VENGEANCE!

[manaknight14]

In light of a recent gaming session I participated in, I have to recount this hilarious tale that spans the 30 years of my relationship with HeroQuest.

The person who first introduced me to HeroQuest was my oldest friend Eric. When we were but tweens in the mid-1990s, my brother and I played our first-ever game of HeroQuest with Eric in the role of Zargon. The quest of the day was The Trial. We were having a great time, but when we reached the final confrontation with Verag, Eric pulled out the deck of Chaos spells and the gargoyle started casting at us. Most notably, he used Command on the barbarian, who proceeded to decimate the remaining heroes and ultimately led to a TPK. Eric later confessed that Verag was never supposed to have spells and he had essentially cheated, but we weren't too mad because the experience was still lots of fun. We were immediately hooked on the game and proceeded to play through the entire core quest book with Eric and another friend, but then we stopped playing the game for decades due to it going out of print. But whenever the topic of HQ came up, we always reminisced about Eric and his overpowered magical gargoyle.

Fast forward to this past weekend. My brother had organized a gaming weekend with a bunch of old friends. He hadn't played HeroQuest since the old days, and many of our friends either never got a chance to play HQ in the old days or hadn't in a long time, but he knew that I had acquired the Avalon Hill reprint and asked me to bring it so we could play a few quests, which I was more than happy to do. I took the role of Zargon and ran two quests for the group, including the dreaded Rogar's Hall which includes an encounter with... a spellcasting gargoyle. Well, one of the hero players attempting this quest was none other than Eric, and I had the great delight of telling him that the gargoyle they had encountered would be making use of the Dread spell deck. However, I didn't initially reveal that the gargoyle's access to Dread spells was random and I would have to blindly draw a spell each turn. On the gargoyle's first turn I drew a random spell, and couldn't believe what I saw. I smiled at my old friend and said "Eric, I've been waiting 30 years to do this... the gargoyle casts Command on your barbarian!" The spell worked and persisted for several turns despite the barbarian being equipped with the Talisman of Lore, but they did manage to get through the encounter and were able to complete the quest without any heroes dying. However, the gargoyle pulling off my revenge move after 30 years gave everybody a good laugh, including Eric himself who was a good sport about the whole thing.

[Daedalus]

I draw my your Brawd-sword!

[knightkrawler]

I draw my your Brawd-sword!

"Oi dror yor bwode sode!"

[Daedalus]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Good to hear back from ya.