Q3: Lair of the Orc Warlord: NA vs EU differences

[Kurgan]

The Armory Buy-back option was officially integrated into the 1992 NA expansions (BQP & EQP) and is otherwise never mentioned anywhere officially that I've ever seen (though it was a common house rule among people I knew even those who didn't own the new expansions much less knew what they contained). In the EU realm, Wizards of Morcar lets you transform a piece of equipment into 100 gold coins with the Potion of Alchemy (found once per quest in the treasure deck... remember under EU rules Treasures other than gold amounts are not carried into the next quest).

I think we just knew about the sell back thing because it was a common enough trope in fantasy RPG video games of the time and was a natural enough desire to unload your unneeded gear to get better stuff. You'll notice that the Japanese edition is HEAVY on Gold, because you need a lot of it to spend on trying to upgrade your character, while in the EU timeline after the Game System is over you really don't get much extra gold, other than what's in the treasure deck (KK gives you a big reward at the end but that's that). In the NA editions the Alchemist Shops were added to try to soak up some of that gold buying potions you will need for later. But look at ATOH and WOM, you barely find any treasure compared to the game system when you're trying to build up your characters. After you find all the Artifacts (of which the NA has many more than the EU original) you really don't need much of the Equipment you formerly saved up for (except in the rare instance when they can be destroyed, otherwise all lost Artifacts are found again early in the next quest or replayed remix of the quest you "failed"). A lot of the new Artifacts to be fair are able to be used up (Elixir of Life, Spell Scrolls, Ring of Return, etc), or replacements for missing equipment (Wizard's Cloak taking the place of the Cloak of Protection for the Wizard).

Just making the monsters stronger isn't always the best way to make a quest less easy (it tends to increase the overall length of the quest as well, which not everyone wants). But each GM decides what it is they are wanting as far as the experience. The EU edition doesn't let you sell stuff back or retain Treasures and there are no death saves, which tends to blunt the fact that so many monsters have only 1 BP even if you finally decide to work together instead of "competing."

There is also the implication that cards limit supply or stock of Equipment items in the EU editions (they absolutely explicitly do in the Japanese edition, which also implements a house rule many people used which was that you have to walk adjacent to a Treasure Chest to open it). It is heavily implied (and a lot of players assumed this) and Milton Bradley actually revised this in the Adventure Design Kit saying you just write it on your character sheet. While this wasn't a huge thing, it did mean that there would be more sets of armor, shields, helmet available instead of having it go to just one hero (depending upon how you played, some might have thought you just got one per buying session, others that you only had one the entire campaign).

Anyway this thread was about quest differences not necessarily a review of how to make the EU and NA editions better, but you can get that from the way I was discussing errors in the NA quest being corrected with reference to the original edition of the same quest!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Yes I got side tracked when I noticed this bit

EU Version: 100 gold coins to the one who kills Ulag alone.
NA version: 180 gold coins to be divided when Ulag dies.

You keep referring to having to walk adjacent to a Treasure Chest to open it as a house rule, it wasn't, it was the official rule in the EA editions.

I think your differences list has missed a few extra pesky Goblins...

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Lair of the Orc Warlord.pdf

Also on a separate note, why is this topic named "Legacy of the Orc Warlord" when the Quest is named "Lair of the Orc Warlord"

[wallydubbs]

Y'all are talking about Quest 3, LAIR of the Orc Warlord, why has no one but me tried to fix the title? Legacy of the Orc Warlord is Quest 6.

[Kurgan]

Which is sadder, that I got it wrong, or that it took some of you 3.5 years to notice?

I fixed mine...

Interesting variant, Bareheaded Warrior.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

The Armory Buy-back option was officially integrated into the 1992 NA expansions (BQP & EQP) and is otherwise never mentioned anywhere officially that I've ever seen (though it was a common house rule among people I knew even those who didn't own the new expansions much less knew what they contained).

Thanks for the confirmation/clarification I can never seem to remember when the buy-back rule was officially introduced and I'm aware that it was a common house rule prior to that but like many other examples in many board games sometimes common house rules have unintended consequences to the detriment of the game. Like Monopoly for example, many complain that the game takes way too long but common house rules like not doing property auctions, having to pass go before buying properties for the first time, "free parking" resulting in pocketing fine money, extra restrictions around play in jail, all are common house rules and all make the game worse by making it take even longer!

In the EU realm, Wizards of Morcar lets you transform a piece of equipment into 100 gold coins with the Potion of Alchemy (found once per quest in the treasure deck... remember under EU rules Treasures other than gold amounts are not carried into the next quest).

A common misconception of NA players when discussing the EU game is to assume if it is in the treasure deck then it is found once per quest. if you assume that an average quest has 10 rooms and you search each one once (not once per hero as in the NA edition) that is a total of 10 searches, rather than 40 and with a treasure deck of 25 cards it is closer to once every 2-3 Quests.

[wallydubbs]

Which is sadder, that I got it wrong, or that it took some of you 3.5 years to notice?

I fixed mine...

Interesting variant, Bareheaded Warrior.

I actually noticed it long ago, but since my previous message on here is no longer appearing I can't really back it up... Lol.

[Kurgan]

Taking another dive into the booklets of old...

I guess the EU 1st edition rules do NOT specify that the Treasure deck should be shuffled every time a hero searches for treasure, just once before each new quest begins. In this edition gold and jewels go to the bottom of the deck. While as Bareheaded Warrior points out you have fewer searches possible in this version since only 1 search per room, you also get an additional search for each "passage" (corridor) since these can be searched in this version. It's not a guarantee that all gold/jewels will be found (nor all potions), in every quest I agree. If you just look at the cards it would seem used potions get discarded out of the quest, but the rules in 1st edition actually say a used potion goes back to the bottom of the Treasure deck. Without extra shuffling though even 10 searches would cover less than half the deck! Potions can be used immediately and go back into the deck but they might be held onto for all of the quest (and returned at the end), meaning more chances to get the next one in the list, but still limited by the number of searches.

2nd EU edition does indeed say that Gold/Jewels are discarded once found (with the money written on the back of the character sheet), and a new shuffle is required before each new treasure search. Wandering Monsters (5), Traps! (3) are "returned to the treasure pile" (which is then shuffled before the next search!) instead of necessarily going to the bottom of the deck. No more searching in passages allowed.

Both decks have the same content: 24 total cards including 7 gold variants (including "treasure horde!") plus 1 gem and 1 jewels for a total of 9 gold giving treasure cards to find each quest. There are seven bottles (Holy Water, 2x Potion of Healing, Resilience, Strength, Speed, and Heroic Brew)... these cards seem intended to be held onto by the finder until they are used, then discarded (cannot be carried from one quest to another). The only other questionable card is "Nothing" which doesn't say whether it goes back into the deck or not... I guess since it doesn't say it does go back to the treasure pile or bottom of the deck, then you could guess it is discarded once found.

So long story short, yes, under 2nd edition rules, Q3 isn't guaranteed to give the heroes all of the gold and/or all of the bottles with only 6 searches to draw cards, and first edition only is a little better with 8 possible card draws from searches... On the other hand it would be very plausible to exhaust the treasure deck of good things under the NA rules with 33 (actually 34, since the unmarked treasure chest is clearly an error, but if you play as written that's four cards possible to draw in that final room) possible searches that result in card draws. The NA deck is the same size but has different distributions (8 gold variants including jewels and gems, 6 bottles including 3x Potion of Healing, strength, defense, and heroic brew vs. 4 hazards and 6 wandering monsters) with gold and potions being discarded (write it on your character sheet) and bad cards going to the bottom of the deck.

Both NA and 2nd EU ed. could theoretically never give any good cards at all, if the shuffling is such that a bad card comes up at the top each and every time, though this seems unlikely in most quest sessions. The rulebooks don't specify precisely how the cards are to be shuffled and in the world of cards there are several different styles, so there's a lot of personal preference here. But I take your point... the EU editions potentially offer more gold per quest (with less to spend it on, and sometimes lower prices, and all sales are final!), but all due to luck of the draw, while a careful crew of completionist heroes will get more gold on average per quest in the NA editions and the remake.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My Ruleset
Just for clarification, when I say that I use the “Classic” edition rules, I really mean the Second Edition rules of play and only really refer to the First Edition where rules in the Second Edition aren’t clear and I’m trying to work out the intention behind a change. That said I don’t use the Second Edition rules “out of the box” as I do apply my own house rules (link in my signature) and I also apply the rules from the whole suite of expansions retrospectively, for example at my table, the Witch Lord in the Game System Quest “Return to Barak Tor” is equipped with the full set of six Necromantic spells introduced in Wizards of Morcar (I won’t go into a discussion of the general differences between Classic and NA here as there is already a dedicated topic on that subject which I’ll post to later).

Treasure Deck Shuffling
The principle with the treasure deck in HeroQuest, is that you always draw from a shuffled deck of cards with identical backs kept in a stack face down, is so that whilst you may not which cards have already been removed from the deck and therefore which ones remain, you cannot know which card you will actually draw on any given occasion. Provided that you shuffle the deck at the start of the game and then each time a card is returned to the deck, then that principle is achieved with the minimum amount of shuffling required. Your proposal to shuffle before every draw achieves the same thing but with more time spent shuffling as you always draw more cards than you return, so whilst it doesn’t make a huge difference I would opt for the more efficient approach, recommended in the Second Edition, of shuffling only when you return a card to the deck, which results in more time spent playing and less time spent shuffling.

Gold Yield
My point around the gold yield of the treasure deck between Classic and NA (1990 Remake) editions wasn’t that the Classic Edition offers more gold per quest, it was the opposite. The NA (1990 Remake) increases the gold yield from the treasure deck by increasing the number of searches per room from 1 to 1 per hero, almost guaranteeing that every “good” card will be drawn in each quest (so the question becomes when in the quest will I get a specific card, rather than will I get a specific card in a quest at all) and if you combine that increased gold yield with the “buy-back at 50%” rule, which effectively halves the cost of equipment (a 500gc mail armour card, that you later sell back for 250gc has a net cost of only 250gc) means that the rate that you advance in that edition is 2-3 times faster than the classic edition, which makes a whole host of issues worse.

Handling the Treasure Cards
In terms of the handling of the “good” treasure cards that represent potions and similar items, I don’t think that either the Classic or NA editions handle that particularly well.

In the Classic edition, you could draw a potion card but be unable to use it in that quest, either because of the monsters in the quest (e.g. Holy Water but no Undead) or because of timing (drawing a Potion of Healing in the last room of the Quest) but the rules state you have to discard it at the end which results in players feeling disappointed or even a little cheated, especially if a golden opportunity arises early in the next Quest when they really need that potion.

An attempt to fix this was incorporated into the NA remake rules that meant you were supposed to write down the potion card on your character sheet, and if it was unused at the end of the quest then you kept it until the following quest and the card was included in the deck for the following Quest. However this was also flawed as it meant, in combination with the increased treasure searching, that statistically every potion in the deck was likely found in every quest and if unused was kept until the next quest during which it was likely to be found again, and again essentially causing an unlimited accumulation of potions (which is the reason why the NA edition was nicknamed the “potion-hoarder edition”)

I would suggest a better approach is if a potion is unused during a quest, then it is recorded on the character sheet, and at the start of the next quest, the corresponding card is given back to that player before the Treasure Deck is shuffled at the start of the game. This has the benefit of players being able to retain unused potions from quest to quest but means that a potion cannot be drawn from the deck again until it has been used and returned between quests, so only one of each potion (card) can be “in-play” at any one time which prevents the hoarding effect. If you try this, you’ll find that it has a neat, simple auto-balancing effect, as groups that find the game easier, use less potions, so find less potions which makes the game a little harder for them, equally groups that find the game harder, use more potions, find more potions and that makes the game a little easier for them.

[Zenithfleet]

The NA (1990 Remake) increases the gold yield from the treasure deck by increasing the number of searches per room from 1 to 1 per hero

Slight tangent, but where is the rule in the UK 2nd edition about only searching for treasure once per room?

I can't find any such restriction in the 2nd ed UK rulebook. As far as I can tell, the heroes can repeatedly search the same room as often as they like. Or passage, if they feel like it.*

I feel like I've had this discussion before in another thread, but searching for Threads is turning up the Nothing card.


*It's implied--but not stated outright--that you can search for treasure in a passage in the UK edition. Wandering monsters are described as appearing in "the same room or passage". That would make no sense if you couldn't search for treasure and draw a wandering monster card in a passage.

In practice nobody I've ever played HeroQuest with has shown much inclination to repeatedly search for treasure in the same place and try to exhaust the treasure deck. They tend to only search when a) they think something important might be in the room, or b) somebody else just searched and got some gold, and they're envious. Naturally they tend to draw a wandering monster or a trap instead.

Depending on play style it could be a big problem for other groups, though, if they're determined to exhaust the treasure deck each game. So I can understand adding a house rule limiting treasure searches to once per room. I just can't find the actual rule about it.