EU vs. NA rule comparison

[Oftkilted]

Two items that seem to have been flagged incorrectly:

Treasure
In the EU version “Between Quests” section on page 15 (of the EU rules) heroes:
- Keep any Quest treasure cards
- Spend any Treasure recorded on your character sheet to purchase better equipment
- May not keep ordinary Treasure cards. (Note: Found potions are ordinary treasure cards.)

Therefore, potions in EU rules wouldn’t be kept between adventures (which would put them back in the deck for the next adventure.) (Maybe potions have a high spoilage rate?)

In the NA rules you keep all the treasure between adventures.

Searching in Rooms and Passages (ie Searching for treasure outside of rooms):
While you can search rooms and passages the EU versions, but there are no instructions to address ‘searching for treasure in a passage’ and how you would get treasure when doing so.

“Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasure which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room the evil Wizard should reveal what treasure is hidden there. If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character Player must take the top Treasure card.”

If you’re searching for Treasure, you can see that the guidance is only guidance is only for gaining riches from “room searches” not for searches in passages. (Which is slightly disappointing as you can’t have wandering monsters jump heroes in passages.)

So, while the NA version calls it out specifically that you can’t search in Passages for treasure, the EU version is a more ‘round about’ and doesn’t call it out explicitly.

[Kurgan]

Two items that seem to have been flagged incorrectly:

Treasure
In the EU version “Between Quests” section on page 15 (of the EU rules) heroes:
- Keep any Quest treasure cards
- Spend any Treasure recorded on your character sheet to purchase better equipment
- May not keep ordinary Treasure cards. (Note: Found potions are ordinary treasure cards.)

Therefore, potions in EU rules wouldn’t be kept between adventures (which would put them back in the deck for the next adventure.) (Maybe potions have a high spoilage rate?)

Interesting. I read the same thing you did but I didn't interpret it that way at all. I was thinking by that it meant you RECORD THEM ON YOUR SHEET but return the physical card to the deck (so another chance to get the potion). So you wouldn't end up with a situation where you knew all the "good cards" were discarded or held and only "bad" ones were left. But Artifacts are "one of a kind" and so they get held onto (called "Quest Treasures" in the EU version).

In the NA rules you keep all the treasure between adventures.

But also in the NA version you're supposed to just copy down what the card said onto your character sheet, you don't get to hang onto the card, even within the quest. That doesn't mean you cross it off if you don't use it. Right?

Either that or at the local pub you're downing Potion shots to celebrate...

Searching in Rooms and Passages (ie Searching for treasure outside of rooms):
While you can search rooms and passages the EU versions, but there are no instructions to address ‘searching for treasure in a passage’ and how you would get treasure when doing so.

In the Premiere edition (first edition in the UK, which came packed with the Maze) you can. I imagine you'd find treasure the same way you'd find treasure anywhere else, you just do. And you get a card.

The only actual error I see is that the NA version mentions you can search for secret doors while in a Pit Trap. Well unless you're somehow staying in the pit and finding them in the surrounding room, that makes no sense. No secret door is ever found inside a pit, and putting one there would be madness, because that means you'd be required to have someone fall in first!

“Some of the Quests provide details about specific treasure which can be found by searching. If a character searches for treasure in the appropriate room the evil Wizard should reveal what treasure is hidden there. If there is no specific treasure listed for that room then the character Player must take the top Treasure card.”

If you’re searching for Treasure, you can see that the guidance is only guidance is only for gaining riches from “room searches” not for searches in passages. (Which is slightly disappointing as you can’t have wandering monsters jump heroes in passages.)

We got the Wandering Monster traps in later quest packs so there you go, I guess.

So, while the NA version calls it out specifically that you can’t search in Passages for treasure, the EU version is a more ‘round about’ and doesn’t call it out explicitly.

They probably figured it was too easy so removed the statement that you could. I agree that in general the NA version, while more clear on certain things is explicitly different in many ways.

Good stuff.

Being reminded of this classic thread, here are my comments from the Remake thread:


In the EU version, you can open Secret doors from EITHER SIDE. NA version makes no such clarification.

In the NA version, you can search for secret doors as long as no monsters are VISIBLE TO YOU (in the NA version, "visible" means "line of sight") but it specifically says Treasure searches require the room be "not inhabited by monsters" (explicitly says no searching for Treasure in corridors.. this was only something you could do in the Premiere Edition).

I also missed that indeed all four Heroes can each search a room ONCE for Treasure in the NA version. In the past I played either unlimited searches or each room got searched once (much easier to keep track of). Oops.

Treasure deck gets shuffled before each Quest (which is how we always played it). It is also implied they are shuffled before each draw too. The EU version says you shuffle each time a bad card is returned. It says "random card" which could mean top card (as in EU version) or could mean "pick a card, any card" from the deck, I suppose.

It will be interesting to see how the NA rules are interpreted in the Remake, I'm guessing more or less verbatim.

After all these years I realize now you could have a sneaky way to protect yourself from Wandering Monsters. Position yourself in the room such that you are boxed in, so there are no open squares for a Monster to attack you. So you need some Heroes to be there. Remember, the Wandering Monster only attacks the searcher this turn. So yes, still be ready for the attack on Zargon's turn, but the Searcher can be defended! You don't have to be right next to a chest to search it in the NA rules, but you can use furniture to your advantage, to further block possible Wandering Monster attacks. Cover!

As I read the NA rules, when you open a door, everything is revealed in the room. So what is the point of "looking through the doorway"? I guess just to see if you can target an enemy with your ranged weapon or spell (or a friendly with your spell).

[Oftkilted]

Something to be aware of is that in the EU version determining what can be seen (page 9) miniatures in the same room are always visible. You would only check for visibility looking into a different room, or when in a corridor/passage and looking into a room.
So there is no situation where you’d be able to search for traps/treasure/secret doors in a room that had monsters in it in the euro version because other miniatures are always visible.

Logically that makes more sense to me than someone attempting to search while being in-danger of being attacked.

[Kurgan]

Lots of little subtle differences that give them character.

Not just differences of gameplay or difficulty or content but also style, as others have said.

The EU Hero (or "character" or "turn" cards) are taller and rectangular (and show a picture of Morcar, which I guess was always supposed to be Mentor, according to some, setting aside what the PC games and sticker album lead one to believe.. he's still Zargon to me dangit!) while the NA cards are square and don't use that cursive ("Gaze") font but nice little boxes for the numbers.

The EU character sheet refers to "tasks completed" (so keeping track of Quests by name, which takes up more room, but if you're playing lots of customs and out of order it makes more sense) while NA has numbers (1-14) to circle and nice little boxes for Body points (use bottom row for mind points, is suggested). EU character sheet also has a little shield where you can make your own coat of arms doodle. Also the Adventure Design Kit came with little stickers you were supposed to put on your sheet when you became a Champion.

I like the idea of Champion and Knight as achievable ranks and tried to make them more meaningful in my house rules (and I'm not the first to attempt this of course).

The EU regions got Against the Ogre Horde (Ogres with variable body points, meaning the first one might have 1 body point, the second might have 3, the third 2, etc. depending upon the quest), Dark Company (4 part quest with good and evil mercenaries!) which was in a special edition of the basic set called "Advanced Quest" (not to be confused with Advanced Hero Quest which was like a more complicated modular dungeon re-make/re-imagining where you fight ratmen, aka skaven) and Wizards of Morcar that gave you midnight blue evil wizard bosses and more red men at arms. While the NA got the Elf and Barbarian Quest packs where you got blue pieces, and some of the same miniatures (ogres-but they're only dark blue, and mercenaries that are gray). Both regions got Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord expansions.

The colors are different... I haven't seen them all, but I notice the EU undead tend to be more white/offwhite, while the NA undead are almost a light yellow color (and not just from the aging plastic). NA Heroes are almost a burgundy red in some cases and that greenskins are a rich dark green. I've seen other sets where the reds are much brighter and so too the greens. Rare examples of black figures (not primed, made of actual black plastic). I've seen pics of Ogres (not the Ogre Warriors which were originally red, but others) that are red variants.

The art style on the EU cardbacks tends to be a more sketchy, ink drawing, or comic book style. The NA cardbacks often looks like an oil panting or pastel drawing render of those same images to look more lifelike. In the various other versions the Monster cards are red or purple on the back, while the monster portrait in the NA version is drained of color, being a brown ink on white background, similar to the drawings you find on the card faces. The EU cards tend to have a brown "faux tattered scroll" border around the faces, while the NA do not.

The NA set came with 6 white combat dice instead of only 4.

The EU manuals are portrait style, and the covers tend to be full color (except the original one which is grayscale) while the NA manuals are landscape and tend to be black and white with oranges and reds (some other colors in the later editions, for example blues in the Frozen Horror).

EU had different # of equipment (bracers, cloak of protection, hand axe and spear) than NA (lacked those items but had longsword and dagger), while NA lacked equipment cards it had the armory "menu" board and chaos spell cards (EU got these in WOM expansion coded to specific characters and ATOH used tokens representing usages of these spells). NA got extra artifacts (wizard's cloak/staff, elixir of life, spell ring, ring of return; wand of magic which is equivalent to wand of recall) and also got new artifacts (the equivalent of new "quest treasures") in expansions (KK & ROTWL had armband of healing, rabbit boots, anti-poison quill, fire ring, dust of disappearance, magical throwing dagger and a variety of spell scrolls that allow barbarian/dwarf to use magic... spell scrolls would also appear in EQP/BQP). And different prices and abilities of said equipment and artifacts/quest treasures. Several EU chaos spells from ATOH/WOM appear in modified form either in the NA GS Chaos Spell deck, or in later NA exclusive expansions (Mind Blast, Rust, Lightning Bolt, Fear, etc).

It was cool to see the Japanese game system had even more differences! For brevity's sake I should read through the whole thread and edit my posts, but I wanted to get my thoughts out first. Nice going!

[Oftkilted]

Two items that seem to have been flagged incorrectly:

Treasure
In the EU version “Between Quests” section on page 15 (of the EU rules) heroes:
- Keep any Quest treasure cards
- Spend any Treasure recorded on your character sheet to purchase better equipment
- May not keep ordinary Treasure cards. (Note: Found potions are ordinary treasure cards.)

Therefore, potions in EU rules wouldn’t be kept between adventures (which would put them back in the deck for the next adventure.) (Maybe potions have a high spoilage rate?)

Interesting. I read the same thing you did but I didn't interpret it that way at all. I was thinking by that it meant you RECORD THEM ON YOUR SHEET but return the physical card to the deck (so another chance to get the potion). So you wouldn't end up with a situation where you knew all the "good cards" were discarded or held and only "bad" ones were left. But Artifacts are "one of a kind" and so they get held onto (called "Quest Treasures" in the EU version)).

For what happens to treasure cards:
In the EU version it calls out that the value of gems and gold are written on your sheet and then the cards are discarded. Potions aren’t called out as being transferred to your character sheet. The EU rules specifically call out that you don’t get to keep normal treasure cards at the end of the quest, and potions are normal treasure cards.

Sure, as the evil Wizard one could determine that is how you’re implementing it. But the rules don’t tell you to write the potions down. From a gaming perspective that would limit the specialized carried potions from dungeons and control how difficult an adventure is.

The Euro version has: Holy Water, Heroic Brew, 2x Potions of Healing, Resilience, Strength and Speed all as standard treasure cards. (Which are fewer healing, but more alternate potions.)

Other than potions bought by the adventurers (which decreases their gold), the evil Wizard then knows how many of these potions will be in an adventure normally. And can plan accordingly.

[Kurgan]

Hmmm. And if you take the strict approach that you can't sell stuff back, that certainly changes things. In some ways the EU version is pathetically easy, in other ways it's harder.

So you'd agree that bought potions stick around? Because imagine if you bought it and it "expired." Ouch.

As for planning, I'm not sure Morcar can do much of that unless he's making up a new Quest or modding an existing one. Potions are going to be random with the searches and monster placement is pre-determined. If he's trying to kill off the Heroes or just torture them, he can do that, regardless.

[Oftkilted]

Yeah, bought potions aren’t “treasure cards.” So they wouldn’t ‘spoil’ and the card gets shuffled back into the deck, they’re purchased ‘fancy potions’ from the alchemist shop. They are not some strange brew they found in a dungeon from a dirty glass and questionable sanitation. Not these, these are made from the genuine highest quality “safe” ingredients.

The evil Wizard knows that in an EU game there will always be (when using a standard deck) those rewards.

They also know they will only show up a specific number of times. You don’t have to worry about the party of four heroes that all have found potions of Heroic Brew. Or the Barbarian that has a full bandolier of potions ... one for every occasion. (Maybe even two!)

[Kurgan]

Strange Brew, eh?

[Jalapenotrellis]

Heroic brew really is OP vs bosses. After playing D&D, probably gonna be less by the book with my HeroQuest group. If they die, that makes it more fun. If they never die, it actually is less fun. Gives them something to come back from.

[Oftkilted]

Strange Brew, eh?

I do want to be clear, there are no refunds for potions with mice in them. They’re part of our specialty “protein drink” line of potions. And we normally charge extra.