US or UK edition?

[knightkrawler]

14 is the number of quests in the game system questbook.
Each quest also attempts to introduce a new concept to the players, thus tying that even closer to the aspect of a "productive" post.
First and formost, it is the number of quests it takes you to win to become a champion of the Empire.
Nothing is ever random...

[lestodante]

Hi Scipio!! I suggest the UK version as base game and as the heroes start to become stronger and go on through the game, to add the monster stats from the US version plus the Chaos Spells cards. US expansions also have Chaos Spells and extra Artifact Cards that are not available in the UK and in my opinion they are the best implementation they did with the US release.

[Scipio]

Hi Scipio!! I suggest the UK version as base game and as the heroes start to become stronger and go on through the game, to add the monster stats from the US version plus the Chaos Spells cards. US expansions also have Chaos Spells and extra Artifact Cards that are not available in the UK and in my opinion they are the best implementation they did with the US release.

Thanks! I appreciate the input. Starting with UK and progress to US was something I had not considered.

[benvoliothefirst]

14! That's a fairly random number...

I **JUST** figured out the reference and I've been here for years!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

This is an interesting question and my position has changed over the decades.

I started with First Edition back in Xmas 1989, playing with my family, but I then joined a second gaming group with school friends and they had the Second Edition so I was playing both in parallel. The Second Edition in almost every respect was an upgrade on the First Edition so we adopted those rules (although we played the "cards limited availability" mechanism that was present in First Edition, present those possibly watered down in the Second Edition and partially removed in the Adventure Design Kit, but we preferred that and I suspect the reason for the half-hearted change was production costs rather than better game play)

That said we adopted improved monster stats (Body points specifically) and some other tweaks from an article in Games International Magazine #9 Sep/Oct 1989

When I discovered this forum about 10 years ago and the North American rules I did a quick read through and came to the conclusion that the NA edition was an upgrade of the Second Edition, so adopted the NA ruleset.

However...

Whilst there are clearly some big ticket improvements in the North American Edition: Multiple BP monsters (although we had already adopted similar stats and later expansions for Second Edition already had some multiple BP monsters), Chaos Spells (although again later Second Edition Quests came with plenty of Chaos Spells, that we had already back-ported to earlier quests, but NA did have them from the start which was an improvement) when it came to playing the game and applying tweaks for clarity and consistency I soon discovered that whilst Second Edition has a generous list of flaws (I have identified and tweaked about 50!) in many cases the NA edition has the same flaws, it also introduced a load of new flaws and unnecessary (in my point of view) complications and inconsistencies and in some cases attempts to fix SE flaws, resulted in those flaws still be present and some new ones added in the same area!

In conclusion after loads of playing and tweaking I reverted back to the Second Edition as my base game and applied tweaks accordingly, so I now consider the North American Edition to be more of a parallel fork of Second Edition rather than a true upgrade and I think that the intention of the designers was to change the flavour and the general direction of the North American Edition to be more co-operative (forcing players to co-operate rather than teaching them to co-operate) which may suit some, but not me.

[The Admiral]

The way I play now is a melding of both the EU and NA editions along with a load of homebrew rules. I would struggle to play either RAW. But if I had to pick one to have it would be NA. The addition of BP's to even basic monsters, Chaos spells and extra artefacts clinches it for me.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

The addition of BP's to even basic monsters, Chaos spells and extra artefacts clinches it for me.

I get this entirely, but by porting the best bits from the North American Edition (extra monster BP, chaos spells - technically they were in the Second Edition already they just weren't implemented until later expansions - and extra Quest Treasures is) into the Second Edition, in my opinion of course, results in an even better game overall, because those represent the best of the NA changes, and they are good, but if you use the NA raw then you automatically get a load of other changes that are less good!

[Zenithfleet]

This is an interesting question and my position has changed over the decades.

I find it interesting that I had a similar experience.

I started out with the UK 2nd edition rules (Australian to be precise). Later I lost my rulebook, so had to play by memory.

When I discovered the North American edition though the wonders of the internet, I assumed it was superior and started using it instead... although in practice I used a mix of NA rules and half-remembered UK rules, plus UK questbooks.

I also added extra Body points for monsters, though not as many as the NA rules added. (2 BP for Fimirs, Mummies and Chaos Warriors; 3 BP for Gargoyles.)

However the more I used the NA rules, the more they irked me. For one thing, I found them overly verbose. (You can see the same thing in Milton Bradley's NA edition of Thunder Road compared to the UK version, so maybe it was just the style at the time.) In many cases, as you say, their attempts at improvement just introduced extra complications that caused new problems not present in the original. You just have to look at all the topics here on the Inn about rules snafus that are specific to the NA version and don't really come up in the UK edition.

When I finally got hold of a replacement 2nd ed UK rulebook, I was surprised at just how clean and elegant most of it was. I've gone back to using it for almost everything. The two exceptions are extra body points for bosses, and the Chaos Spells. I never knew Wizards of Morcar existed as a kid so I never had access to those monster spells. (I don't think it was even released here in Australia, which sadly means my current copy has a flimsy cardboard box rather than the sturdy Australasian top-lid boxes of my other three classic expansions.)

Even 1 BP for ordinary monsters now seems more sensible to keep the game moving. The last few times we played with multi-body-point monsters, we tended to groan whenever a Fimir or Chaos Warrior showed up because of the tedious grind that would ensue to kill it (as well as needing to remember which ones had lost a BP).


As others have said here and elsewhere, but is always worth reiterating because many people don't realise it:

The biggest difference between NA and UK editions is the basic philosophy behind the game.

The UK version is balanced on the assumption that the players (i.e. kids, assumed to be boys because it was the early 90s) will compete with each other, go off in different directions, race each other to the treasure and even attack each other when sufficiently annoyed. If played this way, even with adult players, the base game quests work well. However, if and when the players learn to cooperate, or there's only one player controlling all the heroes, the UK base game becomes too easy. It's presumably why the expansions started throwing hordes of monsters at the players and generally upping the challenge level. Early reviews seem to have identified this problem right away. I think it was the Games International review that specifically offered house rules based on whether your players were competitive or cooperative.

The NA edition enforced cooperation in its rules: prohibiting player attacking player, dividing gold rewards equally and so on. Therefore it had to increase the challenge level from the start in order to compensate. However, the bones of HeroQuest weren't built that way. Not the base game quests, at any rate. It feels to me as if it was twisted (by Chaos?) into a gameplay style it wasn't really intended for.

It annoys me that a slightly modified NA version has now become the global standard thanks to the Hasbro edition. It's the Chaos Warrior edition, I tell you! Or maybe the Dark Elf edition, since they live in the equivalent of North America in the Warhammer world. It's gone to the dark side!

And I don't think I'll ever be able to take the name 'Zargon' seriously.

[lestodante]

What I don't like in the US edition is they split the searchs for traps and secret doors into two different actions, which was unnecessary to me. It just makes the quest longer. But they removed the treasure search in corridors which is bad because someone can lose a coin into a corridor too, not only in rooms.
About the new arttifacts, we only have 3 which are really new, since Wizard Staff and Wizard Cloak were already in the UK 2nd edition (Cloak of Protection and the standard staff).
They introduced an odd rule which allows a dying hero to dring a potion right after his death (or even casting a healing spell, if available), which I don't like at all as it nullifies many strategies (taking care of which spell to use and when as well as the potions).
Nerfed some cool spell features, such as Courage (it was lasting many turns), Rock Skin (it was +2 defend dice) and Fire of Wrath (it lost the feature to search and hit a target "anywhere on the board"). Also lostthe rule saying "monsters in the same room of a spellcaster are always considered visible to the spellcaster", wich had a sense for me.
So I generally prefer the UK version (also for the graphic style of the cards) but added the Chaos Spells and the extra artifacts as well as the multiple BP monsters. Have a look at both of them and feel free to take the best of both worlds.