AGAINST THE OGRE HORDE discussion

[LucaRocks]

From what you're saying it looks like they spent a lot of time making the arena and just did a straight remake of the OG Ogre Horde pack. I mean I'll wait to see the actual book but it sounds like the arena was the big thing they focused on

[QorDaq]

From what you're saying it looks like they spent a lot of time making the arena and just did a straight remake of the OG Ogre Horde pack. I mean I'll wait to see the actual book but it sounds like the arena was the big thing they focused on

Received my (Amazon) Copy this afternoon. No way to post pics unfortunately.

As to the Arena, the 3 Arena Missions are cleverly added into the story arc of the main quests. Essentially, Mentor cannot locate the Ogre base using Loretome, and so sends the Heroes to find a contact who is the current champion of the tournament. The Heroes must then fight in a series of matches to "Prove" themselves worthy of the contact's help.

The "Dead Body" Tokens are called Trophy's, and are the reverse side of the Dice Faces and Potions we saw in the previews. The Quest set up shows where to place them on the board. Essentially, these are randomized Power Ups, one use bonuses that can be collected and then used to add an additional result to your dice rolls. The potions can be used to save a Hero who would otherwise go to Zero BP.

It's all pretty straightforward, but it's a solid primer for running skirmishes outside of the Quest line, as it includes very simple "Rules" for determining the power level of the PCs and thus how to build an opposing team using whatever monsters you like. It's really simple though, and doesn't do much to account for actual abilities of Heroes or Enemies from what I picked from my one read through.

[Kurgan]

Nice. You can post in our Discord if you want... I got mine late last night from Amazon.

Yeah they reduced the wandering monsters in a few places (2 monsters instead of 3 or 1 instead of 2). The second to the last fight they removed two of the Ogre warriors, but the overall body points of the bad guys that are there more than make up for it. There are a few more gold treasures to be found in the 7 quests, lots of more 1d6 healing potions in the purple chests (formerly in empty rooms). You also find a crossbow pretty early on and later a suit of Chainmail. One room they removed a chest (but you still find the treasure), and another they remove the Weapons Rack (that was just decoration). If you were forced to move into the Pit of "Dread" you have one last chance to escape turning evil by walking immediately out of it on your next turn (Zargon could use monsters to box you in, I suppose).

It's two games in one... a brand new Skirmish game... and the remake of ATOH as others have said.

A few titles are changed and some of the wording of the parchment text (to make it clear you're not fighting the entire Horde, just the corrupted followers of Ekur... yes they gave him a name). There's a new prologue and ending text (that says more or less then same things with attempts to humanize the Ogres and again single out the corrupted leadership of one particular tribe). I might have missed one or two other things.

No alchemist shop, artifacts, or new treasure cards added. No Ogre Body Point tracker (making your own tracker will be preferred because the "big" ogres don't really hold the skull tiles well and no extra skull tiles are included for the lord Ogre either. Live Ogres don't prevent other monsters from passing them. Nothing about whether or not you can shop between quests. No "big healing potions" given out at the start.

It says you can't sell bone weapons. Does that mean you can shop between quests? Again it doesn't say whether you can or not. No special instructions given for using the Druid in the quests. Only allies they give you to use are the Wolf (with less than four heroes) and the Ogre Merc (can only hire one per quest).

For the tournaments they only list rosters that include the Heroes, game system monsters, and the ATOH characters. Of course that doesn't mean you can't easily homebrew in whatever you wanted. I am picturing a team that has ALL of the heroes released so far... and it doesn't say you can't do Hero vs. Hero (though again, homebrew it).

And despite what I thought, there are 15 of the Dread spell cards in the box... 5 of each of the 3, just like the original except they're not tokens.

Still uploading but here's my full spoilerific unboxing (Quest book spoilers start about 1:25:47 in): on HeroQuestfans.

[LucaRocks]

Didn't Chris Nadeu say that they pushed the release of Rise ahead of Ogre? Even after Ogre was worked on? The lack of new artifacts makes me think that this was supposed to release before Rise. Unless they consider the arena to be all the 'new' additions.

[QorDaq]

Nice. You can post in our Discord if you want...

Thanks. I meant I don't currently have a good method of posting pics online. Not specifically to Ye Olde Inn, but anywhere.

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Didn't Chris Nadeu say that they pushed the release of Rise ahead of Ogre? Even after Ogre was worked on? The lack of new artifacts makes me think that this was supposed to release before Rise. Unless they consider the arena to be all the 'new' additions.

Personally, I don't recall the bit about Rise and Ogre swapping places in the release plan.

My take on the lack of new equipment is that since the original didn't offer new gear, they resisted adding more (Beyond the Bone weapons mentioned by Kurgan, which are text only). Instead, to beef up the pack, yeah they seem to have focused on the Skirmish side game, which effectively gives us several new board overlays/ tiles... Also they gave us a good number of new cards for other things, like the enemy variant ranged units, and the nice assortment of Ogres, two NPCs in the form of the Wolf and Mercenaries, and the Druids of course, which I appreciate being all new art and sculpts...

The only disappointing thing for me was wasting 15 cards on the 3 Dread Spells. To be clear, I was in favor of making the spells cards, but I think that there only needed to be one of each, with counters or small tokens being used to hand to the players to track turns and the like.

Overall, however, I'm a big fan of what we got with ATOH. I never owned a copy of the original (never owned any of the EU expansions), so I'm happy to have an updated and expanded version.

[Macula]

So.. has anyone hopped on putting all the other creatures into the skirmish table yet? Or does that need someone with a special love of spreadsheets?

[HispaZargon]

Pre-order of Spanish version of Against the Ogre Horde "La Horda del Ogro" is already available in Amazon (expected release the 19th of March):

https://www.amazon.es/Avalon-Hill-HeroQ ... C87&sr=8-1

[Vorimir]

Thanks for the call, ordered mine. Its strsnge they called it La horda del ogro instead of the previous Contra la horda de ogros. I belive old title is better.

[Kurgan]

Pre-order of Spanish version of Against the Ogre Horde "La Horda del Ogro" is already available in Amazon (expected release the 19th of March):

https://www.amazon.es/Avalon-Hill-HeroQ ... C87&sr=8-1

Ah the title... so another Rumor turned out to be true... from a certain point of view!

[Markus Darwath]

ordered mine from Amazon U.S. yesterday. Estimated delivery sometime from late March to early April. I guess their present allocated shipment is currently still in China.