What a board with 1 inch squares looks like

[Davane]

Ah.. interesting, can you post more pics of the board alone and how it fold?

More pics... now there's nothing saying the official Remake board will fold the same way of course.

Now for the important information - where did you get it, and how much? I notice that this board has HQ along the LONG edge, unlike the remake board...

[Kurgan]

Yeah it's not meant to be a copy of the Remake board, just a fancy version of the classic, which happens to share the scale. Boardgamesmaker (BGM, the sister site of MPC), $37.03 (before shipping).

Standard Matte laminated (smooth finish) Custom Size Game Board
Length: 673mm, Width: 555mm, (Quad-fold)

You could get away without the logo border and save a little, but it helps with orientation on camera so I kept it. The finish minimizes light glare, and the folding makes it easier to store (also for travel post-covid).
The only thing I don't like about it are the naked cardboard edges where the "split" happens, but I suppose I could brush those with some varnish or something, maybe. I'm not sure exactly what upgrade from standard looks like but it costs more.

[iKarith]

I do so hope that Hasbro didn't choose 1 inch squares to distance the game further from GW, because THAT backfired!

as far as I know, Hasbro really didn't have a choice there.

Whatever happened between GW and MB is 30 years of water under the bridge. Any agreement likely didn't benefit GW the way they'd hoped it would, and aside from minis and a bit of setting from the world of Warhammer, GW didn't contribute a whole lot to MB's game.

GW has long since retired the sculpts, and now owning D&D and making their own, Hasbro doesn't need them. GW let the Heroquest trademark drop ages ago, and they retired the Fimir too. The only thing left that's not generic is a little flavor text in an otherwise fairly generic fantasy war between light and dark setting. Replace the Fimir, change the name of the Chaos Warriors/Wizard, and edit places or characters mentioned in some of the flavor text. Done.

The original game needed 25mm scale spaces. I don't know why GW used 22mm for AHQ. Maybe because MB did and they wanted to fit more tiles on the board since they'd be randomly laid out.

Oh, and before you ask, the Dungeon Rooms in WHQ are 4 x 4, so with a bit of digital editing, you could easily make versions for the majority of the rooms on the HQ board. The Objective Rooms are 8 x 4, so they could cover TWO adjacent 4 x 4 rooms (Or a 5 x 4 and 3 x 4 room, or whatever). The expansion pack Objective Rooms are actually 8 x 5, so really only fit across the two 4 x 4 rooms in the upper left of the room, or across the central corridor and the two 3 x 5 rooms either side of it to the north of the board. You could even use this trick on the bottom of the board, if you don't mind turning the 4 x 4 room with the corner room to a 4 x 4 room, and the space below it to a 4 x 4 room as well. Now, if only we had a few of THEM lying around... or maybe an 8 x 4 room instead?

One of the things we discussed in 2012 or 2013 or so on the Old Scratch forum—I don't know if it was posted here—was the use of an open board of corridor tiles you could place room tiles onto in any configuration, then block off with rock tiles anywhere you wanted walls. Doing it this way, you'd always have a finite "board space" limit to how big an adventure could be, but any indoor/undeground setting could be configured to your liking. Larger rooms/halls would be possible by joining two room tiles with the same floor pattern, and all the tiles needed to construct a HQ board would be standard.

[iKarith]

Yeah it's not meant to be a copy of the Remake board, just a fancy version of the classic, which happens to share the scale. Boardgamesmaker (BGM, the sister site of MPC), $37.03 (before shipping).

Standard Matte laminated (smooth finish) Custom Size Game Board
Length: 673mm, Width: 555mm, (Quad-fold)

You could get away without the logo border and save a little, but it helps with orientation on camera so I kept it. The finish minimizes light glare, and the folding makes it easier to store (also for travel post-covid).
The only thing I don't like about it are the naked cardboard edges where the "split" happens, but I suppose I could brush those with some varnish or something, maybe. I'm not sure exactly what upgrade from standard looks like but it costs more.

I considered having them print a 6 fold 30mm board, but 30mm brings the cost to … a lot. I just couldn't justify that. And I've always wanted a board I could reconfigure a bit more anyway.

[Kurgan]

Putting those values into BGM comes to $41.34 vs $37.03 (the price I paid for 25.4 mm squares).

Would be interesting to try to create a 3 fold board like Stephen Baker was talking about in those interviews. Then again if we're talking about actual number of squares, that means designing more complicated quests, to justify all that space. You could use higher quality materials, or even make it double sided like Dragon Strike. A board that costs as much as some whole games, I agree.

I can see wanting more squares, but simply bigger, inch squares will cover all the miniatures you could want to use. I have double square monsters, but that's just two squares. You can do an awful lot with the original board. The modular dungeon would be a much cheaper solution, but then you're going to possibly run into situations where the board goes all over the table and off the table, etc. unless you restrict that too.

[iKarith]

Putting those values into BGM comes to $41.34 vs $37.03 (the price I paid for 25.4 mm squares).

Yes, though I went with the premium board, which added a lot to the cost. Don't know if the difference matters, but at the point when it's > $60, you start wondering if you can do something perhaps not cheaper, but more in line with what you'd actually want.

And what I'd actually want is probably a mixture of things, if I'm honest about it. I love that HQ is guaranteed to fit into a finite space. A 28x22 square board at 30mm per square is going to take a fair bit of space, but I know how much space it takes. But I also own AHQ and like that I can put together any kind of quest I can imagine with it.

If I can find a good place to order PVC card in relatively large sheets of a similar weight to credit cards, I know I can cut that without any fancy tools. Clamps, straight edge, a sharp blade, and patience. Cork cuts even easier. Cut squares shave the edges a little, and glue them to the plasticard. Cut patterns into the cork for different floor textures. What to do with them before paint depends a lot on how smooth the tiles are supposed to be. Then painting even I could do. And finally back with non-slip thin sponge rubber … the stuff they use to make desk mats and thin mouse pads. The tiles won't slide around on the table easily. Could even make a tile set that would assemble into a HQ board, though it might be a bit tedious to set up. The reason to do it would be to be able to replace rooms with expansion rooms trivially. The rubber backing means no need for anything to keep pieces in place.

You'll easily spend more on something like this than you would on a BGM board, but the cork and rubber are cheap. Seems 0.030 styrene is cheap too, but is that gonna be rigid enough to protect the paint? I could go with 1/4" polycarbonate I suppose, I know that's thick enough, and it's no longer out of stock everywhere due to everybody who was kung flu fighting. (It's not the flu—I just call it that because some idiot tried to make it a crime to call it that. )

Would be interesting to try to create a 3 fold board like Stephen Baker was talking about in those interviews. Then again if we're talking about actual number of squares, that means designing more complicated quests, to justify all that space. You could use higher quality materials, or even make it double sided like Dragon Strike. A board that costs as much as some whole games, I agree.

I can see wanting more squares, but simply bigger, inch squares will cover all the miniatures you could want to use. I have double square monsters, but that's just two squares. You can do an awful lot with the original board. The modular dungeon would be a much cheaper solution, but then you're going to possibly run into situations where the board goes all over the table and off the table, etc. unless you restrict that too.

My bigger board is for more squares—but not many more. 28x22, make all outside corridors 2 squares wide, and make the two horizontal central corridors 2 squares as well. The extra space prevents the single-file line behavior most games fall into, particularly if you also use wide doors. Given that, no single player (or monster) can block the doorway or most corridors.

Complicates tiles that cover the central room, which embiggens to be a 7x7 square, but since the only boards that have this problem are large scale custom boards, you just need to make custom tiles as well.

For an arbitrary 28x22 empty floorplan, yeah, the space is HUGE. Anything you want to put in it, you can. And yet, it will remain confined to a known size.

The idea for the slightly extended HQ board in 6 pieces as described above is that they'd be just about 13" x 12" … that shouldn't be too hard to find a box to fit. Of course, if you also want to fit furniture and minis, it'd have to be a pretty thick box. And if you wanna protect those minis they should be in foam trays … The box starts looking like a crate or … chest. And immediately you know what must be done with it!

[Kurgan]

I've never played AHQ, but the idea of modular tiles is pretty easy, I've made several customs, including re-creating the ROTWL and KK tiles on chipboard (much thicker and weightier than the originals!). Just printed on a printer, so not glossy and slightly fuzzier, but pretty darn good looking. You could print the whole board that way and assemble it in pieces, or whatever you wanted to do. Making a giant faux-stone board is pretty cool but as I've said before, that's a project for others to work on. If I were retired, and had a huge basement/garage/workshop to complete and store something like that (and actually have people over to GAME on it), then sure, maybe... would be fun to recruit people to help put it together even. But for me, I'm happy with the cardboard. This new board will tide me over until the next big thing whatever that is, and I'm content to just print a card here or a tile or mini there as needed. The main creative work is done, and the fun is in playing, to enjoy that content with others. I do want to print out another shop on some board, but that's probably the last project for a long time.

I pretty much have everything I could ever want from Hero Quest, and the Remake set is just a curiosity. Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing Mr. Baker's new quests, but even if they turn out to be nothing special, I feel satisfied. I'm sitting on years worth of quests!

[iKarith]

Making a giant faux-stone board is pretty cool but as I've said before, that's a project for others to work on.

That's my reaction to the large 3D dental plaster boards or to Warhammer terrain or even to HQ boards that come in one single piece.

I'm in a studio, and I share it. With a wheelchair user. And I have old computers too. So anything I'm going to have for a game … there's a reason I don't have access to any of my HQ stuff right now—it's at my fiancée's parents' place, and they're out of town for the next week or so. If I want to set out even the standard HQ board, I have to clear space for it. But it means I want the thing to pack up as small as possible after I'm done with it.

[Hagdorm]

Kurgan, what board scan did you use for this project? I have the cyber333 scan, which I downloaded years ago to make a 1" square scale board, before I got my hands on an original set. I've considered making more at the original scale for The Dark Company, and this may be an option. I also have the 2x2 board that was posted here for that reason and would LOVE to print it out, if I could do it without it costing an arm and a leg!

Side point, how big would a BGM board have to be to make it a 22mm scale board?

[Kurgan]

I used a few different ones, I don't even remember anymore exactly which one, but the biggest one I could find. I own the real thing so I probably should have just scanned it myself (in sections, then stitch together) but I didn't want to put in the effort I guess.

The 22mm scale would be about the size of the board as it is now. You can figure it out by measuring the squares and then multiplying by the number of them. Then just leave like a half a square size on the edges and I think it's like 2 or 2.5 squares for the "heroquest logo" section.

Something I also forgot to point out, is that the larger monsters do take up more room. We all know about the Giant Wolves that use double size squares (really closer to three since they're leaping off the base) and the fact that the Gargoyle kind of crowds with the (removable unless you glued them) wings. The Frozen Horror shows as double but he's really more like 1 and a half or 1.75 squares. Then there's the Ogre (sculpt from EQP and ATOH are the same) which is pretty close to a 1 inch square for his base.

Things have been crazy around here and I'm a little disorganized but if I can find again the image I used I could share it up, but the size I quoted above seems about right. Just shrink to fit to what you're doing with it if you want to use the same board.