by Kurgan » Monday June 10th, 2024 7:03pm
Yeah I could easily imagine it having alternate sculpts of the classic heroes (perfect opportunity to have the female Dwarf and Wizard... maybe get all four alternates in there?). I could imagine a plastic bad guy for the boss and the rest of the monsters (and furniture as mentioned) be tiles or standees of some kind. Board could be constituted by tiles or a play mat. I think it will be stand alone with the pieces scaled to be compatible with other HQ boxes. We always worried about sets containing exclusives, imagine if one store had one unique mini while another had a different one. People would be annoyed!
Maybe a smaller level game, perhaps 2 heroes and Zargon? The Quest book might be smaller (designed around room tiles perhaps unless the board folds many more ways to compress it into a smaller box) but they could be all new adventures. Having some storyline tie into the past of HeroQuest (or the future) would be great.
The most boring thing would be if it were just the regular GS in a smaller box with things missing. Less of a good feeling to buy this then decide to buy the GS if it were that. But if it were new content it could motivate even veteran collectors like us to fork over to get whatever new things are inside.
If it's a Starter Set, that to me says simplicity. So while it could be a repository for all sorts of new rule clarifications as we've seen bandied about on social media or in digital format, instead I would see this as pretty basic and close to the GS (maybe even simplified).
What if the quests themselves were simple, like "The Maze," and "the Arena" of the 1st edition (before we had the ATOH one) and the first few quests of the Japanese Game System where they introduce you to magic gradually? Of course they could pack that into the game because it's just text at a certain point.
You still need dice, and if those are good quality dice (rather than some cheapo blank cubes with stickers or something like that, thinking of the horrendous ones included with the "HeroQuest Card Game") many would buy it just for that even if the pack was $50! If they really wanted to save some cost they could have it include 4 combat dice and 2 movement like the 1st edition.
You'd need a Treasure Deck (24 cards again or maybe only half that many?)... hero cards. Perhaps only a couple of Artifacts (or maybe none). No need for Dread Spells or maybe just a couple. Only have a small number of equipment cards perhaps just enough for the heroes included. At a certain point it would start to look like a glorified Hero Collection but less than one of the big expansions. Maybe it would be the size of a KK/ROTWL box?
Maybe the box itself would be the GM screen? Or at least it would include its own GM screen perhaps more of a fold out or multi-part thing.
Good point about the D&D Starter Set (of course keeping in mind D&D is at heart a pencil & paper RPG so you really only need dice and a booklet while HQ is a board game). I'm thinking of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, or the various Barnes and Noble "Bookshelf" games of Warhammer (but even simpler because you don't have to assemble the figures).