Ye Olde Inn

I was thinking a bit about the mercenaries lately.

They are costly, but somehow I can't avoid the feeling that they are totally worth each gold coin.
Take the crossbow guy and compare him to the price of a crossbow, for example. On top he brings not only his weapon but also an additional attack per round and adds two BP to the group, ok, one for Europe.
Then they are a preferred target of Morcar, just because it is fun to kill them. So on top of everything else, they work as auto-meatshield for the heroes...

They're also expensive trap-triggers . The downside is furthermore that they all occupy a tile on the gameboard and hence, things can get cramped. Especially the later expansions, which are pretty crowded with monsters as well, the Heroes can run out of space real fast. And we all know that you might end up losing your radar dish in such situations .

I think they're fine, cost-wise, but I admit that I've not played through the later expansions (WoM just a few times, AtOH and beyond never), so I can't form a proper judgment on it in those expansions. Also in relation to the money gain in them.

Yeah did some simulations today. Sorry that's me, I am like that.

Two halberdiers lift a group to the next dice level most of the time.
It's crazy.

So yes they're worth their money. Any quest perceived to be too hard could be tried again with two Mercenaries, it will be ok.

* total damage received by the group goes up a little because heroes normally are better equipped than their mercenaries; so you "dilute" the good equipment if you add 3-dice mercenaries.
* the damage received by the heroes goes down a little bit because of the meatshielding and the extra attacks
* if the quest is very hard, you need 3 mercenaries to emulate the next equipment level.

I took as example a medium-level quest, "The Great Citadel", which is quite easy for a group having 4-dice-equipment.
In that quest, a 3-equipment group was elevated to the 4-equipment performance with 2 Mercs,
and a 4-equipment group was elevated beyond 5-equipment performance with 2 Mercs.
The 4-Equipment group was even able to beat an hypothetical 6-equipment group just by adding 4 Mercs. All the time talking about halberdiers only.

Yes there shouldn't be too many of them. Maybe I have to add a note to my 4-Color-Questbook that 2 mercenaries justify easily to go up one step.

Now that is not taking into account space problems. I was always saying that there will be a max of 6 attacks per round from the heroes, and I justified that in front of myself with the diagonal attack ability of the halberdiers.

I don't get to play too often as a Hero, but when I did play the expansions that have mercenaries, space wasn't so much of an issue. This is because we let the Mercs do most of the work. I role-played that the Heroes had already proved themselves a hundred times and were important enough to hang outside gossiping, whilst the sell-swords cleared the rooms. Depends on how many Mercs have died of course, but at least at the start of the quest there were few or no Heroes in rooms duelling with monsters.
I should say that we always bought the full allowance of Mercenaries if we could afford it.

Nice topic.

HQ mercenaries are worth writing a skirmish rule pamphlet for bigger "rooms", I daresay.

Something about initiative order you mean? People move in order of the number of their defense dice, something like that?

The Conan Boardgame is very good there. But it's too much for 95% of Heroquest. I rather put two or three Wandering Monster Traps, they simulate nicely that you can't see everything when you're storming in.

Anderas wrote:Yeah did some simulations today. Sorry that's me, I am like that.

There's a lot going on in that post I'm not familiar with... are there more details somewhere on how you're tracking this info and taking equipment, BP, defend and attack dice into account?

Anderas wrote:Something about initiative order you mean? People move in order of the number of their defense dice, something like that?

The Conan Boardgame is very good there. But it's too much for 95% of Heroquest. I rather put two or three Wandering Monster Traps, they simulate nicely that you can't see everything when you're storming in.

Hm, initiative...
DD + 1d6 - MP

I haven't had a chance to play with the Mercs yet but I have read through the quest books. I think having them is well worst the cost. Some of the stuff they came out with in the other quest packs makes me wonder what people are thinking....

Now only if I could get another game started seeing as I no longer play with my old group...

In my opinion they are a massive boost. Once the Heroes have all their equipment there is little to spend their gold on other than very expensive potions. One or two henchmen are relatively cheep, and the extra attacks really helpful. And if the EW player attacks them, fine, it's potential BP's the Heroes won't lose. Don't take too many though, as some will just trail around with nothing much to do, and that is a waste of money. We have found 4-8 to be a reasonable number.