23 Men-at-arms cards, what are they?

[Pekka]

So I'm doing this DIY HeroQuest Expansions project, and now that I look at what YeOldeInn offers as pdf's and what the quest book says there should be, I need to re-print some men-at-arms cards. What do the 23 cards actually include? Six of what three men-at-arms and five of one?

[Maurice76]

So I'm doing this DIY HeroQuest Expansions project, and now that I look at what YeOldeInn offers as pdf's and what the quest book says there should be, I need to re-print some men-at-arms cards. What do the 23 cards actually include? Six of what three men-at-arms and five of one?

Yup. It had something to do with the space of the cards in the printsheet. Adding a 6th of the one that has only 5 would have required them to use a whole new sheet or something, for each expansion copy.

The one that has only 5 is the Halberdier, if I am not mistaken. The others are the Crossbowman, the Scout and the Swordsman, 6 of each.

[lestodante]

My opinion is that they printed 64 cards deck as a standard. Wizards of Morcar is one of that expansions that should be developed better but for some reason they didn't.
So I guess they filled the deck by putting lot of Men-At-Arms cards (4 are enough, but if you want to give reference for all type of men-at-arms to all the 4 players you only need 16 (4x4)... If Morcar also need a copy for his reference just add 4 more and they are 20. So all that cards are for sure a "filler" to reach 64 cards in total. A real pity in my opinion because they could have put lot of different stuff (new artifacts, new set of spells, new treasures, weapons and so on...)

[Pekka]

Thanks to the both of you! I usually play with just one friend playing multiple characters at once, so the current deck with two cards of each would be enough for that. Maybe I'll print some more just in case anyway.

[Maurice76]

My opinion is that they printed 64 cards deck as a standard. Wizards of Morcar is one of that expansions that should be developed better but for some reason they didn't.
So I guess they filled the deck by putting lot of Men-At-Arms cards (4 are enough, but if you want to give reference for all type of men-at-arms to all the 4 players you only need 16 (4x4)... If Morcar also need a copy for his reference just add 4 more and they are 20. So all that cards are for sure a "filler" to reach 64 cards in total. A real pity in my opinion because they could have put lot of different stuff (new artifacts, new set of spells, new treasures, weapons and so on...)

I am doing this from memory, but if I recall correctly, then players would take one of the available Mercenary Cards when hiring one. This means the available stack decreases, the more mercenaries are hired. This way, players could only hire a total of 6 of any of the given types, 5 of the Halberdiers. So suppose one player would hire 3 Halberdiers, there'd be only 2 more left for the other Heroes to hire.

[Pancho]

I thought the number of mercenaries you could have of a certain type was simply limited by the weapons that were available. I.e. 3 halberderdiers, 3 scouts etc.

[lestodante]

In fact, not by the cards. 6 weapons for each of the 4 type and a total of 12 men-at-arms miniatures.
And the players can chose what kind of soldier to hire.

[Kurgan]

I always wondered about that number of men-at-arms cards (way more than needed). It seemed strange that all of a sudden they were concerned about the player just losing these cards so they needed a bunch of spares. Filler...

But it is limited by the weapons. Zargon can always limit the actual number of hires by saying only these Mercs showed up that day I suppose. I like that idea myself anyway.

A better use of paper would have been to include tokens for each hero to better keep track of which Mercs belong to which. I made some myself (but have yet to play a quest where they were needed!).