Ye Olde Inn

by **Goblin-King** » March 5th, 2015, 4:09 pm

Pitbullsandaks wrote:I'm into this game for loads of money. Hopefully it's worth it. P.s. Don't tell my wife.

Don't worry - she does the same to you, but with shoes

I tried that game today.

It is not Heroquest, that's sure. Not even a close replacement like Decent or others. Not at all. It is totally different.

First, the exploration part is completely missing. You see the entire Map, you see all the enemies, there is no exploration. Comparing HQ and Conan is like comparing a Boxing fight (conan) with a game of scavenger hunt mixed with a bit of fighting (Heroquest.)

But from the beginning.
Setting up the game.

In Conan, there are, i don't know, 100 or 200 miniatures delivered. I didn't count. It is lots more than double the content of Zombicide. Each unit type has some cards and tokens, plus most of the furniture is represented by tokens. So you have to find the models for this game, the cards, the tokens and everything else, and put it on the game board. That process is horrible. It takes time. easily half an hour or more.
Compare to Heroquest, here you put the board on the table and the four heroes, and the rest you do during the game. The set up phase is better in Heroquest.

Second, Gameplay.

Conan is highly tactical. Heroes decide, and the decision influences the game. The Overlord as well, has a lot of decisions to take, and they are crucial for winning or losing. For the heroes, there is also an operational level as they have to coordinate their tactics and work together to succeed. So two of three levels are there - tactic and operation. The only thing missing is the strategy - for that, the time scale and the scale of the gaming board is too small.
Heroquest is less like that - here you can play with or without brains, it will work somehow. Maybe you die if you play without brains, but certainly the game storyline is more or less fixed. You will rescue sir ragnar, the only question is if you have 3 or 4 surviving Heroes. I think the only mission where you really can lose is the final quest for the Witch Lord, if the Witch Lord is somehow managing to stun or kill the Spirit Blade owner.

So for tactical wargaming, I would say Conan is the winner. It is tactical. You lose or win by deciding wrong or correct.

But there are more aspects to hero quest: Role play gaming and Character development.
Role play gaming / Identifying yourself with the Hero: In Conan it is hardly possible. Each Mission has the three or four Heroes with fixed equipment that are to be used. You can exchange the Heroes, but then you risk the balance; in turn destroying the "tactical" part in Wargaming. How different is Heroquest here: As you are hardly ever dying, you start to have a relationship to your hero. Plus, as you are building up the equipment and gold of your Hero, in many homebrew versions also some Skills, you get the feelings of being "individual" and "getting better". Last but not least, you name your character. A Character with your name is your character. A pre-named character is someone else, you just take over the steering wheel for some time. Balancing in Heroquest is less about being tactical, but more about not being too boring or too hard. So as EWP, you have more choice here.
Win for Heroquest.

The duration.
It's true, Heroquest has some old fashioned gameplay elements inside, like counting fields when moving. This is making the game longer than necessary. Once Conan is set up, it is easily played in one hour, up to 90 minutes. I've already seen Heroquest games taking up less space on the table, but a lot more time. This is good again, Conan wins here.

Finally, packing it away.
If you have vanilla Heroquest, you can toss everything in the box and close it. Done. it will work.
Not so for Conan. First, they are two boxes, each one 30%-50% bigger than Zombicide. Second, the boxes are so densely packed that you will not succeed to pack everything back and close the boxes. At least i had difficulties and stored some of the stuff in an additional bag. Third, same problem like when you set it up: There is so much content to be packed back that it just takes a lot of time.

So, comparison in short:

Setting up
Conan: 30 Minutes plus
HQ: 5 Minutes

Gameplay:
Conan: 60-90 Minutes tactical wargame (or maybe skirmish)
HQ: 90-120 Minutes explorational dungeon crawl with RPG elements

Packing away
Conan: 30 minutes puzzling without solving the puzzle.
HQ: 5 Minutes if you use vanilla HQ.

The games are different. I think HQ has some elements that are much more developed, e.g. the setting up and packing away story. You really see the experience of a big game company behind that.

Conan on the other hand has the much more modern gameplay for sure. Whereas, the gameplay is not very well comparable.