Ye Olde Inn

One of the coolest things about HeroQuest is the occasional appearance of “boss” monsters. That is, monsters with unique names who serve a story purpose and have unique powers.

These monsters never had their own cards, just a “stat block” in their related quest. In almost all cases, there was no physical description, just maybe their race (“orc”) or a basic descriptor (“shamen”) and their stats and powers to base what they might otherwise be like on.

Thus, as a player of the original HQ release in the 80’s, for decades I could only imagine what these unique foes and NPCs might look like. The re-release did nothing to help with this, either. Except when the official app was launched for mobile devices, it included what was the most exciting element for me: artwork depicting key scenes/moments of each quest… including encountering many of these “boss” monsters and ally NPCs. At last, we had *official* representation of what these characters looked like!

I went through all the official quests (core set, all published expansion packs, online free quests, etc.) but please let me know if I have missed anyone. I will do this for Against the Ogre Horde (and any other future expansion packs, including Crypt of Perpetual Torment if it ever gets a retail release), and also plan to do this for the “semi-official” quests that were published for the original release of HQ via White Dwarf and Marvel… though those will obviously use custom art since no official artwork will exist.

That said, I now present to you… at long last with official visual appearances… the unique “named” monsters – the “bosses” – of HeroQuest!

https://banjogames.wordpress.com/2024/0 ... oss-cards/

Once again, an excellent resource, Banjo. I've seen variations on this type of project in the past, but I really like your approach here. Kudos and thank you.

Excellent cards!

I believe Xor-Xel is shown to be a Dread Warrior in the quest. This caused a bit of confusion for me since the map shows a Dread Warrior, and mentions Xor-Xel, but we are not given stats for the boss. While I know now his stats are the same as a Dread Warrior, and the monster is supposed to be him, the quest doesn’t actually tell you this.

I also noticed Sir Ragnar has a “Cheat Death” power. Is this made up or is it something mentioned in the quest?

SirRick wrote:Excellent cards!

I believe Xor-Xel is shown to be a Dread Warrior in the quest. This caused a bit of confusion for me since the map shows a Dread Warrior, and mentions Xor-Xel, but we are not given stats for the boss. While I know now his stats are the same as a Dread Warrior, and the monster is supposed to be him, the quest doesn’t actually tell you this.

I also noticed Sir Ragnar has a “Cheat Death” power. Is this made up or is it something mentioned in the quest?

Re-reading the quest, I am inclined to agree on Xor-Xel. He has spells, and his ART is what made me think "Dread Sorcerer" but I think you're right that he's more likely a magic-using "Magic Knight" than an evil wizard-type. I will change the icon asap.

Evil Sir Ragnar's power is 100% official. If you read the alternate version of his card that describes his ability rather than just giving him a Cheat Death spell, you'll see it's the same power. In ROTDM, you boss fight him near the end of the quest book and he has that power (when he is "killed", he auto-revives at 1 BP).

I do wish Ragnar's boss fight was more epic, honestly (I personally wanted a two-phase one like Fellmarak but in the same quest). As in, when he "cheats death" he comes back stronger and fully embracing/controlled by demonic power (such is the price of aligning with Chaos/Dread!) with new spells and more BP. But while I could easily homebrew this (and did plan to), Hasbro/AH clearly kept him alive at the end of ROTDM (explicitly having him captured again) so I can only assume they have further plans for him that having him become a monster or die now would interfere with.

PS I really appreciate any feedback like this on any of my stuff, partly why I am posting it here the way I am rather than one big "go look at my blog" post.