Our Family Game

[alyndavies]

We've been playing the game for quite a while now, with the initial quest book completed. After that we went straight into Return of the Witch Lord. On the 12/07/2015 we completed the final three quests of the expansion.

Players: Me = Morcar (Zargon)

Heroes:
My Partner - Female Barbarian from Frozen Horror Expansion - Borins Armor, Helmet, Shield (6 defence). Spirit Blade and Crossbow (3 attack or 4 against undead), Amulet of the North, Talisman of Lore (10 body points, 5 mind points).

Eldest daughter (15 years) - Dwarf
Middle daughter (13 years) - Male Barbarian
Youngest daughter (10 years) - Elf
Eldest daughters friend - Wizard

* Depending on how many players we have we use special rules. My partner always plays, and if it's just us two playing she is allowed to buy up to four men at arms, normally she goes for swordsmen. Tactically she uses her Barbarian at the front and uses her men to clear rooms.

Return of the Witch Lord

The Forbidden City:
Players: Me (Morcar), Elf, Female Barbarian
This is a very, very simple quest provided you go in the right way, luckily for me they went the totally wrong way. So every turn I packed every man I possibly could around the exit, using the two undead reinforcement rule, with the plan of grinding them down. I eventually got up to 34 men on the game board! (see pic below - do the conga, do do do!).

I managed to kill the Elf off quickly as she got very unlucky with a chaos warrior wandering monster who killed her in two attacks, however the Female Barbarian managed to wade through my entire undead force one square at a time, killing one undead each turn and moving one space forward she managed to defeat me, this was despite me being able to get two new undead reinforcements each turn. When I told her I'd joined a HeroQuest forum she said to make sure that everyone knew she'd kicked my ass on this quest.
It's clear to me that with 6 defense and 4 attack against undead, with 10 body points she is able to mince all but the very strongest of my minions far too easily! I took a moral win though as she has a lot of healing potion treasure cards saved up and I managed to use up three of them.

The Last Gate:
Players: Me (Morcar), Female Barbarian, The youngest daughter dropped out of the game as we took so long on the last quest she got bored and decided to do some coloring instead. My partner opted for 4 Men at Arms all Swordsmen to assist her.

The last but one quest in the expansion, hopefully the plan heads south towards you and meets Kassandra the Witch Queen. Thankfully thats the way my partner went, however she totally crushed all my men, even killing the Witch queen with total ease. Hardly any challenge for her here.



The Court of the Witch Lord
Players: Me (Morcar), Female Barbarian, My partner opted for 4 Men at Arms all Swordsmen to assist her.
The final battle (again) against the Witch Lord, I gave my partner a little tip here about the Orc statues who destroy weapons (as she's playing alone), and as a Barbarian unable to use fire magic, I advised her to shoot the orcs with a crossbow. She did that and I told her the Statue Orc breaks the weapon, so basically the arrow she shot broke. If Any other player was playing with Fire spells I'd of not given her any help, but there is no point in making the entire expansion pointless, at the very start of the final quest with her breaking the Spirit Blade.
I actually got very lucky here, killing all four of her Swordsmen by the last but one room, I was gutted however to discover the treasure chest gives the hero two potions of healing just before the Witch Lord battle! When she entered the court room of the Witch Lord she did the typical mistake of charging at the Witch Lord and fell straight down the pit trap. I surrounded her with the 2 Chaos Warriors and a Mummy and gradually pummeled her, however on her first go she attacked the Witch lord with four dice and rolling only one skull she killed me, despite me defending with six dice! She took out the Doom Guard Chaos Warriors next, then the Mummies, then the Skeletons before searching the room for the 500 gold coin reward.

[Lemmeron]

Sounds like your partner needs a few challenges to her questing....

It would really be worth you looking at the US rules, I have the EU questbooks, but ended up downloading these from the Inn as they are much better once your characters have that sort of gear. (And that way if she is a stickler for rules, you have actual rules so she cant argue )

At the very least allow boss monsters to defend on hero shields instead of black ones or give them extra body points. Nothing is more of a let down in my opinion for all players is a trivial final encounter.

I am pretty sure in the US ? quest book the orc statues will break any weapon EXCEPT the spirit blade (is also says it will break a ranged weapon fired at it by magic too, so her crossbow could have been broken with those rules

The hardest thing in posing a challenge to geared heroes is you have to surround them in rooms so you get multiple attacks on them each turn, and hope that something gets through ! The single corridors in the game are such a pain as the evil wizard.

You can always house rule a few things to make life harder for her, there are heaps of wonderful ways to make her sweat a bit more on a quest instead of wading through it all - for me it is always about making it fun, but never easy...

good luck with it, it is wonderful that they all play with you !

[cynthialee]

I agree on the above suggestion in having monsters defend on White Shields for more powerful versions of the monsters.
Just that one little tweak to the system can make the game brutal hard for many heroes.

For End Bosses let them defend on ALL shields! Yeah...nasty stuff right there. The heroes need to bring their 'A game' and save a few heals back for the big guy.

[alyndavies]

I'm actually in the process of ordering HeroQuest dice made custom with different colors, I'm hoping to possibly get "special" ones for Morcar made with 2 black shields instead of 2 white shields to give me a fighting chance .

[alyndavies]

19/07/2015

After a short discussion we decided the next expansion we will attempt would be Kellars Keep. Today we introduced our new Reaper bones minatures, so we were playing with 2 female barbarians and a female elf.
During the first 2 quests (great gate and warrior halls). I managed to kill both the weaker barbarian and Elf. In the 3rd dungeon (spiral passage) thanks to the rolling ball and the initial monsters I managed to finally wipe out everyone. I was pleased to finally kill my partner, shes managed to finish the initial quest book and return of the witch lord without dying, so to finally get her was great for me, though to say she was pissed was an understatement.
We restarted the 3rd dungeon again, with all fresh characters, though it was clear it's almost impossible for players to start with new weak characters in this expansion, so I had to help them along a bit with some advice and a wink here and there for directions.

After we completed the 3rd dungeon (on reattempting it) I decided to allow the girls to buy any artifact card they want for 100 gold coins each. It was either that or start the entire game again which I didnt really want to do. The girls were pretty happy with this and thankfully got enough gold from searches to kit themselves up nicely again.
The Elf got Borins Armor, Spirit blade and Elven bracers. While both barbarians got a spirit blade, Borins Armor and Amulet of the North each to give them a fighting chance.

I do have piles of treasure cards across both EU and USA versions and loads of artifact card EU and US sets so the girls can kit themselves up easily, the fourth quest (dwarven forge) they managed to fight their way through, acquiring the part of the treasure map along the way. After 5 quests we got a bit fed up so are taking a break today, though I'm chuffed I managed to kill the entire team this week

I've noticed that kellers keep is a real step up in difficulty from return of the witch lord, the extra damage the orcs and firmirs with 3 attack dice s much better than the 2 attack dice from the skeletons and zombies. Also the Goblins always seem to be at the front of the room so when heroes enter a room they normally kill the goblins first on their turn to allow the stronger orcs and firmirs to get their attacks in on morcars turn.

[cynthialee]

For harder games with new heroes I highly suggest giving the heroes 1 artifact per hero +1 and a small pile of heal potions. Let them settle out how the artifacts get distributed.
For extra hard games, I would go 2 artifacts per hero +2 and a small pile of heal potions.

Sucks to have a group of tricked out heroes wiped and have to start from scratch.

[alyndavies]

For harder games with new heroes I highly suggest giving the heroes 1 artifact per hero +1 and a small pile of heal potions. Let them settle out how the artifacts get distributed.
For extra hard games, I would go 2 artifacts per hero +2 and a small pile of heal potions.

Sucks to have a group of tricked out heroes wiped and have to start from scratch.

I had to actually change the rules and made the girls hand in any potions they dont use on quests at the end of the quest, because the daughters have a tendency to skip off for a few games and we lose the cards.
I think the 100 gold coins rule works well for us as it lets the girls recover quickly if they do die, and it stops them getting annoyed if they die too often.

[alyndavies]

Just a little update we finally finished Kellers Keep and will shortly start Against the Ogre Horde. Im still trying to collect the parts for Wizards or Morcar though we also have Advanced Quest to do also but it doesnt look to clever on the instruction booklet.

[Decipher]

Fantastic pics and game play. Glad you shared. I this kind of stuff!

[alyndavies]

Your welcome I'll try and post some more when we get the game going again, at the moment their all at our holiday home, while I'm just at home working and paying for it.