In the months we have been playing this game, I think the most memorable moment was a quest, toward the beginning, when suddenly every monster in the entire dungeon started heading right toward us, and we were prevented from moving quickly because we had to escort a slow-moving NPC.
We hadn’t really learned to work together. None of us could take much damage, or deliver much damage. Every new room was the potential game over for a character. Pretty sure we lost the wizard once and the elf once, and came close with the others.
Contrast to the back half of the starter fourteen quests. We’ve swapped out the barbarian and the wizard for the extremely overpowered monk and the surprisingly useful rogue. Everyone has at least four defense dice; most have five. Everyone but the rogue has a four attack dice weapon — the rogue’s abilities require certain weapons. When we got the iconic Spirit Blade, nobody was interested in using it. If it hadn’t been required to take on the Witch Lord, it probably would have been forgotten.
As it was, when the monk, exploring, came across the Witch Lord, he calmly killed the skeletons, in no danger from the boss, while the rest of us caught up.
The dwarf had heroic brews and potions of strength. Attacking twice each turn, for two extra attack dice on the first of those attacks, and the Witch Lord unable to defend on the second of those.
The Witch Lord was dead. The treasure was something only a wizard could make good use of, and we didn’t have a wizard.
HeroQuest is fun, and I enjoyed the game, but… power creep made what should have been the most epic battles, yawn fests.
Our Zargon played each quest as written. I think he could have switched things up a bit, made things a little tougher, and that would have been very much appreciated. The devs should include optional, tougher, dungeons for those of us who have dipped into the advanced characters.
I had fun! I think we all did! But we could have had more fun.
There’s going to be a lot of vacations this summer. But our next game night game is going to be… something new.
