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First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 7th, 2013, 12:32 pm
by Balinor
So the Wife and Daughter went out of town for some Disney Princess show and the boys (12 and 9) and I had the house to ourselves. The boys have been wanting to play Heroquest all week since I discovered this forum and began dragging my stuff out. So the game was on.

My 12 year old got the Honor of being Zargon and has been reviewing the rules for the past couple of days.
The 9 year old chose the Mage and the Dwarf. I of course end up with the Barbarian and the Elf.

Game start 6pm.

The trial. This brutal dungeon crawl had taken quite a toll on our resources. Low on BP and spells and the treasure deck was not kind to us for healing potions, but we only had two rooms left, so we decided to press on. Entering a room with two Chaos Warriors proved our undoing and led to a TPK. At this point I realized just how much Zargon was enjoying his role as he laughed a bit to maniacally to blame it all on being in character. Evil little spawn I have. We decided for the sake of time that instead of restarting the entire adventure that we would allow new characters to enter and finish up what was left, the fact that most of the treasure in the dungeon had been discovered and then lost was penalty enough to make up for what we thought would be an easy finish. Truth be told those last two rooms took a heave toll on us still and burned any resources we found while searching for treasure.

The second quest Search for Sir Ragnar turned out to be a blood bath. The beginning went well, just a bunch of pesky Goblins running around the halls, but then as we enter our first set of rooms and discover that we have found Sir Ragnar and were about to finish the quest with ease, an alarm sounds and all hell breaks loose as the game board suddenly populates with monsters everywhere. Realizing now that we are in a race for our lives the elf uses Pass Through Stone and makes for the exit room door way to try to block the passage from being overrun by monsters. The dwarf and mage make their way toward the exit of Sir Ragnar's prison chambers to run interference for the Barbarian and Ragnar.
Zargon's forces came around the center exit chamber from both directions and the elf was surrounded on both sides infront of the door. The mage who got near the growing hoarde of evil a bit sooner than the dwarf was our first casualty. The Barbarian soon caught up to the dwarf and the two stood side by side with Sir Ragnar standing behind with the exit in sight but unreachable. Not many turns later the elf although he took a couple orcs and goblins out bit the dust. The dwarf with only one hit point facing a goblin leading a small band of Orcs decided to skip his attacks to keep the weaker creature between him and the more powerful orcs. The Barbarian who still had good health began a long process of taking out the creatures and all was starting to look good until the Dwarfs defense roll failed him. With the hole in the line Sir Ragnar was hit by a goblin and injured. The warrior with one last heroic effort drank a potion of Heroic Brew and took out two orcs leaving only a few more creatures to deal with but more importantly opening a path to escape. Sir Ragnar took advantage of the situation and ran past the Barbarian into the room which was for the time safely blocked by our Broadsword toting friend. It was then that I became greedy. The barbarian kept taking the enemy out and with only one BP left I slew the last creature on the board. I then picked up the remaining gear from my fallen friends and explored the rooms we had not yet seen. Knowing I could not live through another wandering monster, I searched for traps and treasure only when there was a chest and managed to get a chunk of gold from one. I then returned Sir Ragnar to safety and collected the reward.

We recruited another party to join me and moved on to quest 3. At this point we had a bit of gear and Zargon allowed us to sell extra equipment back to the Armory for half price.
Needless to say when we finially finished at 1am in the morning we had completed 5 quest and were exhausted but my boys are now die hard fans of Heroquest and my son is already talking about some house rulings and future quest designs :)

Can't wait to report on future games.

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 7th, 2013, 12:47 pm
by Sjeng
Sweet! Amazing story :D
Did you take pictures? Can't wait for my boy to get old enough to play xD He's 1 :P

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 7th, 2013, 1:01 pm
by knightkrawler
I'm sure he can throw dice, Sjeng. And even that he doesn't need to because of the monument of a dice tower you made.
Nice story, Balinor. The evil maniac seems to take after me. Could you PM me a picture of your wife, please, just to play it safe...

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 7th, 2013, 1:21 pm
by ampersand
knightkrawler wrote:I'm sure he can throw dice, Sjeng. And even that he doesn't need to because of the monument of a dice tower you made.
Nice story, Balinor. The evil maniac seems to take after me. Could you PM me a picture of your wife, please, just to play it safe...



haha for your sake KC i do hope he gets the humour!

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 7th, 2013, 11:57 pm
by Balinor
Any pictures I have of my wife are not safe to post on the internet :). Anyway, another session today TEN hours. Finished the last of the quest in the original quest book. Crazy last battle took almost 40 minutes and drained every resource we had. What a blast. Next we will play Kellar's Keep, is there a preferred order to play the expansions? What if I throw in the Euro expansions and the quest from magazines, where do they fit best?

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 8th, 2013, 2:52 am
by knightkrawler
Balinor wrote:Any pictures I have of my wife are not safe to post on the internet.


Oh, it's her then... Well... take care of her and our evil offspring.

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 8th, 2013, 4:57 am
by Thantos
Balinor wrote: Anyway, another session today TEN hours.


Remember to take time out to eat and sleep! :P Sounds like you guys have the heroquest bug! Make sure to intro the lads to painting minis, as a kid and teenager, mini painting really helped me :D

Cant advise on quests since you are further on with the game than my group!!!

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 8th, 2013, 9:55 pm
by gootchute
The rescue of Sir Ragnar was truly epic!

An interesting choice to let your son play Zargon in his first game, I've only introduced people as heroes. Not that it is more difficult or kids can't handle it, I was Zargoning it up at age 6!

The number one house rule I would recommend is something to prevent the doorway blocking tactic. Allowing all miniatures to attack diagonally prevents this (you need to give diagonal weapons something cool to compensate, such as attacking two squares away). Search the forum for other suggestions, and have fun!

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 8th, 2013, 10:30 pm
by Balinor
The choice to let him be Zargon was two fold. He has read the rules for D&D, Men In Black and Star Wars rpgs, all are fairly simple games but just a bit much for him to grasp yet. He has been playing roleplaying games for about 5 years now so the play style is very familiar to him and I thought Heroquest would be an easier way to "DM" for him then a full rpg. The second reason is I DM almost every rpg we play both in our family group and our weekly group, and dammit I wanted to be a player :)

He did a great job and I think we will work on some house rules and maybe some rpg aspects to the game. Today I printed the Master rule book and all the official quest from Pheonix's web site and put them in Binder for him. He is stoked to prepare us for Keller's Keep.

Re: First HQ with the boys..

PostPosted: December 8th, 2013, 10:46 pm
by chaoticprime
I loved to run HeroQuest for my older brother and his friends when I was a kid. Mostly because they let me swear as much as I wanted.