Ye Olde Inn

Hello everyone , When I was kid Ive got the Heroquest box and Ive noticed differences about some designs,the (plastic?) minis of course but also the doors, throne etc, now that fans are digging the game and its detail since a long time, did anyone got more infos about this unreleased version ?

I personally like the design of the unreleased throne better.
The released version of the board looks better.

yeah, the box shows the game prototypes. Also the TV spot was using the same prototypes.
So the miniatures were made of metal instead of plastic and many other details were still under development (cards, furnitures and all the rest). Also check teh Barbarian character's sheet, it shows a totally different artwork!
You can see better pictures of the prototype miniatures looking at the borders of the bottom box: the painted figures you see are all metal prototypes. They are unreleased miniatures but occasionally they appear on ebay at very high price.
The original figures are secured by Brian Ansell (Citadel Miniatures founder) in a glass cabinet at Wargames Foundry.

lestodante wrote:yeah, the box shows the game prototypes. Also the TV spot was using the same prototypes.
So the miniatures were made of metal instead of plastic and many other details were still under development (cards, furnitures and all the rest). Also check teh Barbarian character's sheet, it shows a totally different artwork!
You can see better pictures of the prototype miniatures looking at the borders of the bottom box: the painted figures you see are all metal prototypes. They are unreleased miniatures but occasionally they appear on ebay at very high price.
The original figures are secured by Brian Ansell (Citadel Miniatures founder) in a glass cabinet at Wargames Foundry.

What a cool piece of trivia! I really don't know about this!

In my country the game don't have any true miniatures at all, only paper miniatures.

To be honest I think the released miniatures were better than the prototypes, in pretty much every case.
That said, I’d give anything to have the prototypes. It’s funny how that works.

it's a matter of taste...
I've hunted this figures for years and got few of them and have to say that some of them I prefer the plastic version. Especially the Orcs are more tiny than the plastic models, so I prefer the released ones.
Other like the mummy have really minimal differences but what I like the most is the metal Fimir because is more muscular and looks very huge.
About the Chaos Sorcerer and the Dwarf I prefer the plastic model again, while for the other 3 Heroes, I like the Barbarian a lot, and the Elf is way more beautiful in metal in my opinion, while the Wizard I don't know, I should see it closely, in the pictures I've seen he looks very tiny and slim when you look him by the side.
But even so, I would really be happy having the 4 Heroes and the Fimir. All the others are better to be replaced by the classic plastic models in my opinion.

lestodante wrote:it's a matter of taste...
I've hunted this figures for years and got few of them and have to say that some of them I prefer the plastic version. Especially the Orcs are more tiny than the plastic models, so I prefer the released ones.
Other like the mummy have really minimal differences but what I like the most is the metal Fimir because is more muscular and looks very huge.
About the Chaos Sorcerer and the Dwarf I prefer the plastic model again, while for the other 3 Heroes, I like the Barbarian a lot, and the Elf is way more beautiful in metal in my opinion, while the Wizard I don't know, I should see it closely, in the pictures I've seen he looks very tiny and slim when you look him by the side.
But even so, I would really be happy having the 4 Heroes and the Fimir. All the others are better to be replaced by the classic plastic models in my opinion.

I hear you, i've hunted down the metal advanced Heroquest skaven model for years, but no luck so far.
I prefer the metal personally.

old_skaven wrote:
I hear you, i've hunted down the metal advanced Heroquest skaven model for years, but no luck so far.
I prefer the metal personally.

I've seen it a couple of times on ebay. But I don't own this model.

Interesting. I hadn't looked too closely (I don't turn the box upside down enough!), other than to notice the extra shiny miniatures (painted metal) with round bases. The furniture has the shiny look too (probably metal with cardboard) and the doors very much reminds me of the TV commercials. The dice look different. The barbarian hero card has a different illustration. The cardboard art on the furniture often looks different (as pointed out the throne is the coolest example). The cards don't have titles (and the Quest Book lacks a title just has the logo and cover painting). Just about everything looks slightly different from the EU release!

It's unusual in placement in that it actually uses all the rooms (most quests block off a few with stone), although some of them are just empty rooms. It certainly looks cooler to have stuff out all over the board of course.

The board tiles look different too, and while the (much simpler) logo is on the "top" (making it oriented upside down compared to our final board) it is same dimensions as the final board other than the double small room in the upper left was transferred to the upper right section of the lower left quadrant of the board. I also don't see a board seam, as if it was printed as a single sheet attached to the backing board.

At first I thought maybe it would be worth doing a custom board like this but now I'm thinking a couple of room tiles is all you need (and some of those exist already on the Inn).

There's a few errors (or anomalies you could chalk up to it being in mid play), like a few monsters in rooms that don't have doors (or closed doors). The monsters on the side could be destroyed monsters or they might just be there waiting to be placed (2 orcs, a mummy, Chaos Warrior, Fimir and Skeleton). The stairs would not really be "trapped" in that room, in the board pictured that's one big room instead of two tiny ones.

Could make a playable quest out of this...

The box inset on the left shows the pieces with more updated artwork and square bases (and looks to be the modern board too). The figures depicted wouldn't work with the game shown because there are only two bookcases.

Heroscribe wouldn't let me put the bookcase in the lower left corner, but it should be over one row of squares, otherwise I was able to re-create it.

Edit: It seems they ran out of doors, that may explain the trapped skeleton! (Genie reveals a room without entering it and could be used twice with the Spell Ring which isn't available in the EU version and Spell Scrolls are NA expansion only items... but even so it would reveal any doors too)! Could be that Zargon hasn't yet placed the secret door tile for that room...

Edit #2: Thanks to HispaZargo, I edited the Wizard (and the dang door's) position and re-added the missing staircase to the EU version. Fixed at last!

This thread reminded me of the Swedish edition of the game that has a picture of the board setup instead of the Les Edwards art. The components look like the final version of the UK edition.

Looks like the Barbarian died and many figures on the sides... only noticed one "trapped monster" this time, but all the rooms used once again for some kind of mega quest example.

Here's a quick recreation... (in the upper left that's just a guess as to whether that's intended to be a falling block tile)

I see there's no stairway or in/out door, but there are a few quests where the Heroes just start in out in the dungeon already. Neither of these two "quests" exist in the GS, KK or ROTWL.

Cool!! We did it with the Adventure Design Kit box too