to munch through (on top of any other enemies that may be present) and it feels like that might bring the whole thing to a grinding halt. There are points where Frozen Horror can become a bit of a slog, and maybe this is their attempt to prevent that here.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring You hit the nail with the body point issue. Not to spoil too much but there are times where you run across multiple ogre in the same room\area in the quests. Count in the 6 attack and you could have a TPK with only a couple of ogre at 10 body each. I'm curious if the half body will be enough to make those encounters a bit more doable.
I just ordered this this morning. I can't wait for it to get here.
It's a great expansion. I hope you have a lot of fun with it.
Wow. Everything in this expansion looks great! I wasn't really a fan of the sculpts in Frozen Horror (and that's part of why I haven't gotten around to purchasing it yet) but this box... I like these better than a lot of what came in the core box. Thank you for your continued coverage of HeroQuest. I've got some serious FOMO re: Frozen Horror, but this one I will have to pick up.
I can't talk about the quality of the quests themselves, but in terms of materials and inclusions, this feels like the better set to me. Just having the elf spells makes a big difference to the elf, and the new miniatures are great. Maybe nothing reviles the awesomeness of a polar war bear, but even so...
Dude the Frozen Horror sculpts are AMAZING! Great detail and the Frozen Horror boss is one of the most impressive HQ figures ever!
A great video 👍 really looking forward to getting this set. Already have the frozen horror set and am on the lookout for the rogue set! Also it would be amazing if they make the against the ogre horde and wizards of morcar sets 😮
I would be surprised if they don't eventually do Wizards and Ogre Horde, especially now they have worked through all the other expacs. It's just a bit more work to convert them to the NA rules.
Great vid.
Thanks.
Are you going to play it on video?
The Barbarian ones are my favourite videos of yours, that's how I discovered your channel.
I plan to run the solo missions on the channel, but they haven't been added to the app yet. If they aren't added soon I might have to do it the old-fashioned way.
Hooray for this champion of old-school games. Really enjoyed everything I’ve watched so far.
I’m really pleased you are enjoying the videos. Thanks.
I would have liked a mirror sculpt
I guess they felt that because the mirrors have images on them it was better to keep them as the printed standees, but yes, mirrors would have been cool.
Wonderful review, thanks for sharing. Looks amazing!! I have all previous expansions and would love to get this as well. AH seem to get better and better with each new realese. Do you know where it can purchased, by any chance? Can't seem to locate it online....
The first print run, which went up for preorder before Christmas, has sold out everywhere (there may be a few copies floating around somewhere, but for the most part, it's unavailable). Most places are awaiting restocks, so keep checking in with your retailer of choice.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring will do that. Thanks for the tip...!
Thanks ABNB.
Thanks for watching.
I waited till I saw the price drop on Amazon and now I have this ordered. I realize there are some things they could have done even better, but for Hasbro this is a great job, a really nice looking product. To make an American analogy, they're hitting the ball off the tee, but they still hit a home run.
This was the Quest Pack that the Rogue Heir of Elethorn was designed for having been the next in line as the son/daughter of the Queen. And the Princesses that was kidnapped by their aunt is their sister.
This Quest Pack introduces the long jump for the wide pit traps and quicksand which is even more difficult to jump only succeeding on a Black Shield.
And because I use a modified movement system for the heroes being a base movement of 6 spaces. The Elven Boots Artifact can literally make any hero move as fast as the Scout mercenary being 9 spaces of movement. Like I said I had to modify other cards based around this movement system.
Yeah, I talked about the connection in my rogue heir video. I did go over the rules for long pits and quicksand in this video.
Too bad we can't use the Rogue as an elf character.
you have so many great ideas... would love to do a collab sometime (even though different time zones)
Thanks so much, that's very kind of you. I'm not looking at collaborations with content creators right now, for various reasons, but I really appreciate you thinking of me.
Hi I'm Chris and two of the new heroquest expansions are due out in Jan 1-24
Ogres for me will always look like the one in the original battle masters game, I always loved that miniature and still have him
He was the best bit of Battle Masters. Had an unnerving ability to die to cannonballs, though.
I'm with you. I really do love that we have more furniture... but *different* or new furniture would have been better. And better still would have been NPCs and Werewolves, absolutely! Now I'm scanning various minis manufacturers for suitable stand ins or ebay, and it's a bit of a hassle. Seems like it would have been a lot easier to just give my money to Hasbro here, but... okay then.
No miniatures focused boardgame should EVER use tokens to represent characters, NPCs or monsters. It feels like this unspoken rule needs to be spoken a little louder.
It's a weird thing where on the one hand they have tried to stay true to the original version of the expansion, and then on the other hand they've wanted to add in all this cool new stuff, and the choices got a little mixed up along the way.
I thought in the original version, the other Elf models were allies and not enemies and could be hired.
No. The elves were baddies.
I still think I'd have preferred 3 sets of 3 Elf Only spell groups - Time (Slow, Flashback & Timestop), Illusion (Double Image, Disappear & Hypnotic Blaze) & Nature (Deep Sleep, Twist Wood & a healing spell).
The system of picking 3 from 8 is fine though- I just really miss the option for an Elf to pick a heal without having to go back to the Elemental spells - just gives some more flexibility.
I prefer being able to pick the spells. I wouldn't want to be tied into sets. But it does feel like there is a heal missing. I guess it was done to stop a situation where you had a wizard with two heals and then the elf with a third.
I wish I could find extra sets of the furniture that come in this expansion.
I suppose down the line Avalon Hill could always do "terrain crate" style packs to give people a chance to decorate more dungeons.
🔥
There was no mercenaries for the Mage of the Mirror. I can't remember which came first, this one or Frozen Horror but I want to say Frozen Horror was the one to introduce the mercenary concept. It is really hard for me to tell the difference in the male\female archers. I admit, I never considered the mind points of the creatures but can you argue high mind points for monsters who don't cast?
They completely redesigned the ogre from the first version. The first version were three pieces you had to put together which allowed the arms to swing freely. The stomach was more pronounced on the original and the head much smaller. I definitely prefer the updated look and understand the drop in body in half. The original had 10 body and when matched with the 6/4 it made the ogre extremely potent especially with solo quests.
This is the first time a monster had range attack so it may not be much it is still significant especially since it follows the same rules for line of sight and range. I don't remember the stats for Frozen Horror creatures but I do think these monsters are quite a bit beefier than the original set with exception of the gargoyle.
I would have appreciated a few more closed doors for those times when the party walks on by a closed door which makes it tough having only 5 closed doors from the base set.
Flashback wouldn't take much since the app lets you cast spells as many times as you want and the monster damage can be reversed easily. Now, seeing the traps would be an issue. The magic dueling dread spell might be another iffy one. Now, the use of the new dread spells I will question since the AI hasn't exactly proven to be the most intelligent in combat.
There were no mercs in Mage of the Mirror back in the day. They were introduced in Frozen Horror, which came out first. But in the new edition of Mage of the Mirror they have added rules to clarify you can still use mercs if you have them available. This was something that was never mentioned in the original release, so it was never really certain if those rules carried over.
The monsters here are tougher than the core set. Wolves and ogres have the highest attack value yet, but the Frozen Horror monsters had special abilities that made them horrible to deal with. Yeti's had the hug attack that could trap a hero, while polar war bears attacked twice with one attack completely bypassing armour. I would rather face a single six-dice attack and roll for defence than face a four-dice attack I can't defend against after already facing a four-dice attack.
I do like the new ogre designs, but I prefer the original classic GW designs. They looked a lot goofier.
Flashback is a bit of a pain for a developer as casting it may return monsters that were defeated, hide rooms, traps and doors that were revealed, close doors that were opened, and so on. As the app doesn't track a lot of things it's not as hard as it could be, but now it's going to have to start recording a beginning of turn state and registering when each hero starts their turn so it knows where to roll back to. And yeah, the app seems to struggle with dread spells at the moment.
Hello. I have the main game and I have one question. Do I have to buy the other expansions first or it doesn’t matter?
Mage of the Mirror and Frozen Horror are a step-up in difficulty from the core game and the first two expansions. In terms of plot they are supposed to follow on from each other (and you are supposed to continue with the same heroes) and I feel like they were designed assuming players had already worked through the previous quests to be strong enough. Avalon Hill have even shared an official order in which the quests are intended to be played. However, there is nothing stopping you playing the HeroQuest campaigns in any order you choose. If you have a real Zargon player they can always adjust the difficulty up or down on the fly based on how well your heroes are doing.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring thank you for the answer!
I can't really play HeroQuest anymore, so I think my next best option is to try to find a group that is streaming their play sessions for things like this. The expansion looks fantastic. Thank you for sharing with us! It is very odd that the enemy elf minis look better than the hero elf mini.
Thanks for watching. The elf enemies really are very nice. I like them more than the hero too.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Thank you replying, you always do good work!
Thanks for saying so. I really appreciate the support!
This isnt a new Expansion, it is based on the US exclusive Elf quest pack from the 90s. They took some liberties, added a few minis, but at its core this IS a reskin of old rules
That's correct. I cover this in the introduction of the video.
Thanks for this one.
Avalon Hill should really get to remaking "Advanced HeroQuest" as well, now that they're done with HeroQuest and a lot of the expansions.
It's clearly catering to loads of players these days (as we see with the huge interest in games like "League of Dungeoneers", "Dungeon Universalis", "Dungeon Crusade" etc.).
Unfortunately Avalon Hill have no rights to Advanced Heroquest. That’s entirely a Games Workshop product. There is definitely an interest in that old school style of adventuring at the moment.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Thanks for that piece of information, very much appreciated.
Reanimation is an odd one, it seems if you read it carefully that it's actually saying you bring back all of one type of destroyed Undead to the position of the spell caster... otherwise it would seem to be a very ineffective version of "summon undead" because presumably you'd have to flee to the room where some undead monsters happened to die to get any use out of it. I'm not sure if the original designers realized this, or if people have just been misreading it all this time. read carefully and see what I mean (you Zargons can check the two times a bad guy is given this power and there's no undead anywhere near the room they start in). thanks to the fans who brought this to my attention
I don't think that reading of the spell is correct, although admittedly the wording on a lot of HeroQuest cards is a bit funky. It says you revive the defeated undead of one type in the same room as the spellcaster - they rise from the floor to attack again. It doesn't say revive all of one type of undead from the dungeon and teleport them to the spellcaster (that would be some annoying bookkeeping as much as anything else).
The fact the spell is potentially weaker than Summon Undead doesn't really matter. Soothe is absolutely weaker than Restore Dread. Not all spellcasters are created equal in all arts.
The phrasing is the same for the spell Firestorm - "creates a roomful of fire that inflicts 3 wounds on all heroes and monsters in the same room with the spellcaster." It means that's where the effect of the spell takes place.
The other reading also seems well off to me because of just how many undead you would populate in the final mission if the heroes clean out the dungeon before the final boss (add up just the skeletons across the double quest!).
I thought I would see what the app did with this spell in the first quest where it turns up in Mage of the Mirror. Fun fact - the app will never use the spell. Doesn't matter where the spellcaster is on the board, or how many undead enemies you kill - whether you kill the enemies in his line of sight, before or after he is on the board, in his room or any other room - he never uses it.
I think the problem is just that somewhere along the line during the creation of the quests something got changed. Maybe the spellcasters were originally supposed to have "escape" but playtesters found the game dragged too long that way. Or maybe there were some undead enemies, and then they got removed. Or maybe the wording on the spell got changed at the 11th hour and the mistake just rolled over to the new edition.
Ultimately, those spells may be almost useless in those quests, but it wouldn't be the first time there were mistakes like that in these old quests that have been repackaged. Those sort of mistakes shouldn't happen, but they do. But that spell still becomes a tool in Zargon's arsenal, and when you are designing your own quests you can make much better use of it.
I think the "monster" elves have low mind points to reflect them being controlled by the evil elf witch
But they aren't really being mind controlled, and they are just as dopey in Rise of the Dread Moon. I think it's just one of those things - a concession to balance rather than fluff.
head cannon mate. I find "dumb" elves a bit hard to imagine. but a brilliant evil elf with ability to turn others to doing their bidding...yeah that I can see@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring
Still waiting for my copy, apparently this month at some point... waiting on this same as the frozen horror for UK they are very exciting.. Waiting for news on rise of a dread moon as well, that seems interesting.
All they have really shared so far is the name, cover, and the details for the knight class, which I covered previously. That’s certainly got me interested.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Yes, I was not expecting the next big expansion to be anything but a Wizard or Dwarf expansion to be honest, so I was taken aback.
I think its nice they are clearly invested in the series but I also hope the Wizard and Dwarf get their time to shine, I really want to see a more fleshed out wizard, with new items and maybe spells like we had in Wizards of Morcar, I feel the wizard is very stale in terms of development without this, he only gets minor improvements, some better defence but his main purpose does not shift from the first quest really.
Will be interested for more reveals on rise of a dread moon, and likely the leak of whatevers coming afterwards for a release in early 2024.
@@crimsonsun2000 lots of places have their preorder pages up as of today, so I expect we will hear more very soon now.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I didn't know that! better get my pre-order in... Any UK stores?
Zatu has it up for one. Other places too. Estimated July dispatch.
13:48 - Is it just me or the Elf Spells are more powerful or impressive than the Wizard spells? I can't wait to experiment with these new spells.
And as far as I can tell, the Elf can start with those spells even from the New Beginnings, Rogar's Hall or the Trial quests, as it seems that nothing says that they only have access to these spells once they start playing the Mage of the Mirror quests.
I agree the elf spells are better, and we have used them since I got this expansion as there was no reason not to.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring So far, I only had the opportunity to play a single quest, New Beginnings. Next quest will be Rogar's Hall and I think I will give the Wizard all the 4 elemental spells and let the Elf have Elf Spells. Some people use that houserule and I think I will try this as well.
I think it's an appealing idea to let the Wizard player be the master of _all_ the elements, while the Elf player uses his unique Elven magic to bolster his martial prowess.
I like the elf warriors and archers. The ogres are nice. Of course you can't go wrong with werewolves.
Finally got our werewolves... just in a different game!
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring We can always find werewolves. Hell Reaper mins has provided plenty for me. It just would be interesting to see Games Workshop (that has everything else in fantasy) make one again.
I have lots of werewolves already. I was joking because we kept hoping to see them in Cursed City.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Oh I got that.
it's a little odd that in Mage of the Mirror (both the '92 edition and the remake) that certain artifacts will say "may only be used by the Elf" while others will only say "the Elf" (or have "elven" in the title) but not specifically say ONLY the elf.. and yet the Elf spells all use generic language like "the spellcaster" (why not just say "the Elf" again? so you have to flip it over momentary to remind yourself it's an "Elf Spell" ?). I'm tempted as Zargon to say that the items that don't say "only the elf" on the card can also be used by "elf friends" ;)
HeroQuest has some of the sketchiest wording ever in its rules. It doesn't bother me all that much, but it's still a bit of a shame Avalon Hill didn't do more to tidy up all those sorts of things
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I think early on they had the excuse of wanting to stay true to the source material, a care in not fixing what wasn't broken with a level of care I hadn't seen before in a franchise remake which I appreciated, but as we moved into packs that most people never played back in the day that didn't have the same level of protective nostalgia around them, it would have made more sense to make changes. I don't think they realized Frozen Horror needed that from the fan community (that we wanted it) until it was too late. mage of the mirror got a lot more by comparison, but yeah little things like that will be left up to Zargon as only a few people will ever see what they write on twitter in response to random questions about it. an "into the northlands" style digital quest would be the perfect way to tie things up, but they seem to be so busy with the dread moon and the MOTM app update (which introduces so many new things) that's probably why we aren't seeing more. agreed that Zargon can just make the call
I give the elf a choice of three spells with the option to buy the rest at 400 gold to give some progression beyond weapons
Does he have to rebuy spells for each quest or do you let him keep purchased the spells from mission to mission?
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I let him keep them
If I was to make him repurchase them I’d drop the price to 200 gold
I understand where you're coming from on the use of plastic assets in this expansion but personally I LOVE the new furniture. It's honestly the most appealing part of the box for me.
I think the new furniture is great. It's nicer than the stuff from the base game. But why pretty up a dungeon and then push cardboard tokens around it?
the packaging was fine except the Ogres (which really should be dark blue, not plain gray, I painted mine)... those things were STUCK in there hard like the pledge version. the tissue paper was nice but a lot of people have gotten their quest book cover bent or torn from the swords.
I didn't have any issues with my ogres, but I'm still going to replace the plastic with custom inserts.
I can’t wait to complete the hero’s alternate sex characters with the wizard and dwarf packs down the line 👍
I feel that, with just a bit of work, updated versions of Wizards of Morcar and Against the Ogre Horde would be good Wizard Quest and Dwarf Quest expansions.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring absolutely. I’m waiting to throw my money at AH when they do 👍
With this Elf expansion, I think it's a good idea to let the Wizard have all the four elemental decks (Fire, Water, Wind and Earth, like the elemental Master the he should be) while enforcing the Elf spells to the Elf.
What do you think?
I suppose it's a way of offsetting the spike in difficulty in Mage of the Mirror, but the elf is supposed to be able to choose from elf magic or an elemental spell set and I'm not sure the wizard deserves such a boost in his abilities. An extra three spells is quite a jump, and we have to assume that he will get his own perks if they ever do the "Wizard Quest Pack."
I know that some people have come up with homebrew rules where gradually the wizard gets to unlock and use new spells. So, maybe give it a go, and see how it feels.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I've just joined the club recently, so I don't have the experience to say...
... BUT I have seen some people arguing that the Wizard is too weak and I saw this idea as an option to give it an extra mile.
Indeed, this is not the rule by default... But it might be interesting. I would test it myself, but I need to grab a copy of the Elf pack first.
That said, I like the idea of letting the Wizard being the elemental Master (controlling all the four elements) and giving the Elf his exclusive spells. As you said in the video, the Elf is a good Warrior. His/her spells is a complement to her martial skills.
How is the scaling of these minis in comparison to modern GW Warhammer minis?
GW stuff is a law unto itself with scaling and is generally larger than any other range (although that's not always the case). If you check out my Instagram (link in video description) I have just posted some comparison photos to give you an idea.
With the release of MotM, I think we are at a do or die moment for AH. The three new quests in the Mythic tier were not all that well received (I personally am skipping them with my HQ group) but they have been handling re-releases like FH and MotM very well for the most part. So it's critical that Dread be good. They can still recover if Dread doesn't do well with fans, but Hasbro has been having financial trouble lately so the future is never certain. Hopefully, AH will get it right.
I assure you that they really are not having financial trouble at all, no. Unless you mean that the value of their toy manufacturing is only 30% of their total company earnings (amazingly, 70% of the company's worth is Wizards of the Coast and D&D)... then maybe that's a bit embarrassing for them, but they're still doing just fine.
But the bottom line with a corporation that large, is always the concern that a property or product is not preforming well "enough". A game like HQ could still sell like gangbusters for any other boardgame publisher, but if the shareholders decide it's not as good as it COULD be, they'll still axe it.
Yeah, with a multi-billion international company it's not necessarily about being profitable, it's about being profitable enough. Shareholders need to see those year-on-year gains, so resources always have to go to the thing that will squeeze out the most money. The recent issues with D&D stem from the fact that while D&D makes them an amount of money most companies would be delighted with, it isn't making them as much as they felt it should or could. Avalon Hill will continually have to prove its worth to Hasbro.
@@Templar462 Financial trouble to a company as big as Hasbro does not mean they are going bankrupt. When large companies see signs of an endeavor not being worth the investment, they tend to scale back the line, discontinue it or do it for as cheaply as possible. Neither of these scenarios would be ideal for HQ. Don't forget, the OG game wasn't around for that long in the scheme of things. I defer to ABNB's comment in this thread about the financials. He's spot on. If Hasbro can mess up Magic and DnD, they could very well mess up HQ as well.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Absolutely. And after the Heroscape HasLab having failed, some greedy executive may try to say that mini games cost too much to produce as opposed to card games or DnD, which is more book based I believe. Even if Dread knocks it out of the park, I think caution is advisable until Hasbro gets back on track.
Having said that, I do think that while nothing can be taken for granted (and nothing ever lasts forever), I believe everything is fine with HeroQuest right now. Every product they have released has sold out its first print run at the preorder stage, Avalon Hill are announcing new products even before the current product has hit the market, and they are continually putting dev. time into the app. That could all change in a second, but right now, I'm not concerned. HeroScape failing may have helped in some way, because it may have made Hasbro readjust expectations for what it can get from a board game.
I'm more concerned about D&D Onslaught right now, which has come out of the gates with a massive retail price, probably mainly due to WizKids having to pay extra to Hasbro for the license.
Why can Avalon hill not just release several different quest books containing a campaign each? I think that is what a lot of players are seeking when buying all these expansions.
For any other Pen and Paper you can buy adventure books. It will tell you what expansions you will need to play this.
They should have done a HeroQuest annual with new quests and new rules, like Games Workshop did for Blackstone Fortress. That was neat.
The elf mini is so much better than the core one or the Mythic Tier one.
Who in their right mind wears plate mail in Heroquest? So why sculpt the core heroes with plate mail?
This elf is a much nicer throwback to the classic Heroquest elf mini.
(I do wish we could have a female version... and maybe a male version of the Frozen Horror barbarian)
It's pretty much a recreation of the original Mage of the Mirror quest book and box art (which was kept very similar for the new edition), and to a lesser degree, a throwback the original MotM elf miniature, much like the female barbarian from the Frozen Horror was a throwback to the original Frozen Horror barbarian. I really appreciate them taking that approach.
I hadn't really thought about the armour on the core set elf. At least in Mage of the Mirror it's possible to get a snazzy suit of elven armour. Maybe she's wearing that, and just accidentally put it on a bit too soon.
That wolf enemy looks terrifying! One lucky roll and even the Barbarian will be almost dead 💀
Some very heavy hitters in this quest. Frozen Horror is very tough. Im not sure how this one stacks up against it but it looks challenging.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Not to mention Hasbro nerfed the Ogres!
@@Archaeonomy 10 hit points seemed excessive to me though. I could see fights dragging on forever like that.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I suppose it depends on how the heroes are equipped by that point. I recently had to 3dprint more combat dice because the heroes needed them after completing Dark Company.
@@Archaeonomy you mean the 18 dice isn't enough if you got the mythic tier and Frozen Horror set. I can't see attack going above six (battle axe plus courage) but maybe defense pushing 8. I don't remember what the mythic tier gave in weapons except the dragon spear.
its a wee bit of padding. but I do like having more peaces of bits and bobs for more dungeon stuff.
It is nice, but given the choice I would have rather had the other characters to run the quests without tokens.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring i ran it at an event in Maine its a fun expiation . but i'm very interested in the next,
Nice. I had mine all painted up a week or two ago, don't like the sculpts, monsters, boss, contents etc... nearly as much as the Frozen Horror expansionand, but it is cool to have an elf with a shield. Unfortunately this hero mini is oversized compared to the other elves in scale so he looks a bit mis-matched. Also disappointed it didn't contain at least 1 dedicated mini for the werewolf's, just tokens for them
It will probably be forever and ever (if ever) before we ever play our way up through the quests to this expansion.
Oh, and it is a bummer about the furniture, it barely looks different, doesn't look interesting, and none of it is of a new type. Big bummer
It's funny because I think the sculpts here are generally better. Okay, nothing rivals the awesomeness of the Frozen Horror itself, and nothing is ever going to be as good as a polar war bear, but other than that I think this set has the best of it. Missing out on the chance to make plastic minis to replace the cardboard tokens is my biggest gripe.
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring yeah, the War Bears and Frozen Horror were just awesome, but personally I love the Yetis too.
I'm adding in minis for the Princess, Prospector and Werewolves. They just arrived today and I'll paint them up this weekend!
I would definitely prefer NPC minis to new furniture, this is the reason I've not pulled the trigger on this set, so far. I'm far more excited about 'Rise Of The Dread Moon' at this time.
I'm looking forward to finally getting the knight class, but it really depends what else Dread Moon is bringing to the table. At the moment, Mage of the Mirror feels like the most complete and interesting expansion they have done.
I never owned this back in the day (I own the remake now). up till this point I've only played the very first quest (tried with a solo elf, it was way too hard as written, played it successfully a few times with two heroes)
They could have included both males and females (into the main game) but well … diversity.
They're doing exactly the same thing as with the original MB Games edition. Four heroes in the base game, with the alt-gender characters in the expacs. It's just that originally all the heroes were male, so the expacs had the female versions, and they never got around to make the dwarf and wizard packs.
How do people find out about things like crowd funding besides being on Twitter? I was a big fan of this game and totally would've supported it but I had no idea about any crowd funding for the new game as I'm not a 14 year old girl so I don't give a sht about social media.
I covered the run-up to the campaign, and the campaign, on my channel, and so did other TH-camrs, but if you don't like social media that probably wasn't much help. Gaming, hobby, and Geek sites such as Polygon, ComicBook, ICV2, BoardGameGeek and Dicebreaker also covered it at the time. Hasbro announced it through their official channels, and some big business sites such as Forbes gave it some coverage too.
The good news is, the game is available now at retail along with four major expansions, and Avalon Hill have confirmed that content from the crowdfunding campaign will also be going to retail.
"most people would recycle this outer layer"... That's crazy, then they would no longer have a complete game.
How could I ever play the game without the all-important cardboard wrapper?
@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Ha! Well I couldn't. I die a little inside everytime I hear someone threw away a piece of one of their games.
I store everything I'm not using, boxes, inserts, extra flyers even original zip lock bags. I bet most have the original silicon packs in them (along with the extras I add myself). All my games are truly 100% complete, ha!
I have boxes up in the attic with all of the original vacuum inserts and empty expansion boxes for all my games. If I ever decide to get rid of something, I can pretty much restore it to factory settings for the next owner (the only exception being punchboards - I'm never going to put hundreds of tokens back into their card frames).
The Quality of the minis and material is nothing to write home about.
I really like the idea of a new Heroquest, but taking investor money without giving any real form of ROI but a few cheap mini figs is abysmal. I have multiple KS games that give much more value for your money and by much smaller companies. It's all about shareholder value since 1991. The rich are robbing the working class every fucking day since then.
It's going to a company that literally says they hate you as well, a lot of people can look past a lot of things but they have just gone too far for me to ever give them another dime
⚔️ 🤗 🔝 🐺 🥰 🔮 🆒 😀 ⚔️
This game is starting to get Kickstarter levels of bloat. Just a few more expansions and everything will we great.
It does have that potential. At the moment it's still okay; it hasn't scaled beyond what it was back in the day (for me, at least, as I don't have the Mythic Tier stuff). I am a bit "concerned" that Dread Moon is focusing on the knight class rather than the dwarf or wizard (not because I don't want a knight, but because I want them to complete the core game character set), and I don't want them to focus too much on stuff like extra furniture. Wizards of Morcar and Against the Ogre Horde always felt a bit like "the wizard pack" and "the dwarf pack" so if they can tweak those in that direction, that would be good, and hopefully something they do before the game hits a saturation point. I am sure there will be a point where I say enough is enough, and I want them to get to at least where all the old expacs are done, as that will feel in some way like the reissue is "complete."
Oh no your accidentally revealed yourself as a furry.
I was a huge fan and collector of HeroQuest (and HeroScape) back in the day , and managed to collect all four quest packs that were released in the States. One thing I have always been unhappy about is that Hasbro never released Wizard and Dwarf quest packs (I even wrote them about this once). After the releases of the Elf and Barbarian quest packs, it seemed they had, at some point, intended to. In additon to providing a female Barbarian and a female Elf, the titular characters received artifacts that enhanced their capabilities. It only seemed fair that the Wizard and Dwarf would also receive enhancements. Hasbro now has a chance to correct that oversight.
Notes do exist from back in the day for a planned dwarf expansion, and I am sure Avalon Hill will make such expansions eventually. Before then it looks like we are getting remakes of the EU expansions, as Ogre Horde is on the way, and of course we have the reissues of the previously crowdfunding-exclusive expansions Prophecy of Telor and Spirit Queen's Torment, plus the new monk hero pack. Lots of things to look forward to!