ATOH 2024! What are your likes and dislikes?

[Naniyue]

Just got mine today! Never had the chance to buy the original, so I really appreciate the work they've done here! The new pieces look AWESOME!!!! The Lord, Champion, and Commander ogres are HUGE!!!!! Even the Frozen Horror doesn't stand a chance!

I look forward to painting these, since their size makes such a thing easier to do!

I don't know of any rules differences, since I never played the original, but I'm sure there are.

[Vorimir]

I dont like the different stats for "vanilla ogres". We have ogres from MOTM and now Mercenary ogres and Ogre warriors, each with different stats.
Asida of that, its an improvement in every aspect.

[wallydubbs]

I like the addition figurines for Orc and Goblin Archers as well as the Skeletons, this'll allow me to up the ante by including them in Keller's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord.

I wish I can say more about the Arena Mode, other then the fact that basing everything on attack dice doesn't exactly even it out. I wish I had more time to playtest it, as I've pretty much wrote my own standards for that.

Ogre Mercenaries are understandable given the storyline, but 8 movement? This is better than an average mercenary and Ogres are supposed to be bulky and slow. I would've much preferred an Ogre Hero instead of a mercenary with 10BP, having the ability to wield a Battle Axe one handed, but on the downside needing to pay extra for armor that would fit him and only allowed 1 movement dice (Plate Mail wouldn't slow him down either).

I think the Ogres were beefed up quite a bit and although I haven't had the opportunity to playtest them to be sure, I have played the original Ogre Horde using drathe's cards for Ogre stats, which made it fairly level, so I'm thinking the additional body points will make things more difficult.
The Ogre Lord being at 10 BP seems a little overkill given the starts of the Frozen Horror (I'm curious to have these 2 fight in the arena)... And I don't think a Yeti should be able to bear hug an ogre.

I don't like the fact that they didn't do anything to fix the trapped rooms or the fact that they only gave the 3 enemy spell casters only the 3 Dread Spells to use over again. I understand this was in accordance with the original but the 3 spells spells here are very similar to Command, Mind Freeze and Mind Burst. They could've just thrown these spells in negating the mind battle aspect. I wouldn't have minded if they gave Festral and the others other Dread Spells, like Summon Orcs and whatnot.

I'm also disappointed by the lack of artifacts offered in this quest pack.

I mean it's good to have the Expansion with needed figurines, tiles and a quest books, but odds are if I ever get to play this I'll be making changes to it.

[Naniyue]

So when and how would you suggest I approach this one?

[Kurgan]

It seems like the expansion is built such that you could begin it with four basic heroes... as the tournaments give you enough gold to buy what you need to approach the rest. Most expansions assume you've played the original 14 however...

[wallydubbs]

So when and how would you suggest I approach this one?

It's probably still playable, I'm not saying it's not. I think if you want to make it interesting, give Nexrael, Xenloth and Festral a wider variety of Dread Spells.
I'd also suggest, any time the heroes find a Sorcerer's Table let them draw a random Spell Scroll card. Also give the heroes escape routes when trapped in a room like finding a secret door or Ring of Return to get them out of there.

I haven't played this newer version all the way through yet. I played the older version a couple years ago, but the Ogre's BPs are heavily increased in this version. So I'll be making later recommendations if need be.

So far I've played the Game System with random heroes on each separate quest, then I went through Keller's Keep with the Female Barbarian, Male Elf (from MotM), Knight and Male Druid.
While they were out rescuing the Emperor;
The Male Commander of the Guardian Knights led the female Berserker (Talisman Bearer), Female Wizard and Female Rogue through Prophecy of Telor to stop the ride Fellmarak.

Meanwhile Spirit Queen's Torment was handled by the Male Berserker, Male Explorer, Female Barbarian (From Frozen Horror) and the Bard.
As all these other quests were going on the Male Barbarian led the Male Wizard, Male Dwarf and Female Druid to stop the Witch Lord from raising his army.

The smaller Expansions are easy for heroes that have built up all their weapons and artifacts, but still relatively challenging for heroes with minimum armor and weapons. So by the end of these 4 expansions I have nearly 16 heroes built up. I understand things are going to be tougher, so I remix the hero pool and I'll be going into Against the Ogre Hoard with the Knight, Elf (from MotM), Warlock and Male Berserker.
I'm weary of this team as they have no healing spells or special trap disarm ability. We'll see how it goes. But I played the first two battles in the World's End Tournament. Quest 1 was easy enough, Spawn of the Pit - Enraged didn't stand a chance once the Warlock cast Fear on it.
Doralf teamed with a Dread Warrior and 2 Cultists.
Once the Elf cast Slow on Doralf, it was an easy enough win. Though he did get a huge hit on the Knight, limiting his movement to 1 was easy enough to avoid while the heroes took out the rest of his team.

[Kurgan]

I don't like that the "loin cloth" on each Ogre boss model hangs down quite so far so that I can't easily stack the skull tiles onto the "surfboard" base (like you can with the giant wolf). Makes it a little more cumbersome to track their damage I would think...

The colors of the Ogres were a little boring to me. So one of the first things I did was spray paint the bosses medium blue and the mercenaries/warriors a brick red. Would have used dark blue for the Ogre bosses, but I had already sprayed my MOTM remake Ogres dark/navy blue.

I wished that there were included artifacts and alchemist shop, even if it were just a repeat from KK/ROTWL.

I would have wished that the Dread Spells used tokens rather than cards (but I can live with it, plus I have plenty of spare tokens).

I thought that the BP of the sorcerers were a little low.

Otherwise I thought it was very well done, awesome, great, can't wait to play it for real! (we've used the Arena mode rules in another quest to try them out... a little harder to get used to, but fun nonetheless).

I am glad there is new content in terms of the arenas. The difficulty is blunted a little with the extra potions (which you have to find instead of them being given out to you). I know that the "Ogre's block hallways" wasn't that big a deal but I miss it. The new Ogre lore to soften them a little I felt was a bit unnecessary but maybe to differentiate them more from the Warhammer Ogres, it was okay. Finally getting Ogre Mercs officially was great (though not being able to feed him a potion seemed off, I know you can still cast spells on him). I like the new design of the Druid (continues to improve from the Haslab versions we first saw!). Like the animal companion mini. I like that they more or less retained the classic era ATOH and while they tinkered with the Ogres they generally made them more powerful to compensate for the overall difficulty of the NA edition (and the power that the heroes may have by this point). The "can't shop between quests" thing would have made it a lot harder, but I think that's one of those things that you can very easily homebrew if you want. I don't really like the "no shopping" rule myself, but it's a popular enough fan request that they felt like introducing it back in the 1990 edition at least.

But yeah the biggest thing is the Arena mode. It's so much more than I imagined (the old arena from 1st edition or something of that sort). "HeroQuest: Killteam" Cristobal of La Guarida De Morcar called it. He wasn't far off!

[wallydubbs]

This probably wouldn't be the best quest pack to run the Rogue in, but I'm gonna assume his Combat Mobility or the smoke bombs won't work on Ogre's. But at the same time, due to the sheer size of the Ogre's if the heroes have clearance andthe circumstances seem right I'd allow a hero to fire a Crossbow over another heroes head if he's firing at an Ogre. Usually I only allow a hero to shoot over the Dwarf or Warlock's head against an Orc they're fighting.

[wallydubbs]

I've noticed in Quest 2 new Quest 5 of this quest pack they removed the 2 chests from the center room, but the quest notes still seem to acknowledge there being 2 in there with 600 gold. Plus there's an additional 300 coins found in the tomb, not there in the original.

So far I've only been through the first two quests since entering the Ogres lair using the Knight, Elf, Warlock and Berserker. The first quest was really difficult as they all survived with 1BP, except for the Warlock, who had 2. The Berserker did drop to 0BP upon falling into a Pit of Darkness, but he had luckily found a Mysterious Flower earlier, eating it for 1BP. I thought this was going to be a TPK as they had no healing spells (Elf is using Time Spells) and there's no Dwarf or Explorer to handle traps all that well. They were all so thankful to find the supply crate in the Outer Caves.
I guess I found a loophole discerning the pit traps and pits of darkness. When in Demonform the Warlock ignores pit Traps, I assume this is to simulate a form of flight. So she generally tries to disarm those traps, since she can't be harmed by them. The Pit of Darkness could do some heavy damage on the Knight with his Plate Mail. But I've allowed the Warlock to occupy these identified pit spaces and help the Elf and Knight jump safely across. She also has the Fear spell, which took effect on the Ogre Champion. With only 1 Mind Point the Ogres have trouble resisting this spell, forcing it to 1 Attack Dice made the Ogre Champion a breeze to go through.

The Elf only has a Crossbow and Orc's Bane, so to handle Ogres he casts Slow, dancing around with a Crossbow taking his shots as long as he's further then 1 space away. Time Stop is usually spent on the Berserker so he can get extra licks in with his BattleAxe. Flashback would probably be used if the Berserker or Knight falls into an unsuspecting Pit of Darkness.

The Berserker also has Rabbit Boots to help avoiding pits and Borin's Armor, so I guess a Pit of Darkness could be dreadful to him as well. He's best off avoiding the skill Enrage, since he needs to preserve his body points, but Frenzy and Retaliation are still nice to have. There was room with Pit traps dividing the entrance from 2 Bowed Orcs and the Ogre Champion, the Knight and Berserker both tried to run across the room but fell into the traps. The Elf and Orcs exchanged ranged attacks while the Warlock cast Fear on the Ogre Champion. On his next turn the Berserker climbed out of the pit and used Frenzy to kill the 2 orc archers and land 3BP of damage against the Ogre Champion.

I've also seen the Knight's Shield Block effectively: An Ogre rolled 4 s on the Berserker, who only rolled 1 in defence, the Knight was in perfect position to negate 3 damage. His 6 defense dice really comes in handy in this quest pack. But due to the pit of Darkness it is a Double Edge Sword.

[wallydubbs]

So when and how would you suggest I approach this one?

This requires a bit of strategy, but it's also extremely tough. I've played the original, and that was much more challenging than Keller's Keep, but also not as close to the difficulty of Frozen Horror.
I got really worried playing this one around. Playing with the 4 original heroes they were able to accumulate hero potions, which helped them get through it. I didn't do that with these heroes. The Warlock can't carry a lot of equipment but winning the World's End Tournament allowed her to buy Bracers, and the Berserker just happened to have a Wizard's Cloak from a previous quest pack for the extra defense.
However going through this pack it was mainly the Berserker and Knight taking the brunt of the attacks that the Elf and Warlock had to pass off their potions. I got worried a couple of times. Slow and Fear worked well with the Ogres, even though surprisingly Ogres with 1MP broke Fear on the first roll. These things are bound to happen.

So on approaching this quest pack I'd add a few spell scrolls with every sorcerer's table, make sure you buy a lot of healing potions. I suggest limiting the Wandering Monsters to 1. I played with the Treasure Deck containing cards from other expansions as well, such as Warmth, Mysterious Flower and such that potentially save a heroes life. There were times the Berserker was scrounging for body points and needed to eat the Mysterious Flower for one extra body points. So you could include other treasure cards as well as a reagent kit to the heroes; however there Alchemist Bench only appears once in Against the Ogre Hoard, so these potions might come in handy in Fortress of the Ogre Lord. In my play through the Berserker got lucky and used his reagent kit to craft 2 Unidentified Ingredients into Frost Skin and Celerity, so in the battle with the Ogre Lord the Elf cast Time Stop on Berserker, who drank Celerity, getting 4 attacks against the Ogre Commander with his Battle Axe, successfully taking out the Ogre Commander.

The Ogres are really heavy hitters and require all the heroes for two or three turns to take one out. You'd be very lucky to take one out in one turn with 4 attacks.
It's a difficult quest pack with deadlier monsters and traps. As often as the heroes fight there are going to be many bad attacks and defenses. Make sure you have healing spells and potions.