WIZARDS OF MORCAR discussion

[HispaZargon]

I think if I had to vote for which one would have to "leave the deck" to make room for the "nothing" nostalgia card, I guess I would at this point vote for Poison (but for sheer completeness I wouldn't want any of them removed, you understand). It's unique, but it's so weak.

Fully agree.

[wallydubbs]

I totally understand urning for completeness. I think the're most likely to do away with is the Potion of Alchemy. I also feel they could just mesh the Potions of Magic and Fire Resistance together to nullify any magical attack. The original 4 Wizards of Morcar spells don't interact with Mind Points (unless they alter the Necromancer's Fear spell), but this new Artificer has the Leach Life Spell, which is dependent on Mind Points. The Poison could be changed to the Mind Point poison, even though the original took away body points. This is all speculation but I think the likelyhood would be on the Potion of Alchemy. The Charm potion is likely to stay, could be used in the Frozen Horror.

[HispaZargon]

Alchemy paste is surely another candidate to be removed due to its useless in NA game system since weapons and armor are allowed to be sold back to the Armory by half gold price. Nevertheless, if AH would like to keep as much original material from classic WoM, they should probably remove the Poison card first.

We will see at the end which path they followed.

[LucaRocks]

Someone on Reddit is ranking the original WOM spells.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Heroquest/comm ... ming_lets/

Makes me realize I'll be disappointed if none of the spells are tweaked. Consensus seems to be that they are not as good as the element spells. Maybe I'll allow my wizard to use any 3 WOM spell cards in addition to the elemental sets.

[HispaZargon]

Yes, I always thought classic WoM spells were too weak to be enough attractive to be chosen by the Elf or Wizard at the beginning of the Quest instead of elemental spell decks.

[SirRick]

Clairvoyance particularly needs help. Treasure Horde is such a terrible spell, if they replaced it with an actual “Treasure without Doom” spell copying the scroll from EQP, it would be much better. When I was playing through FL, the double treasure draws from rooms with cupboards were dreadful. I think in one of the last quests, I finally drew a good card from a cupboard room. Almost all other instances were double bad cards. The thought of a caster drawing 3 treasure cards at once and resolving all of them seems horrifying. If i remember correctly some quests in WoM have multiple Dread Warriors for wandering monsters. That is bad news. Future Sight is nice however.

Darkness and Protection seem useable at least, but not good enough to take the place of any elemental spells. Some of them could be a little better. An increase in spell capacity (a caster getting more spell groups somehow) or a new hero who can also pick from the pool of generic spells is needed to make use of them.

[Kurgan]

The NA treasure deck is less forgiving than the EU treasure deck as well, let's compare.

NA: 24 cards.
EU: 25 cards (already includes a "nothing" card)

Of course we're adding the 8 WOM cards...

EU: 5 wandering monsters, 3 trap! cards
NA: 6 wandering monsters, 4 hazards

NA: 3 Healing Potions (1d6)
EU: 2 Healing Potions (+4 BP)

The EU edition also features more possible gold coins overall (especially if you're playing 1st edition where cards are not discarded) and Holy Water while the NA features more individual gold cards.

I agree Treasure Horde as written is less desirable now with the remake edition.

[LucaRocks]

I bet the "Wizards of Morcar" refer to the 1,000 dread sorcerers Zargon wants to free.

I think it would be cool to have the last quests where you face the wizards all at once have them be imbued with the 1000 sorcerers magic so they all get crazy stats lol

[wallydubbs]

Oh dear, in some cases they've made them worse than before... Future Sight and Treasure Hoard can only be cast on the spellcaster!? No, no, no, this will not do. They'll need to be altered.

I usually play Clairvoyance as showing traps and and secret doors as well as revealing the next treasure card (designated to that room). if they specify not to do this on the card, this would certainly harm the spell, I don't consider shaded areas on the map as rooms. The rulebook counts these as stone. Upon implementing these, my group loved the Detection spells (I also had an upgraded treasure deck though.)
And not that I think they're going to do it, but a nice change to Treasure Hoard would be to cast it any hero, that hero looks at the next 3 Treasure Cards, he may take all of them or none at all.

Invisibility, though, certainly needs a timer. They failed.

[Kurgan]

There are at least 8 cards I don't know what they are yet. I'm curious to see what if anything has changed mechanically for the other cards (realizing that some CGI images might not be final):

-Magical Reference Chart (not a card, but still a mechanical change): Discard any Water Spell to disarm a discovered Fireburst Trap instead of just Tempest. See Dungeon Master's reveal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5E8jTJpxus (image captured and translated below, thanks Virg for sharing on HeroQuestFans discord)...

-Escape (Dread Spell) has changed to the NA GS wording. I think I inaccurately said before the old version you could only move to a previously explored square with your sorcerer, but originally it was ANY unoccupied square. Here now it would be based on what the designers said on the map, probably meaning the character vanishes from the board until you reach that new area instead of letting Zargon choose, as written.

Men-At-Arms changed to "Mercenaries" and match FH stats.
1991:
-Halberdier (6, 3, 3, 1, 2; 50 gold)
-Scout (Move 9, Attack 2, Defend 3, Body 1, Mind 2; 50 gold; search/disarm traps like Dwarf)
-Crossbowman (6, 2, 3, 1, 2; 75 gold; ranged attacks)
-Swordsman (4, 4, 5, 1, 2; 75 gold)

2026: (parts in italics are speculative, being obscured... guessing match to FH)
-Halberdier (6, 3, 3, 2, 2; 75 gold, diagonal attacks)
-Scout (9, 2, 3, 2, 2; 50 gold; search/disarm like dwarf)
-Crossbowman (6, 3, 3, 2, 2; 75 gold; ranged attacks)
-Swordsman (5, 4, 5, 2, 2; 100 gold)

FH has 2 each of female Scout & Halberdier, male Crossbowman and Swordsman (in gray).

WOM will have female Swordsman and Crossbowman, male Scout and Halberdier. Each mercenary type has one of each of three colors... dark blue/black (varies with image but presumably matching the five evil wizard figures), heroic red, or purple/magenta (matching the Sir Ragnar figure in the same set). Specific meaning of the colors (if any) is not yet known.