WIZARDS OF MORCAR discussion

[manaknight14]

One thing worth noticing is what's NOT shown in the images: unless it's on the back of some other tile shown, there's no fireburst token! Perhaps they tweaked its rules in such a way that a token is no longer used, or maybe they replaced it with something else entirely. Either may, maybe that's a good sign that AH did their diligence to make changes where the original mechanics were broken or didn't make sense.

[Kurgan]

"Hoepkins" (Doug Hopkins!)...

So "Boons of Heroism" card deck. We finally get the "upgrade" mechanic Doug was talking about...

5 "Re-imagined" quests. So they acknowledge the 5 original and there are 5 new ones...

[wallydubbs]

It looks like those pictures are all of models in the game. Hopefully it still won't be officially tied to D&D (because it doesn't need to be, not because D&D is now woke or some such nonsense) despite having mimics. Curious that many of the figures come in purple, black, and red versions.

I think the multi colored mercenaries are to avoid confusion. Like Frozen Horror it was easy to lose track of who owned which mercenary and which ones have moved. Who's the purple guy with the shield, I didn't see a card for him? I see suggestions for Ragnar.
The tiles shown are potentially double sided, just like we don't get to see the other side of the cards. It's possible the Fire Burst tile is on the other side. There should also be Pits of Darkness and broken wall tiles... Maybe they did away with some of that.

I've never been so happy to be wrong about something.

It's somewhat disappointing that they removed Grawshak. They used Dread on the Horizon to explain away his absence because they wanted a female villain. Also, it's a little disrespectful to the Wizard, who I think should have been on the cover instead of the Barbarian. It would be more faithful to the original.

I could also see bits and pieces of the Dwarf and Wizard quest packs in there. The 10 quests were "re-imagined." I think what they mean is that they are all based on previous quests, but changed, mostly in storyline but a few things probably got moved around in these quests.

I also want to add in about this town/guild tile, supposed to be used between quests. When I got the chance to playtest Where Heroes Dare with Baker, he had a very similar tile that allowed heroes to visit between quests. He had a Thieves Guild, Temple, Oracle, etc. I think this is a very similar principle where heroes visit between quests to buy or trade treasures for boons. Donating to the temple will give you blessings, paying the Oracle to tell the future, finding a mysterious artifact that's highly valuable. Things like that.

[Alby87]

Morcar will be a different character? Sargon is in the story behind the box, yet the name is still wom...

[Kurgan]

One thing worth noticing is what's NOT shown in the images: unless it's on the back of some other tile shown, there's no fireburst token! Perhaps they tweaked its rules in such a way that a token is no longer used, or maybe they replaced it with something else entirely. Either may, maybe that's a good sign that AH did their diligence to make changes where the original mechanics were broken or didn't make sense.

Hmm!!

There are a big pile of skull tiles and a pile of cloak of shadows tiles. The Fire bursts might be on the reverse side?

No "magical reference" tile, unless it's on the back of the village or the arena room.

[Kurgan]

I think we've got enough dice, and enough character sheets, so here is my reaction:

"Likes"
1 - Retaining most of the aesthetic of the original.
2 - multi-colors for mercenaries makes visually identifying which belong with which hero easier, also if you want to have some of them as evil characters. (also appreciate they gave us the opposite sex versions of the ones they swapped in Frozen Horror!)
3- This is a "big box" expansion, feels packed with content, much like we got with ATOH, retaining the original and ADDING to it.
4- New content feels like it fits... it's either stuff we were specifically asking for, or fits within the context of classic HeroQuest
5- Excited to see the new mechanics "Boons of Heroism," town tile.
6- Female wizard was expected, and you could say she looks "boring" or "plain" but I appreciate that her aesthetic is based on the 1989 art, even more so than the First Light Elf was a tribute to the old pose.

"Whines"
1 - "only" 12 mercenaries. I know the heroes can hire up to 16 in the rules though only 12 "bodies" were available. The game gets easier (as long as they have gold, I presume the prices are increased from the original which were very low and on top of that you got discounts) with more mercs of course. But you COULD add the Frozen Horror mercs to compliment the available hiring pool though if you just take one each of the gray mercs to add and retain the color divisions.

2 - No Grawshak! That is, unless he does appear and they use say, the Dread Sorcerer or Orc with the "Large Sword" to represent him. Goofy as many found the original miniature, an Orc wizard is still something we don't have in modern HQ. I guess we do have his daughter, who looks cool, but she's a totally different character (though her precise powers are unknown, Dread on the Horizon touts her as being more powerful... so maybe this highlights some alterations to the mechanics of the character this time around?).

3 - Didn't notice this one at first, but despite this being the Wizard themed pack, the Wizard hero isn't featured on the front cover (nor is the Dwarf for that matter). Something of an oversight. So unless there's an important story reason why during the final showdown there's only the Barbarian, Elf, and a group of mercenaries left, this was a little disappointing. Don't judge a game by its cover right... but having those other heroes even in the background would give it that extra boost to really sell it to the public (granted, it's still a cool cover, and very good rendition of the original in the new format). Wonder who the artist was for this one?

4 - Have to wait till March 1st! Granted, for all we know this means we'll be able to get it "early" in February but I had really hoped we could get it still this year. Won't be under your Christmas tree, but it might be next to your Valentine's Day candy!

Concerns:
I see the Mercs are bulked up to be like their FH counterparts. What about the prices and availability? What limitations will be placed on them this time? In the original WOM they were needed (I take it), they were very cheap but also very fragile. With increased monster body points in the rest of the quest, they will need to pass muster.

What is this "Artificer" and how will she fit into the story? If it's simply a "fifth wizard" who can say, summon golems and mimics in one or more of the new quests, that's fine I guess. Could be an interesting hero conversion too, potentially. Sounds like it will be possible to hire monster mercenaries (maybe they will be the "Fragile" ones or perhaps they can "turn" on the heroes in unlucky circumstances, have to be paid in meat or something, who knows!) so this could be interesting.

People mentioned the Fire Burst Traps aren't being shown. I'm guessing they're on the reverse side of the "skull" tiles (or at least a few of them).

What about the Hero Spells, have they been buffed at all? Then again if they are "as is" from 1991 (I keep wanting to say WOM is 1992, I guess I'm thinking of the Wizard Quest Pack in my mind... which probably would have been 1993 had it been finished and released!), maybe they will adjust the requirements for the spells (instead of three of them just replacing 3 of the elemental).

Wonder what the hold-up is for these four months?

[Kurgan]

Need to figure out the cards... Virg I think has a list going.

Cards spread image from Reddit (higher res). Others are from Amazon.

[wallydubbs]

I managed to get an extra zoom into some of the cards. It looks like some changes have been made. The High Mage's Escape Spell is the same as the Dread Spell from the game system (same effect as in non disclosed location). Sharpen Blades is the same. Death Bolt only does 1 damage. The Stone Wall only has 1 Body Point , can't read it all so I'm assuming defends with s. The Hammer is 2AD but gets +2AD on magical creatures.
Leach Life forces all heroes to roll 1 red dice, if they roll higher than their mind points they give 1BP to the spellcaster.

Good enough to know some things might be fixed.

It seems like they're replacing Grawshak with his daughter, who will have the same kind of spells. I think they just wanted a female antagonist. She'll probably have the same stats.

[Kurgan]

Yeah, Escape is most certainly different (stronger in this case, and those secret locations are something new for the quests of course).

The magical walls in the original book each had 1 BP and defended with white shields, so no change there.

Death Bolt only did 1 BP in the original.

I posted the higher res image earlier, but this one, though blurrier (from BBTS) shows a little more on the top and bottom. Very hard to make out the text...

Now I'm starting to wonder about those tiles we haven't seen. The original WOM had several individual square tiles:
4 Firebursts (you never really need that many, maybe three at the most ever at a time in the original version anyway), 4 breached wall tiles, and 6 rubble piles. Some sets also split the "cloak of shadows" tile into six individual tiles.

Now the remake edition adds 14 skull tiles and a key tile, that never existed in the original. Of course skull tiles replaced the need for written trackers from the EU to NA editions. There are certainly a lot more use for skull tiles in the NA/remake gameplay with the stronger monsters, though the GS already contains 10 of them if I recall correctly. So you could handle two five BP monsters and a pair of two BP monsters with them all at once with everybody ready to die (but not dead yet!). The remake also gives you both options for the cloak of shadows with the six individual pink fog tiles alongside the block of 2x3. So the reverse sides of those tiles could account for the "missing" ones.

There's also the fact that in the original HeroQuest, rubble tiles represented all individual blocked squares (and the doubles were 1x2 slabs of rubble). Whereas in the NA/Remake edition rubble tiles are only used for sprung fallen block traps and those neat brick "blocked squares" (and the rarer double blocked squares) are used for walls. Anyway, if you imagine six of those Skulls (or the pink fog squares) are taken up with rubble or blocked squares, that's 14 more squares that could serve for the other 8.

Then there's the matter of a certain WOM quest that uses exactly FIVE pits of darkness (same icon as used in ATOH). Many consider that an error because the use of pits of darkness is never explained in the WOM booklet, nor are any such tiles included. Probably they were meant to be regular pits, right? Then again WOM was written as if the players had completed several expansions before this one (including ATOH) and the difficulty certainly suggests that, so many they just goofed up but meant for that info to be included or just hoped everyone had it already, not like today where it's only assumed you have the Game System and this one expansion (and still mistakes happen, forgetting you don't have all the assets). Still... the have room to put those Pits of Darkness on the reverse side of some of those other tiles. Plenty of room. I could imagine them putting the same image on both sides (a practice started with CoPD back during the haslab campaign). I guess odd combinations of tile sides can help you figure out which ones to put back in which box after the gameplay ends... or maybe they'll just "fix" it and change those into normal pits instead. They changed the mechanics of how those pits of darkness worked in the ATOH remake, so if they're in there I imagine they'll be explained and be given the proper tiles.

[LucaRocks]

Well, color me a bit disappointed. Of the images above that we can read (thanks for posting guys!), the spells are pretty much the same as in the original.WOM (except escape). I will be very disappointed if all the spells of the original stay the same as some of them were so weak. Unless the stats of the wizards was changed to make their base attack or defense less..

More double based monsters having 4att/5def is also a bit of a letdown. So many monsters have those stats. Hopefully the Bp of each is different. I'm also wondering if the other golem.will have a different card with different stats (like the female Ogre warriors). I thought for sure they would have special abilities. At least the Minotaur has a special ability that sounds cool from what I can read.

And the hammer artifact will never get used in my group. A base two attack is not better than a longsword. And a buffed 4 attack is not better than a battle axe. And you can't attack diagonally with the hammer. I think it would have made it a very in demand item for this expansion if the base att was 3 and the buffed one against constructs was 5. I know they will probably never go to 5 attack with any weapon but this 5 would one really be useful in this expansion and only in certain circumstances.