Redrawing the Dark Company

[Kurgan]

The way the Dark Company is supposed to work, if the heroes go to the edge of the board, doesn't it work similar to an exit door in the expansions (or a staircase) such that they go "off the board" ? The last hero might exit the board some other way, but on the new board, the party would all teleport to the same entrance door.

[wallydubbs]

The way the Dark Company is supposed to work, if the heroes go to the edge of the board, doesn't it work similar to an exit door in the expansions (or a staircase) such that they go "off the board" ? The last hero might exit the board some other way, but on the new board, the party would all teleport to the same entrance door.

That's the conflicting part about this quest, the group is not allowed to split up. What happens if 2 heroes leave one board and the other 2 leave from a different door... What then?
There's that one area where the alter replenishes the Wizard and Elf's spells. What if they need to replenish spells but the Barbarian and Dwarf are equipped enough to joyfully hack 'n slash their way through monsters... What then?

Understandably dividing the group isn't the wisest move, but sometimes it's necessary and this quest kinda negates that alternative. They have Pass Through Rock, what if it's used on a hero that ends up on a different section of the board that you could only access through another board. Two, sometimes 3 boards are required to fix these issues. So condensing the quest kinda sorta works. But I think other players would rather buy 3 boards and whole bunch of extra doors to make this playable.

[Kurgan]

Not to be argumentative, but you still don't need multiple boards to play this. People will do what they do of course. Some people want a unique miniature for every named character and a professionally printed card for each one-off quest note item. Some people can't stand the fact that some official quests call for too many pieces of furniture/doors (even though you just get around this by re-using parts from old rooms). I feel that, but you still don't need any extra assets to play this adventure "properly" than what you got in the box... the Game System + the 12 mercs (with 24 weapon options and cards).

Regarding the "exit off the board" issue:

You solve it like this... someone goes off board, they are (temporarily) "out of the game" and waiting for the rest of the group, just like the stairs/exit door in other quests. When the last person exits, then they all teleport together on the other side of the doorway on the same "new" board. The board is cleared, "reset" by their travel, that's it.

They don't instantly go onto another board and keep moving while everyone else is still on the old board. What are you going to do next, camp one hero on each board to prevent the monsters from "respawning"? Plus, the hero who has "gone rogue" on his own might not even make it to the next door alive... really bad idea since there's only one Elixir of Life (assuming you're using the maximalist interpretation of it, that a hero who died anywhere can be brought back to life and magically within sight of the one who used it to revive them instead of having to physically track down their body on the exact square they died as some prefer). I'll say it again, I thought along similar lines to a lot of people when all I knew was the Phoenix re-creation of the Dark Company, but studying the EU edition it makes a lot more sense how it was intended to work. And the goal of the quest isn't to explore everything and everywhere either, it's to kill two specific bad guys that are found in the same room and perhaps wipe out the bad guys in that same section, that's it. Do this and you win! (I don't think these bad guys regain their health if you happened to wound them and then run away to another board though).

Yes, there are a few accidental dupes of furniture, but they don't really change anything. To me the barrier to entry is more the extreme difficulty and time commitment on this one, than any concern about needing to buy extra sets. Even if you are lucky enough to have four game systems lying around to do that, you are going to have to make adjustments to gameplay anyway, because now you have to have a much bigger table and Morcar has to keep track of all of it, plus you could have people lingering on different boards (until they get killed of course).

What is the advantage of someone going off by themselves? At best they are hanging back to search for stuff, but under the EU rules, there's only one treasure search per room anyway (not like the NA edition where you get one for each hero). We can assume if you own the Dark Company you're playing under the 2nd EU edition rules rather than the first, so no worries about forgetting to search one of the corridors for treasure (this rule only existed in the 1st edition).

Now you might ask what happens if they all wander off in different directions and exit via different doors? I'm not even sure if that's possible unless they use Pass Through Rock (which is limited to one use in most cases, they need to visit the specific room to replenish that spell, right?). You could have Morcar "rule" that the majority of heroes exiting one area means they all teleport to that area rather than the alternate path someone else took.

Each section of the board you enter is kind of limited to a narrow corridor. Unless someone is using Pass Through Rock to go off path, I don't see any real effort on Morcar's part to fix it, least of all needing to own multiple sets. Dark Company was designed much like the "double quests" in other expansions, that you clear the board when the "last hero" exits. And what gets reset? Only the monsters that were killed come back. Treasures already found are no longer available (though in theory the "recharge" rooms could be re-used I suppose) including card searches of existing rooms which Morcar would ahve to keep track of.

Yeah, it would be cool to have four boards going at once and maybe multiple GMs running it, but the way the quest is meant to be played, you're covering little sections, narrow snippets of each area before you move onto the next board, not exploring the whole thing then going onto the next. I don't see there being much need for someone to even want to venture off, but if they did, it can easily be resolved using the logic above which already has precedent in the HQ world via the exit doors in KK/ROTWL (even without getting into the "double quests" of EQP/BQP which are under the NA rules).

[lestodante]

I agree with Kurgan when he says What is the advantage of someone going off by themselves?
I've always thought HeroQuest is a game to be played in group and the Heroes should never split unless there is some special situation forcing them to.
best way to play the original version of the DC would be with four boards and owning enough stuff to cover all the rooms. You can solve but inviting other friends with their own version of the game and mix all the pieces together (you may like to place a sign under your own stuff to recognize it) but if that's not possible, here is when Pancho's version comes in help.
As in many videogames the camera is looking where the main part of the group is walking and the single hero who leave the party is cut off the scene, you can force any solitary adventurer to re-join the party if they goes off from a section by locking all other exit doors, so he will have to come back and follow the rest of the group.

[Kurgan]

What to you is the advantage of having four boards and four sets... other than coolness? The heroes can't be on different boards at the same time (and placed monsters get reset as you travel from one board to another), and it will take up 4x the table space, right?

Yes, you could certainly combine your sets together to play this way, but why is it needed?

The only way a hero can "go off on his own" would be using pass through rock, but he will STILL be on the board with all the other heroes (even if he exits via a different door than they do), and once he exits, he comes over with them. Are you talking about changing it so that all four boards are "live" in real time? Monitoring four boards simultaneously with one hero running around fighting monsters on each one would be very "cool" but harder to manage and not what was intended by the original quest.

I think it's far easier to account for a single straying hero who uses Pass Through Rock to visit a different section by himself (and just teleport him to the rest of the group when he finally exits, no matter how he does so) than to manage four boards simultaneously.

But don't let me stop you. There are people who want to play Quests 9 & 10 in the Elf and Barbarian packs simultaneously. They can use two boards too if they want, you can do just about anything in HeroQuest with a little ingenuity... but HQ was designed as a game system, they didn't demand you buy multiple copies of anything to play these (small inconsequential errors like having a duplicate piece of furniture that shouldn't be there, notwithstanding). Some people prefer their modular dungeons, and this is about as close as you get with something like that, officially, short of going over to Advanced HeroQuest (not to be confused with this "HeroQuest: Advanced Quest edition") or Warhammer Quest.


Edit: Looking at the maps again I could see where you might not have a clear cut situation of "obviously they are going this way or that." I suppose Morcar could always let the heroes decide among themselves which board they should go through if they took different doorways... perhaps force them to do a roll off with red dice, highest roll decides (re-roll in the event of a tie).

Perhaps the heroes might beg Morcar to let them split into two pairs, trying to "cover more ground" going through two different doors. The trouble is that they will be purposely cut off from each other and only one hero (whoever has "pass through rock") could cross over to the other group, since you can't have someone leave and then immediately teleport back to the rest of the group on the other side, without clearing the board. Morcar will have to force the heroes to stay "together" in terms of which door they go through, and just teleport the one straggler. This is especially true at the end (spoilers) when otherwise the entire party won't be there to finish the final battle's objective. I guess the "guy who goes off on his own" could always be the one with PTR (Elf or Wizard, there are no spell scrolls in the EU edition and the Spell Ring doesn't exist either). There are opportunities to regain spells in two rooms which in theory could be used infinitely (a small compensation for the fact that the non-boss monsters are never truly defeated and the note treasures don't replenish though the card treasures can).

A possible exploit loophole? Moving from one board to the next re-shuffles the treasure deck (and restores all discarded cards, but you get to keep what you've found --here I assume cards are held onto until they are used and thus "discarded"). Then again I guess you don't get to go shopping here, but you could accumulate a large amount of gold this way, and about all the potions you could need as long as you know where the doors are. Some areas are dead ends so Morcar can't just say you're not allowed to re-enter the same door you came out of.