AGAINST THE OGRE HORDE discussion

[Kurgan]

Covering the release with Karingul & iKarith on the RantCast Podcast Episode 31 here (warning, contains strong language)

[LucaRocks]

Orge horde is up on Pulse and ready to ship

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/her ... YWP1625%29

[Kurgan]

With Amazon being sold out (at the moment, seems to change throughout each day) that's good news, for the same price!

[TheLastChaosWarrior]

I just tried to order, out of stock. I'm in uk

[LucaRocks]

Can you order from US Pulse? Or will they not ship to you? Still shows as available.

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/her ... quest-pack

[HispaZargon]

Keeping aside the errata I already found in remake's AtOH, here are my first impressions about some of the 'new' things in this expansion:

"Bone" weapons that can't be sold for gold but otherwise function like the real thing.

Honestly no idea why they implemented this 'bone' weapons...

Pit of Dread can be survived if you move out of it on your next turn immediately (but Zargon is encouraged to march Dominated heroes in there!).
Pits of Darkness mention "metal armor" vs. "non-metal armor" effects.

All of them are good polishing of the classic rules.

Tournament (first 3 quests) can be skipped if one wishes.

Interesting to see that they clearly admit in the questbook itself that a "original" campaign exists for this expansion... I think it is the first time we see something than this in an official product of the remake version.

You can create custom tournament rosters.
Play random tournaments anytime (even between quests, separate from the first three).

Well, something expected to be included I think, however the points value assigned to each monster in the list does not look too balanced, but we will see.

Zargon gets oversight on what to do if a hero gets trapped in an area because of a falling block trap (including leaving him trapped but letting him use the animal companion).

I am not a fan of this kind of bad-design disclamers... I thought the same about the general treasure rule for empty chests introduced in RotDM.

Wolf and Ogre Mercenary are pretty restricted and nothing about hiring outside mercenaries from other expansions this time.

But actually nothing official stops you to hire mercenaries if you own TFH expansion, so Ok from my side.

No Alchemist Shop, or list of extra artifacts at the end.

in my humble opinion this is one the BIG mistakes of this expansion. An shop with dedicated Ogre themed potions had been really cool and (probably) funny to be played. Anyhow, even just the potions from KK or RotWL had been also welcomed I think. But not giving any chance to buy potions when playing this expansion is for me a total error.

Multi-phase monsters (for example Abomination that gets new stats when "defeated" the first time... coming back in enraged form).

Rolling dice to claim different gold rewards after winning a bout!
Monster vs. Monster battles in the tournament!
"Riposte" tile for tournament, lets you attack the enemy right back. (wasn't a swinging blade trap tile at all)
"Combat" tiles let you swap out to improve your dice roll (after you rolled).
"Potion" tiles (+2 as in healing that many BP, rather than x2 potions as I misread originally).
Discard a tile to get a burst of speed (2 extra squares of movement)[/quote]
Concepts already seen in other games, but they are welcome here to add variety to HQ if used just in some sufficiently justified cases like the Arena one.

New intro and epilogue explaining the story. Ogres aren't all bad, but there's still plenty of bad ones to fight.

I am starting to see too many monster races in HQ remake which can be also 'good'... I don't like this naif concept in a game where the Heroes can lose their life in any turn fighting with monsters similar to the 'good' ones, honestly. The base of most of the best fantasy worlds ever created have the bad and good guys clearly identified. Is it simple? yes, but it works if well done. HQ don't need this to be a good and cool game, in my humble opinion.

Unthreatened movement (as in Into the Northlands) written into the book as an option.
0 Mind points is "shock" now like MOTM/ROTDM/FH rather than unconsciousness (and out of the quest) like ROTWL as in the original.

Good addons, trying to stablish them as quasi-standard rules in all questpacks.

Mind Blast is renamed Mind Burst.

Change probable motivated by the existance of other spell also titled "Mind Blast" to avoid confusions.

No "Ogre King" it's the Ogre Lord. The Ogre Chieftain is now called the Ogre Commander in the book.

Well, minor aesthetical changes. The original Ogre Lord also owned a crown, but it was not a King, just a Lord.

"Skeleton" archers are the proper name, not "Skeletal" though I probably have written that a half a dozen times already, heh.

So, is it an errata?

goblins carrying boomerangs (male) or bombs (female) are both called "goblin archers"

For me this missmatch should not have happened. I don't like it.

What about the Ogre's blocking monsters as well as heroes? Any word on that?

I think they want to harmonize the rules with MoM Ogres who do not block either.

Bummed that there are no new artifacts so far. I guess they wanted to make this a bit more "action" orientated, what with the arena and all.

Yes, for me is an error not including new artifact/equipment cards in this expansion. Instead they stup**ly included 5 cards for the same 3 spells, which are not needed (remember that Witch Lord from GS can cast Fear spell two times and only one spell card was included in the game, including these 15 cards is not justified in my opinion). 4 of the absurdly repeated cards should have been Equipment cards for the non-existing Alchemist's Shop, and the other 8 cards could have been Treasure cards wioth new traps or treasures and/or Artifact/Equipment cards with new items... but not, the prefered to include 12 unseful repeated cards. BAD DESIGN DECISION in my opinion.

No mention of the five big healing potions per hero or playing "as a series" (instead they strongly recommend people play the quests in order, but they also suggest skipping the tournaments if you want to play more like the original version... and also give you the option to at any time between quests to jump back into the arena to try to win some more gold.... that I guess if you're not shopping, you don't get to spend on anything except another Ogre mercenary).

I had prefered the inclusion of an Alchemist's Shop. No opinion about the series potions change in special chests, but looks like a kind of weird patch/fix.

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.

It is good that they connected the Arena events with the rest of the story, but I don't understand very well why is so difficult convincing Gruzbella (defeating her in the Arean) to reveal the location of her cursed tribe if the Heroes are actually going to fight against Zargon forces, the enemies of Gruzbella's tribe... well probably I have not understood well the story yet.

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).

Yes it seems they have introduced some difficulty balance compared with the original, sometime adding more (Ogres base BP's increment), and other times reducing it (less monsters number, etc.).

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.

Good to have a conclusion text because the original was missing but the 'conclusion' itself is less epic now than the original, in my opinion. It was cool for me imagining the heroes leading the Emperor's forces. Nevertheless, minor change, not too important.

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.

I never liked the BP track for the Ogres, so correct change for me. However seeing an Ogre with more BPs (10) than the Frozen Horror (6) is not good...

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.

Interesting hypothesis the order change in the expansions... has anybody more info about this?


More things I don't like:

- The size of the ogre bosses miniatures. I can understand that FH is big because it is a kind of demon, but seeing ogres with double size of other ogres is something too hard for me...

- Unsuffient use of the Archers miniatures in the quests. They just put some of them to fix runout errors from the original but meh, none Orc Archers are used in the maps... the worst feeling I had was seeing that they eliminated the Orc Crossbowmen of the original and they just replaced them by regular Orcs instead of using a couple of the Orc Archers included in the box. It makes no sense for me. These mistakes suggest me the expansion design has not been well thought, unfortunately.

- Festral charcater had a lot of role in the original story, it appeared in the Intro, however now it has become a second actor character, briefly mentioned in the quest he appears. Why??? He is the main responsible of cursing the Ogre tribe!! Is as inportant villian as the Ogre Lord or even more!!

- The number of BPs given to the other two Dread Sorcerers (just 1) is a clear durect transcription from the original. Under NA rules those sorcerers should have had 2 or 3 BPs, not 1. Festral BPs (3) look me also short, but ok, they are the same as a CW, I can live with it. Spending 15 cards slots for spells for just 3 sorcerers, 2 of them with just 1 BP makes me crying... those cards mostly will not be used!!

[BakaMatt]

-Unsufficient use of the Archers miniatures in the quests. They just put some of them to fix runout errors from the original but meh, none Orc Archers are used in the maps... the worst feeling I had was seeing that they eliminated the Orc Crossbowmen of the original and they just replaced them by regular Orcs instead of using a couple of the Orc Archers included in the box. It makes no sense for me. These mistakes suggest me the expansion design has not been well thought, unfortunately.

Is this not because they added in the Ogre rulebook that Zargon can freely substitute any regular version of a monster with the archer version when revealed? You could use them for every placed orc in the quest book if you wanted, and also have the flexibility to use the archers in the GS or other quest packs. I think that’s a great use of them, and something the pack adds to every quest without needing to designate specific archer enemies.

[Kurgan]

So, is it an errata?

Not Avalon Hill's errata... my personal errata. Sorry!

[Kurgan]

More things I don't like:

- The size of the ogre bosses miniatures. I can understand that FH is big because it is a kind of demon, but seeing ogres with double size of other ogres is something too hard for me...

Yes, makes me think that the Frozen Horror should have 10 (or more than 10!). It looked like they were establishing that a character with 6 BP gets to be twice the size of a normal monster, but then suddenly we have the biggest monster who has a "glass jaw" compared to these medium sized ones? My rationalization is that while the creature has awakened, he is not yet at full strength (plus you destroyed his Scepter which may have prevented much of his growth). Of course AH decided to make him so huge, originally he was "only" a 2 square monster (and yet still couldn't match the MOTM ogres that were single square and 10 BP). I guess you can't win them all!

- Insufficient use of the Archers miniatures in the quests. They just put some of them to fix runout errors from the original but meh, none Orc Archers are used in the maps... the worst feeling I had was seeing that they eliminated the Orc Crossbowmen of the original and they just replaced them by regular Orcs instead of using a couple of the Orc Archers included in the box. It makes no sense for me. These mistakes suggest me the expansion design has not been well thought, unfortunately.

I double-checked and I think you missed the Orc archers used in Quest 5 (corresponding to 2 in the original) and Quest 9 (corresponding to 6 in the original). The instructions say Zargon can just use an available ranged miniature for the original monster type if he wishes though (as BakaMatt said above). It should be remembered that they are weaker in close combat compared to their ranged attacks. You could still say the Orc archers are under-used (in the original, ranged goblins only appeared in one quest). This reminds me a bit of the Magus Guards in ROTDM, being so similar to Dread Warriors, why not always use them instead (or why have the minis at all, just assign new powers to the regular gray warriors)? Then I thought well you have a smaller supply of these special figures, so you could always line them up alongside their "less special" (but more numerous) brethren. Anything can stand for anything else within your imagination in HeroQuest of course, but I mean when just using the identifiable assets and default values established by the game in a quick and easy fashion. You can grab the miniature and put it on the board and everyone will understand without further explanation.

I agree with many of your other points. I'm not saying it can't still work well and be challenging (yet fun), but it could have been better with a little more polish... and I think many fans will do just that in their own version. This doesn't require as much setup and improvisation as Rise of the Dread Moon, but perhaps more than the other remake releases, and more learning to be done. They give Zargon more work to do. I suspect this was either due to development crunch, fear of trampling on rival homebrew fan solutions over the years (and picking one "side" in a debate over the best fixes) or a combination of the two. If it is the latter, I would have hoped they provided the options in the box... like giving us tokens AND cards, fixed BP's but also an optional tracker to use, etc. But that's more work and there's only so much space for all these things as well. I guess that thin sheet of protective cardboard could have been punched out into tokens! (too thin, maybe)

- The number of BPs given to the other two Dread Sorcerers (just 1) is a clear direct transcription from the original. Under NA rules those sorcerers should have had 2 or 3 BPs, not 1. Festral BPs (3) look me also short, but ok, they are the same as a CW, I can live with it. Spending 15 cards slots for spells for just 3 sorcerers, 2 of them with just 1 BP makes me crying... those cards mostly will not be used!!

Here I agree with Phoenix's mod where he gave the regular Sorcerers 3 BP (instead of 1) and Festral 6 (rather than just 3). If this was the first time we had encountered such characters, maybe it would make sense, but the players have been fighting magic bosses with more than 1 BP for a long time now even if they've only played the Game System before this!

[TheLastChaosWarrior]

Haha, you should look in the Sunday Quest books, there are frequent Evil Sorcerers with 6 - 8 BPs!!!
There is one with 18 bps in volume 8!!!!!!!!