Heroquest is a board game that was made available in the 1980s. It was designed and made by Games Workshop, who are now more commonly known as the creators of Warhammer. In fact the Heroquest boardgames are believed to have lead to the creation of warhammer. This is a boardgame with a difference, it comes with many small models and several seperate game cards.
The Game Pieces
The game came with several figures, mummies, zombies, skeletons, chaos warriors, warlords, orcs, goblins, gargoyles and fimirs, oh....and of course a Warlord. These models have since been adapted and are now used in warhammer armies. The game also comes with four hero models, these represent; a barbarian, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard. These are the 'good guys', they each have individual skills which are required if you want to succeed in the game.The game board is large and is printed with rooms and corridors laid out in a maze-like fashion. Also included with the game are different types of cards. These are:Treasure cards: These are used when a character does a treasure search. These cards can be good or bad, some give you wealth, other's take some life away from your player.Monster cards: These are used by the gamesmaster as reference cards which show the different abilities of the various monsters.Quest cards: These cards represent the various skills and weapons a hero can gain and use once he's completed a quest.Weapons cards: These show the different weapons available for the heroes to buy, at the end of each level, or collect from weapons' racks during the game.
The Aim of the Game
The aim of the game is for the heroes to navigate through each quest, without dying, working as a team to defeat the gamesmaster.
How to Play
The game is designed for 2 to 5 players, the more players the longer the level time. No matter how many players you have one has to be the gamesmaster, the job of this master is to place all the objects on the board in places designated by the level maps, or from maps that have been created by yourself. These maps show the gamesmaster where to place monsters, furniture and traps.Unfortunately the heroes do not have access to the maps so have no idea of what will appear when their hero enters a new corridor or room.The gamesmaster has the job of moving and attacking with all the monsters that have been found by the heroes. Each hero has one turn in a round, they can use this turn to explore, search for treasures, or traps, as well as attacking the monsters. They cannot however search/treasure search and attack, or search and treasure search in one turn. Once all the heroes have had a turn it is the turn of the gamesmaster, he can move as many monsters as he likes and can attack as many times as possible. The difficulty of the game is determined by how aggressive the gamesmaster is.
Moving
On each turn the heroes can move, to do this the player must roll two dice and can then move the rolled number of squares. If for some reason the hero has lost the ability to roll two dice then the player can only move the number of squares rolled on one die. The gamesmaster can move the monsters by the number of squares shown on that monster's character card.
Searching
If a hero decides to search, they can at any time during their turn, athough they are not permitted to move, search and then move again. If you search you proclaim so to the gamesmaster who will check on his map to see if there are any traps or secret doors in that area. You can only search one area of the board in a turn, for example a room or a section of corridor.
Treasure
During each level, or quest, a hero may come across treasure chests and cupboards that contain hidden treasure. Also, if a player decides that they want to take a chance and do a treasure search in there turn, then they take a treasure search card and the hero finds the thing stated on the card.
Attacking and Defending
When a hero or monster attacks he rolls special 'attack dice'. The characters' abilities and their weapons decide on the number of these die they should roll. These special dice have three skulls, two 'white' shields and one 'dark' shield printed on their six faces. When attacking you want to roll skulls, the number of skulls you roll is the number of lives you take of the victim. The victim then has a chance to defend, if the victim is a hero they roll the number of dice specified for that character defence, if they roll the same number or more 'white' shields than the attacker did skulls, the hero is safe. If the victim is a monster they roll the specified number of dice in defence, but they must roll 'dark' shields. If the defender is unsuccessful then the number of skulls not countered by shields equates to the number of lives the victim loses.
Advanced Heroquest
Several years later a new version was released known as advanced heroquest. This is a brilliant game similar to the original except the 'monsters' provided were all skaven (rat-like creatures that walk on their hind legs), encouraging people to complete the teams by buying the newly successful models. This version of the game is fun to play; there are unlimited combinations of levels because the game board is put together depending on dice rolls. The down side of this game is the fact the rule book is almost a hundred pages long and contains many charts which are all required during play.
How did this start the Warhammer craze?
Due to the success of heroquest, Games workshop began to produce expansion packs. These included new level maps and more models. Soon they began to produce and sell the models seperately, over the years they have been adapted and improved. Now these models have become a bigger success than Heroquest and are well known as Warhammer.
What is Warhammer?
Warhammer is a game that is well known to people in the UK and Ireland. The game uses model creatures which each have different abilities and skills. You can collect whole armies and play against other armies using special reference tables.
Is Heroquest Still Available???
These are really cool games but are, unfortunately, hard to get hold of now, in fact they have been withdrawn from the market for about 5 years.
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