Ye Olde Inn

Greetings,
I supposed this topic had already been covered, but I searched this forum and didn't find one. If there is though, please let me know.

We have begun discussing about this issue in the "HeroQuest Rooms" subforum, and I thought it deserved a topic on its own in here.

In the EU version of the game, the armory is a deck of cards. This can have some usefulness (like explained in the linked topic above) but also sets a question: is each piece of equipment limited to the equipment card or not?
i.e. there is 1 "Battle Axe" equipment card. Can only one of my heroes purchase it and then no more battle axe is available, or not?

At first, we shouldn't even think there is a limitation, BUT something made a lot of people think this way: in the equipment deck, there are 2 "Shields" and 2 "Helmet" cards. So why having 2 cards of the same item, if cards are mere references?
When I was a young regular HQ player, I used to ask my fellow players to write down on their character sheet, if the equipment they got was found in a quest (in case they can have as much as they want), or if it resulted from an equipment card purchase. And you could indeed only purchase equipment still available in the deck and not yet owned by another hero.

But then later, I learned about the US rules, and I agreed that it was more logical that outside a dungeon, heroes could easily find more than a single Battle Axe or a single Staff for sale.
Additionally, I read that some people also think that pieces of equipment dedicated to the Wizard (such as the cape and something else I forgot) were "lost in translation" (even if EU is the original version? Can't remember..) and converted to an already existing card, hence making those duplicates. (those Wizard pieces don't exist in the EU version).

I don't have an English UK version of the official rules, but I have the French ones, and I believe they are the same. I checked them, and here is what I found:

lousily re-translated from French rules wrote:There exists a card for each piece of equipment. Any player wanting to purchase one, must choose a card, subtract the price of the bought piece and write down the advantages provided by this new piece of equipment. The spear, the club and the dagger, for instance, allow the character owning them to attack diagonally.
Remarks:
- A character cannot buy equipment if he hasn't enough money to do so.
- Money can be stacked and stored from one quest to another

What about "must choose a card"? The exact verb in French is "choisir", which could be translated by either "choose" or "pick up". Means once you get the card, no one else can, ever ? What about cross-player games? I play with friends A B C, A purchased a battle axe. Next day I play with friends B C D , and D cannot use a battle axe he purchased early, because A also owns it?
What about "write down" ? If you need to write down the advantages, it means you cannot see them live on the equipment card you then no possess?

This is one of these cloudy points in the European rules which is really annoying ...

What do you EU guys do ?

Possibly the creator intended HeroQuest as a gateway game into more involved RPG's. After the base game your love would be fuelled for that extra something, not more of same... but our love was so great, nothing else would do! It appears the base game was meant to be limited by cards and then that would be it, there was no more game. Then comes expansions, there's nothing wrong with an expansion introducing more cards or even an armoury, that's what expansions are for. It doesn't change the base game to specify, "Weapons are no longer limited to cards, you can now buy any and sell back what you've bought for 50%" (I don't allow sale of start weapons, but I wont get into why here, it's covered in depth else where).

If you're playing cross player games... you're already into mods, just do what you like! But if playing card restricted, if you played earlier and bought it, it's their toughies for not being there first.

People could always buy more cards from me. I sell on ebay!

In the US version there were no armor/weapon cards, so I would imagine in the EU system there would be jo limit.

In my opinion the equipment cards are meant for random draws on the weapons rack. Unless I'm mistaken aren't the heroes generally allowed to draw an equipment card at random when they reach certain weapon racks?
This feature was revoked from the NA version, but I would assume the extra sheild and helmet cards are to increase the likelihood of those draws. You'll me more likely to find a sheild or Helmet on the weapons rack. Heroes constantly buy daggers as 1 off throws, so I don't think they'd limit those.

wallydubbs wrote:In my opinion the equipment cards are meant for random draws on the weapons rack

That was the point some of use highlighted in the linked topic. Actually the only one explaining the duplicate cards, if we agree that heroes can all purchase an item represented by a single card.
But in the official quests, this feature didn't appear before some expansion (cannot remember which though), so in the basics game it still doesn't explain everything

Heroes constantly buy daggers as 1 off throws, so I don't think they'd limit those.

Yeah and that would mean rich heros could purchase a lot of daggers (but then again, with the unlimited ammo crossbow, you'd have a better weapon for cheaper).

The duplicate cards were only in the 1st edition EU version of the game. I believe many of the non-English language editions were based on this, and didn't get the revised rules in the 2nd edition English EU version.

In the 2nd edition EU, the two duplicate Equipment cards were replaced with the Wizard-only items (Cloak of Protection and Bracers).

Those items then carried over to the North American edition, but in a different form. I think they became Artifacts (Quest Treasures) rather than purchasable Equipment.


Now for the complicated part...

In the 1st edition EU, it seems that you can only buy something if a card is available. Otherwise they wouldn't have included duplicate cards. That means that the game is balanced around only one player ever having the Crossbow or the Tool Kit.

In the 2nd edition EU, things become unclear. There's only one of each Equipment card. So do you have to buy the card? Or is the Equipment deck just a handy 'reference guide' that you can write down on your character sheets? The rulebook makes it sound as if you take the physical card--but it doesn't strictly say that only one player can have each item. However, I think the quests are still designed around the assumption that only one player will have a Crossbow, only one will have a Broadsword, and so on. Between the Equipment cards and the Quest Treasures, it's still possible to equip all four players adequately.

While this is obviously unrealistic (what, there's only one Crossbow in the whole world?), it seems to work for gameplay purposes. For instance, if everyone has a Crossbow, the base game becomes far too easy.

However, once you get to the expansions, players end up with huge amounts of gold and nothing to spend it on. It makes more sense to let everyone buy their own Crossbow, their own Shield, and so on. It also seems more realistic. Unfortunately, the game isn't necessarily balanced for that...

Then the Adventure Design Kit is released. It has a new, larger character sheet with more room to write on. And the examples in the photos show that the player has written down their weapons and armour! Does this mean that by the time the ADK was released, the HeroQuest designers had decided that players aren't limited to the available cards?

In the NA edition, there's no confusion since everything is bought from the Armory rather than on cards and written down on character sheets.

Overall, I think this shows a progression from a more 'abstract gameplay' approach in the 1st edition (limiting the cards for game balance reasons), to a more 'realistic' approach later on (allowing or assuming everyone will just write down what they bought, because there must be more than one Spear in the world). I suspect that many EU players started houseruling that they could buy duplicates and write down the info. However, the original game wasn't really designed with that in mind.

The EU rules do state that you had to have the “Tool Kit card” to be able to disarm traps. (For both first and second edition.)

In EU heroquest the Equipment Card deck is the available equipment you can buy.
Later, in the Aventure Design Kit (i think it is released before the Against the Ogre Horde expansion) this rule changes with the presentation of the following character sheet.

A good point of clarification! The Japanese Game System also has doubles of a few equipment cards, going with the old Premiere (1st) Edition EU rule of having to have a card to have that equipment, implying a scarcity.