Today my regular game group (also known as cousins) had a hankering to play Heroquest, which was a staple of earlier years but has been sadly neglected in recent times. Below is an overly long write-up of events. Please note that I'm typing this after midnight so it might get a bit silly.
Last time, we got as far as completing Quest 1 of Against the Ogre Horde before stalling (also known as giving up). Our problem was that the heroes were under-equipped for this difficult quest pack. A few deaths during Return of the Witch Lord had left us with less gear and gold than was strictly ideal. Because of this, before we continued on with Quest 2, we went back to the base game quests and played Bastion of Chaos to see if we could upgrade our heroes a bit.
Now technically speaking you're not supposed to do this if you play through the Ogre quests as a series, but what would Heroquest be without a little cheeky customisation? Our cunning justification was that we had simply chosen to play Quest 1 as an individual adventure, you see, so we were totally free to go off and do something else afterward. So there. (Actually, we just assumed that our heroes had realised they were in over their heads and bravely ran away, Sir Robin style, to fight another day.)
Starting with a base game quest also helped our Evil Wizard player get back into the swing of things after a gap of several years. She absolutely insists on being the Evil Wizard player but, unlike me, didn't waste untold hours of her childhood reading the old quest books and making new maps, with the feeble excuse of not having been born when Heroquest came out. So some of the finer points of Heroquesting occasionally escape her. In Ogre Horde, for example, she and we missed the rule about Pit of Darkness traps being un-disarmable. One corridor was therefore rendered quite a bit easier by the Dwarf unjustly applying his trowel and polyfilla. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I should add that although I've played the base game quests quite a few times, as well as Kellar's Keep, I had only played the Ogre Horde quests a grand total of once and that was long, long ago when lizardmen roamed the earth. I couldn't remember much about the individual quest maps--which was ideal from the point of view of a hero player.
Note that we were playing the original UK/EU edition of the game and the quest pack (not a fanmade North American localisation and not the recent Hasbro remake). However, we did play with a couple of house rules. One was that Fimir, Mummies and Chaos Warriors have 2 Body Points each and Gargoyles have 3. (In the EU game as written they only have 1BP each--something I'm considering going back to, as increasingly I'm finding that extra BP for ordinary monsters just creates roadblocks that slow the game down.)
The other rule we were using is that when a trap is discovered by a search, but not yet triggered, the pit trap or falling block trap is placed on the trigger square upside-down. It can then be disarmed. The UK default rules place the tile face-up once found, which means you end up with an open pit trap that you can then disarm, or a fallen block that you can then disarm. These trap rules as written have always struck me as silly, which is why I introduced the house rule years ago. The Ogre Horde quest we played, however, was of course designed with the default rules in mind, and our reckless tweaking was to have unforeseen consequences...
The preliminaries in Bastion of Chaos went smoothly enough, apart from a frankly unfair number of Fimirs jumping on the Wizard and Dwarf whenever they searched for treasure, while the Barbarian and Elf were showered with potions and gold. We didn't walk away with all that much money but the Wizard did acquire the magic sword Orcs Bane (a whole two attack dice!!!) and a couple of shields and helmets were purchased in the aftermath.
Before starting Quest 2 of Ogre Horde, though, we decided to add one extra wrinkle: the hireable Men-at-Arms from the Wizards of Morcar quest pack. I had never, ever, ever, ever used these (or anything else from that quest pack) but given the Ogre Horde's legendary difficulty and the fact that you only need to be a Champion to hire Men-at-Arms, it seemed worthwhile introducing them now. Besides, they were cheap as chips. Each of us dipped a toe in the mercenary waters by hiring just one Man-at-Arms each, and each was a different type, so we covered the four available (Swordsman, Halberdier, Scout and Crossbowman).
The quest began in rather cramped conditions--we were stuck between two stone doors.* The right-hand one refused to budge despite several attempts so we made our way down the left corridor. With eight figures instead of two (each hero and his Samwise) things got cluttered quickly, especially when the first room turned out to contain more monsters than the entire Bastion of Chaos quest (or at least that was how it felt at the time).
*The rules for opening stone doors are a bit ambiguous but we instinctively assumed that each hero could only try once per turn, and couldn't do so in the middle of his movement. Sheer impatience, and the thought of the Elf getting to treasure and/or excitingly violent death before he did, led the Dwarf to give up trying the right-hand door and chase after his rival.
Rounding the first corner, the Scout (who, by the way, can search for and disarm traps) completely failed to notice the false flagstone ahead of him and set off a swinging blade trap... which he ducked, whereupon it smacked into his master the Elf behind him. Luckily it must have either been blunt or hit the Elf with the flat of the blade, since it only took off a single Body point and decreased the likelihood of the Scout being rehired in future. Reckless play of this sort is par for the course in our games. Despite our supposed adulthood we tend to play like a bunch of headstrong competitive nine-year-olds rather than careful and cautious professionals.
A little way past the swung blade trap we opened a door that contained a cosy fireplace, a bookshelf hazardously close to the fireplace, two distinctly un-cosy-looking Orcs and a positively discomfiting Ogre. Uh oh. Ogres in the original EU game have the infamous 'variable Body point' mechanism whereby you're never sure how many hits a particular Ogre will take before it keels over. Some people don't like it but I do find that it makes Ogres menacingly unpredictable--just how many times do I have to hit the &$#@ thing? Is it worth using a spell on it? And so on.
Anyway, the Wizard and his Halberdier bodyguard were relying on the Elf and Scout to bottle up the Ogre in his room while the more fragile parties tiptoed past. Naturally the Elf and Scout chose that moment to run for the hills (or at least both ends of the corridor), suddenly leaving Wiz and Halbie within stabbing range of the annoyed monsters. The Halberdier promptly lost his head (that's not a metaphor) and the Wizard took a battering. Words were exchanged, oaths were uttered and reminders were raised that the EU game allows players to attack other players. We're family. Of course we don't cooperate.
(Meanwhile, the Crossbowman who was in the pay of the Dwarf kept finding that he never got to shoot anything due to the line-of-sight rules in corridors.)
A slightly confused sequence of events later (involving some falling block traps and the Evil Wizard player getting confused about which square triggers the trap and which square the block actually lands on), we had circled the main central room, sealed behind two stone doorways. The quest notes say that to complete this quest the heroes must clear the room of monsters and be the only ones inside for a full turn. What exactly it means by 'completing the quest' isn't quite clear but we assumed that we had to do this AND THEN leave by the exit door, wherever that was.
It proved easier said than done. Not only did we have to contend with several Chaos Warriors and a Fimir, but an Ogre and another two Orcs in a side room someone foolishly opened. This particular Ogre turned out to be so incredibly fat that he had to be practically pincushioned by swords and arrows before somebody finally hit a vital organ. (It took five hits to bring this guy down, and he was defending on five dice too! In fact he was supposed to be an Ogre Champion but the Evil Wizard player misread the icon. It didn't actually make a difference because Champions and regular Ogres have exactly the same stats--something that has bothered me for, oh, I don't know, thirty years now. WHAT IS THE POINT?!? Ahem. No I'm not obsessing over a tiny detail of a game from the early 90s.)
After much death, destruction, unwise moves and general bickering, the monsters were dealt with, but both the Scout and Swordsman had lost their 1-Body-point lives in the service of their regrettably amateurish masters. The Crossbowman however did get to bounce his bolts ineffectually off several Chaos Warriors yet somehow live to tell the tale. And the Elf had used his Pass Through Rock spell to charge into the room directly for a pincer attack rather than go the long way round. This is important. Please take notes for later.
The main room threw up another hiccup (that's a mixed metaphor) when the notes talked about two treasure chests in the room, which were nowhere to be found on my dog-eared vintage copy of the quest book. Eventually we swapped the table for two chests and called it a day. Anyway, the Elf took all the gold and the special healing potion. Typical.
At this point total and utter disaster struck--little did we know at the time...
Being in an understandable hurry to find the exit door and get the heck out of this place before we ran into any more 5-attack-dice Ogres with kidneys for days, we decided to head south-west toward everybody's favourite little cell rooms that really show off the fact that classic Heroquest miniatures have bases too big for the squares. There turned out to be quite a lot of Goblins down this way, for some reason presumably involving the torture rack also found in this region. Plus a couple of Fimirs. The Fimir in the first room had some Goblin mates, but the Fimir in the second cell room was all by himself. In retrospect that ought to have seemed suspicious. It did not seem suspicious. The Elf moved in to fight him first, and when he abjectly failed to dispatch the one-eyed horror, the Dwarf felt it was time to show him how it was done. He rolled a big move and sprinted into the cell to stop just in front of the Fimir. As he did so, the Dwarf player (me) said with accidental but perfect comedy timing, "Hey, was that move OK? We haven't seen any traps in a while. I don't suppose I've just stepped on anythi--?"
"Funny you should say that," interrupted the Evil Wizard player with a glint in her eye. "FALLING BLOCK TRAP!"
The trigger was the square I'd stopped on--right in front of the Fimir. The arrow square where it actually fell was right in front of the door we'd entered by. A cave-in cutting off the Dwarf and Elf from the rest of the party behind them. They would have to find another way out.
Oh, well, never mind! It's hardly the first time. They would just have to take the long way round to the exit. The designers always include multiple paths! No worries! She'll be right!
Ahahaha. Ha.
While the Dwarf and Elf continued their campaign to wade through the Goblins (and the surprise Gargoyle who was overseeing the torture chamber), the Barbarian, Wizard and last surviving Man-at-Arms headed northwest in search of the fabled 'other way out'. In the room where they'd originally met the especially fat Ogre, now empty, a search by the Wizard revealed no fewer than three pit traps in a row across the middle of the room. He'd come within a square of walking right into them. With the Dwarf separated from the rest of the group, no disarmament was possible. They'd have to jump the untriggered traps.
Confidently the Barbarian made a running leap, tripped, and fell headfirst into the leftmost pit. Ow.
The unsettled Wizard carefully measured the distance, checked for uneven flagstones and other trip hazards, tested the dungeon wind speed and direction, and finally stopped stalling and jumped. Into the pit in the centre. Ow.
Hearing the screams and pained curses of the two doughty Heroes, the Crossbowman swallowed nervously and wiped his brow. Never had he been more acutely conscious of his one and only Body Point. What was a mere flesh wound to his employers would be certain death for him. To make it worse, they were both staring at him in unsavoury anticipation.
Naturally he cleared the pit in a single bound. The Barbarian and Wizard shouted "WHAT?!" in unison.
The adrenaline rush of his success sent the Crossbowman straight through the door and into the north corridor. He was ready to tackle Morcar's whole monstrous army! Except possibly for the Ogre who was standing right outside the door. Eep.
The Barbarian and Wizard rushed to his aid. In the course of events two more Ogres were discovered in a nearby room and dispatched. The Crossbowman made up for his earlier uselessness by slaying TWO Ogres himself, by shooting them in the bum as they tried to brain the Heroes at the other end of the corridor. He didn't manage it singlehandedly, mind you. The Wizard cunningly cast Courage on him to double his crossbow dice. (We weren't quite sure this was allowable per the rules but hey, it seemed fun.) Still, it was an impressive performance and we would have called him the MVP and possibly the GOAT if we were playing by North American rules. As it was, he had to settle for 'bonza'.
Meanwhile the Dwarf and Elf discovered that beyond the torture chamber of infinite Goblins there lay... THE EXIT DOOR! At last! Both of them promptly disappeared through it to Quest 3. Also important. Take notes.
In the northwest corner of the board the Barbie, Wizard and strutting, preening Crossbowman found a particularly musty and ancient door. Within it they found bones... walking bones! At least that was what the Crossbowman yelled. I can't think why. Maybe it was a reference or something. One Skeleton in particular turned out to be a confirmed ghost: absolutely nobody could roll a skull to hit him, nor could he roll a skull to hit anybody else, for three or four turns in a row. Finally the Wizard figured out the proper ghostbusting incantation and crossed his stream (that might be a metaphor) to banish the ectoplasmic threat.
Beyond that room lay a tomb with two bandaged lurching figures in it. Gamely the heroes (and hero of the hour) readied their weapons once more.
But at that moment a sinister voice boomed through the caves...
"Do you want to keep playing or should we call it now?" the Evil Wizard player said wearily.
The hero players exchanged glances. It had, in fact, been a long and gruelling Quest and it was getting a bit late.
"I'm happy to keep going," said the Barbarian player.
"So am I," said the Wizard and Crossbowman player (me again).
The Evil Wizard player sighed and said, "Well, the thing is, you're $%&@ed. There's no way for you to reach the exit."
"What?" we said in unison.
"No, really. I've checked the map over and over again and I'm pretty sure. Here, look." And she took the unprecedented step of showing us the map.
It was true. There was no alternative route. The falling block had permanently cut us off from the Dwarf and Elf and the exit. The designers really had been that fiendish.
Against the Ogre Horde, ladies and gentlemen! Living up to its reputation once again!
After some disbelieving debriefing we decided that the Barbarian and Wizard clearly weren't trapped forever (they could at least get back to the starting door) so they would escape the caves and survive... but they would be unable to continue on with the Ogre quests. Only the Dwarf and Elf, plus two newbies, could venture on. To be continued?
But that's not the funny part. The funny part is that, hours later, I realised that the designers hadn't been quite so fiendish after all. We had been using our house rule that traps could only be disarmed when discovered but not yet triggered. Once the block fell, it was permanent and couldn't be moved. But that wasn't the EU rule that the Ogre Horde designers were working under. They assumed that the Dwarf could disarm a fallen block AFTER it was placed on the board. I had never liked that rule because it rendered pointless some otherwise nifty party-separating traps (like the one in Barak Tor in the base game). Here, though, it would have saved two members of the party from being left behind. But it wouldn't have saved us if we remembered it after we realised we were stuck... because the Dwarf had already left the building, thinking, "I'm sure they'll be fine."
(We also missed a few interesting things, like most of the rooms up in the northeast corner, as well as some extra treasure in the southeast. There's a curious secret door there that I really like: it opens behind a table, meaning that it reveals the treasure room but you can't get into it from that side. You have to find the other secret door leading into the same room. I hope that was intentional and not a typo.)
All told, though, it was long, it was tough, it was memorably lethal and it was fun. The Men-at-Arms worked pretty well too and I found them more fun to play than I was expecting. They die easily, so they're probably not worth the price in strict cost-benefit terms, but it's surprisingly entertaining to have extra figures to control--it brings some much-needed variety to the game. You have to weigh up whether to risk their fragile lives to protect your Hero, or try to look after them (so they can risk their lives for you later)! I have a feeling it would become hard to keep track of which figure belonged to which player if you had several each, though. Might need numbers written under the bases or something like that.
