by Kurgan » January 3rd, 2025, 11:36 am
So now that we've all seen ATOH the remake, and I think we can safely say it was well received (with a few people dissatisfied with a few small things) here are my observations, followed by speculations...!
FIRST A RECAP & REACTION TO ATOH REMAKE:
They revised the lore slightly. Ogres were described in terms of them being chaotic and brutal, savage, etc. and (along similar lines for the Orcs) AH revised this to carefully say that not all Ogres are like this, that some of them can be good guys, and even gave us a "good guy" Ogre in the form of a mercenary you could hire (which fits in with the old lore actually... we were told Ogres could be mercenaries just not given any concrete examples or official rule mechanics back in the 90's for using them but now here we are!) but also an Ogre boss that, once defeated in combat, becomes a storyline ally.
They nixed the idea of the "big healing potions" that were automatically given (since by now we're all used to playing the quests in order one after the other in sequence) and totally abandoned any idea of "not being able to shop between quests" though they also didn't give us a shop of any kind. That is to say, in HeroQuest's remake rules (based on the NA rules) you're always assumed to be able to spend your gold with a visit to the Armory between quests unless the questbook says you can't, including trading your unwanted items for half-gold, etc. ATOH remake didn't precisely say you could not shop, but it did give you the option to fight a tournament between quests.
They gave us the 3 new quests to round out the original 7 to the "standard" (not counting PoT and SQT) 10 for expansions, but instead of them being solo quests, they're "tournaments" using the brand new, "arena mode."
That was an interesting addition. Cristobal of La Guarida De Morcar called it "HeroQuest Killteam" and he's not entirely off base with that. It's not a true competitive tournament (the heroes have the advantage; though you can also play monster vs. monster which comes into play in the new "First Light"). The storyline is that you win the tournaments and win the approval and support of a certain Ogre boss, meaning the potions are found as little caches, like care packages or air drops in previously empty/blocked rooms in the original maps. This was a cool idea... these caches of healing potions are thus earned, and you have a built in way of explaining why they are there. Now the questbook gives the players the option to skip these tournaments (and the optional tournaments between quests... those being where you could earn gold though if you're not shopping what good is it? but there are also the bone weapons and potentially other potions if I recall correctly) does that mean the caches would not be found? Zargon decides (maybe the alliance happened off screen or you could simply say that there are Ogres who disagree with what the Horde is doing and are secretly supporting you or anyone rebelling against them).
ATOH took into account a common player request, which was that the oval cardboard tokens be replaced with standard cards. I personally didn't prefer the change but I also feel that the EU players who grew up playing these expansions should have first say when it comes to changes vs. NA players like myself who might be "comfortable" changing everything to match what we played in the US, but can also stand to see new things. I feel like "fans come first" also means that nostalgia should be catered to above changing things to just make them seem more uniform. Obviously if the EU fans are all about the change, that casts a heavy vote in favor of it being changed. It's the same way with the NA exclusive packs (Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror). I didn't expect those to be tweaked to conform to EU rule sensibilities in the remake edition, but I also had my own concerns there as they suffered from insufficient playtesting back in the day.
Did ATOH need more tweaking? Possibly. One complaint I heard was about the new traps that the Dwarf simply makes disappear... he doesn't have to do any rolling, which is as if they didn't bother to implement the new trap disarming mechanics found in the NA edition. I guess this is preserving the original mechanic, but was it right or necessary? I actually don't have a big problem with the new traps not working the same, as it's kind of an "easy" thing, and the quest pack seems pretty challenging as is.
Another issue was the Sorcerers. We're used to playing against boss characters that have AT LEAST 2 body points. Looking back, I think actually 3 was the standard (the first Orc Warlord had only 2, and he was a pretty easy fight for most of us). Single body point boss fights are odd. Yes, you could say that these guys have powerful spells and perhaps are even stronger in other areas, but they simply die in one hit. I'm concerned that boss fights can be over too quickly by a simple lucky roll. Very often heroes will get the drop on a bad guy anyway, because they will open the door to the central room (usually), see the bad guy, and let loose with a spell (Genie or Ball of Flame, usually) or the crossbow (3 dice) and score a hit right away before anything can happen. Getting off 2 or more attacks and the bad guy can be finished in a single round and it's over before he even got to use a single spell! Phoenix I think had the right idea by increasing the Body Points of these bad guys to at least 3 (and 6 for the final battle) instead of having it be 1 (and 3 for the final battle).
Then again, doing some playtesting of our own, we realized that if the heroes don't have Crossbows by the end, they really run the risk of being the victim of cheap tactics, because the final guy can use the "pit of dread" to protect himself and "hide" from the heroes (with only ranged attacks being possible to have a hope of defeating him).
AH's designers felt free to thinker with ATOH, giving the Ogres new stats, increasing the figures in size (all the bosses being 2 squares), and taking into account the fact that the players might be using non-standard heroes in the game (using base attack to determine how to open the stone doors, rather than just coding them to the four classic characters).
We didn't get new dice, but we did get a "New" hero (two alternate sculpts of the previously Mythic only druid, unmentioned in the quest book). We also got special sculpts for some of the quest note monsters (Orc and Goblin "archers" but also Skeleton archers that never featured before). The new options were nice!
NOW WHAT ABOUT WIZARDS OF MORCAR: WHAT COULD CHANGE & WHAT IS LIKELY?
So when it comes to Wizards of Morcar, what new things could we expect to see? I don't expect to see Wizard that are giants who take up two squares each. They are little powerhouses (being able to open doors and activate rooms, in the second encounter, a very powerful ability! and being stocked with spells in addition to having lots of body points and strong attacks). The Wandering Monster mechanic might need a little explaining (does it simply teleport one of the Wizards to fight the heroes, or what if they are dead, does it bring them back to life to fight some more... with all their body points and abilities refreshed? Or would they just appear, attack or launch a spell and then vanish back to their old place?).
I think the title will remain "Wizards of Morcar" just as "Against the Ogre Horde" was not changed to "the Ogre Horde" (except in one translation, apparently, and that not consistently either). Perhaps it is best if there is no explanation of who or what "Morcar" is, but I think a simple storyline where someone named "Morcar" is leading the bad guys is fine, especially if in the epilogue we discover that it was "Zargon all along." Though having an evil wizard leader that is not Zargon could be a little weird. Maybe you fight and kill this guy and never see or hear from him again? Otherwise I think he should probably escape and you are just left to imagine whatever you want about who or what he really was. If the rumors are true... I mean, considering we have only 5 canonical quests for this expansion so far, and theoretically we will be getting 5 more, maybe the other five could be battles with this "Morcar" person, and it would be a perfect excuse to throw in a "Wizard" Mini that might just be the "Mentor" figure from the Haslab campaign cast in a different color of plastic (gray would be the most boring, but a silvery gray, black, dark blue, or purple would be pretty cool). Despite the true intentions of the artists being finally known, many of us thought of Zargon as wearing a red cape (I guess "red" is the color of the hero plastics.... but it's also been the color of the Chaos Warriors in the original card art, and also the color that either forms the clothing color of the monsters or the background for their portrait in a few cases). Maybe Zargon could be depicted here (as "Morcar") wearing inverse colors than Mentor to differentiate them? Or maybe they'll just leave it all a mystery. I think there was a very inconsistent presentation of what "Morcar" looked like in the EU materials. He was never actually depicted and identified as such in the EU boxed sets, only in ancillary materials (DOS pc game cutscenes by Gremlin, Marvel Winter Special comic, Sticker Album comic). The most natural solution I guess is just to say that Morcar = Zargon and just don't depict him visually and leave the rest to the imagination of the players. Still I think it would be a neat opportunity to get another figure into the box. They could include the alt "old man" Wizard figure, maybe cast him in silvery red plastic (a la SQT/PoT retail) and give no explanation, leaving the players to figure it out for themselves.
When it comes to the Pits of Darkness, that seems like the cooler solution than just converting them all to standard pits (it's also much more challenging that way). But it isn't the end of the world if they go the other way.
When it comes to the mercenaries, I could imagine we'll just get 12 figures cast in red plastic, same designs as Frozen Horror remake. It seems like the most cost effective solution. Maybe this time we'll get a new "Men-At-Arms" card category (like the original) but just one card for each character. That frees up the possibility of new cards (maybe a new Alchemist Shop?). But then ATOH didn't give us any new items to buy, and there's plenty of opportunities to spend gold on merceneries so it would be unnecessary.
At this point it seems they will be looking for ways to fill up the box. However, if they want to give the same number of combinations of weapons possible as in the original they really should be giving us 24 Mercenaries in the box (this also means that theoretically, the heroes could hire all 24 for a quest). Will the stats be tweaked? Many have over the years assumed or promoted the idea that the stats of these mercs would be made the same as the human mercs from FH. That's the more boring choice (just as using the original sculpts, instead of crafting new ones, such as the opposite sex versions of the ones previously found, like female crossbowmen and male halberdiers). If they went with bolt on weapons, would that work with this type of plastic material? I bet they could give us weapons that have pegs that fit properly (and aren't too easily broken) with the figures. Since this is already intended for "Age 14+" they shouldn't worry about small parts being lost (though accounting for all of them in the factory boxing process could be a pain). I would expect probably that if they give us bolt on weapons (I don't expect them to include magnets or sticky-tack in the package for us to use!) they would probably be on sprues, similar to how they preserved those tiny skulls... since the 2021 "super tight" candy trays were a point of annoyance for so many of us and we were vocal about it (to the point that they got Adam Glick to re-tool the trays for much easier access in subsequent releases). If bolt on weapons are used, this would potentially mean the figures would be more generic. Maybe instead of male and female mercs, they'd just give us characters with bulky armor or baggy clothing and helmets covering the face? The old figures were all the same with just the hands holding the weapon being different. This of course would mean far less dynamic poses. Then again they could take a different tactic here and using a page from Games Works Shop, give us "push fit" type weapon designs. So you'd have a figure that is a body (head, torso, legs) and "pins" for the arms at the shoulder... you'd have detachable arms either as a single piece (two arms holding a weapon) or an individual arm (though you'd have the possibility of two mismatched weapons being held together though that would be fun for homebrew). If you made separate left and right arms that is a lot more mess in the box to keep track of though. Aftermarket collectors will be annoyed if they go this route I'm sure (and some will mistakenly "glue" their figures and then re-sell them). But there are warhammer figures out there where you have a piece that is two arms holding a weapon that you can pin onto the torso, and since AH has been using pretty flexible plastic for their figures thus far, it could still work.
Then again if they follow previously established convention, probably we'll just get pre-assembled figures. But there were 12 figures and 24 weapons. Still, with proper engineering you could fit all 24 of these mercs in a ATOH sized expansion box with the four sorcerers... the only other plastic called for are the wall bases that support the three magical walls (which could be made as all plastic, or kept as cardboard). Speaking of magical walls, how cool would it be to have the fire and water walls cast in translucent colored plastic? I wouldn't have imagined that in HQ before, but they set the precedent in ROTDM (and followed up in JoD). The stone wall could just be gray. Separate black (or dark blue) plastic bases wouldn't strictly be necessary however as they could just be made free standing.
I would really, really love to see the four evil wizards cast in dark ("midnight") blue plastic like the originals. It would really set them off as unique. However it seems that AH has been dead set on using "gray" more for powerful or wildcard type monsters. I am biased against the color gray simply because as a collector and amateur painter "gray" is the color of "unpainted" (that is "Unfinished") miniatures. It's not the same as white or beige, but it's close. I suspect they will likely make the four wizards gray and I'll be spray painting them dark blue once I get them out of the package (and given a rinse with some soap and water and dry of course, as is good practice in case there is any shmutz left from the factory processes).
The Wizard spells, there's been much talk of altering or removing them because at least a few of the spells already have precedents within the Game System "Dread" spell deck. I am in favor of preserving the uniqueness of the WOM spells, but I also understand that at the very least they will alter the titles of these spells to set them apart from the spells in previous sets. I do hope they tweak some of them to be stronger, but most of them, unlike the hero spells, don't really need tweaking to be usable. Most of these bad guys will be struggling to stay alive long enough to use most of them, whereas the risk with the Hero spells is that they will seem to weak for heroes to want to pick them in the first place. I could imagine a scenario in which the art is replaced with "Dread Spell" standard cardback and some of the "duplicate" spells are removed. However I think the Necromancer losing his Call Skeleton AND Summon Mummy spells in favor of just drawing the "Summon Undead" from the GS deck to be the most boring approach. Perhaps a note on "Raise dead" would say that if the monster is already a skeleton that they be replaced with some other monster (or just place another skeleton?).
"Summon Orcs" might be changed to "Gather Orcs" or "Orc Guardsmen" or something like that. Maybe it would bring in Orcs armed with crossbows (and then you could introduce a new miniature here) similar to the Orc Archers in ATOH (or maybe the same mini!). You could then rename the Spell "Orc Archers."
Would the spell effect tiles be kept? I'm sure. I don't imagine them being replaced with sculpted plastic, though that's a very modern miniature thing to do (imagine a translucent plastic "lightning bolt" piece that you set on the board to show who is hit by the spell instead of the tile). I would imagine the tile being preserved, which means the spell card is preserved, since it is inherently different than the previous "lightning bolt" spell from the Game System. Maybe it would be renamed to "Thunder Bolt" or "Electricity" or "Dread Lightning" something of that sort.
The five quests are the real wildcard here. ATOH got a whole new mode for those quests. I doubt it will be five new solo adventures. Perhaps it will be something we've never seen before. It could be five quests dealing with tracking down and defeating "Morcar." Or it might be something as simple as padding to each of the pursuits of the four evil wizards. Four wizards... and Morcar. So really there are FIVE wizards. Perhaps that's it... 2 quests to go after each one, and the last two you have the "boss rush" against the four wizards and a really hard fight against "Morcar." Still, I wonder how powerful Morcar must be to equal a fight with four evil wizards? I mean this guy must have multiple stages, not just a big pile of spells (maybe he has all the spells of his minions?). If he is so powerful, why was he holding back all this time? Then again maybe he needed the time you wasted fighting his guards to build up his powers? Here is where the story writers could come up with some brilliant excuse. Would it be too repetitive? Perhaps, like the Frozen Horror, he has 12 spells and gets to choose from those available from the previously defeated characters? Having a final single bad guy with a bunch of spells sounds good on paper, but there's the fact that he only gets one turn... meaning its likely, even if you give him a ton of body points (10? 20?) he won't have the chance to use all his spells before being defeated. Maybe he can use multiple spells per turn? Of course you can always just give him a lot of guards. This expansion doesn't introduce a lot of new monsters. What if he has his own "mercenaries" helping him? Perhaps in the final quest you can't hire half of the men-at-arms because they are under his control? Of course having that many mercs on the board at a time could get confusing... who is controlling who? Here is an opportunity where you could use more than one color of plastic. Maybe half the mercs are gray and the other half are red? (or some other color combinations, but I hope that red are retained due to the original). ATOH had the color scheme of red (ogre warriors) and dark blue (ogre bosses). Then again ATOH had gray (ogre warriors and ogre mercs) and beige (ogre bosses). Maybe this means that the Wizards of Morcar sorcerers will be beige and the mercenaries will all be gray? But AH have shown they aren't necessarily beholden to the original colors.
Back to the five quests idea... what if there are no padding quests, no special fight with "Morcar" at the end. What if instead they just throw in "The Dark Company"? Originally it was a fold-out, color coded poster. Fans have created their own modifications over the years, but this would be another golden opportunity to remake a long ago EU exclusive that was originally sold in a game system box (from 1992, the same year this came out) with nothing extra needing to be added, because you already have the 12+ red mercenary figures (but this time they are bad guys). Now how do you deal with the confusion of having mercs being hired alongside the bad guys? I don't think you really fight more than five of these guys at a time in most cases so I don't think it's a problem, especially if you limit the hiring of mercs to say, 12 for the group? (the original limitation of models plus I think it was actually 4 per hero, so that would be 16 in theory though you wouldn't have enough models unless you bought more than one set back in the day). There were 16 or 24 weapons in the "Advanced Quest" box that included Dark Company. Yes, there was a variant box of either WOM or Advanced Quest (aka Master Edition) that depicted gray versions of the mercenaries, so I guess that is a precedent for the alternate color (outside of Frozen Horror across the pond).
Here is where they could include colored rims to differentiate the pieces. They ought to include four colors (one for each hero). Inspired by Ribby's Remarkable Rims(tm) which I'm sure he would print in any case, but the colored rims used in the 3rd edition "Betrayal at House on the Hill" sets are a good example and they are the right size and shape since those minis at the same scale as AH's HeroQuest. So let's say you have 20 rims... five each of four colors. The "bad guy" mercs can be just left without rims, but let's say the Barbarian uses orange so all his mercs also have an orange rim on their figure. Yes, you could say "why not just paint them" but each quest you may have a totally different configuration of mercenaries and you are not going to be re-painting them every play session, are you? Putting tiles under the figure is another way to differentiate them but a little more clunky to have to keep dragging them around all quest long, especially when you may be stacking these tiles on top of other tiles as you play. That's another thing, if you use them as bad guys and give them more than one body point, you'll want to include enough skull tiles as well (five in a room could mean five skull tiles at a time could be called for).
Dark Company may only be the equivalent of four quests though, so you might still be able to include your "wrap up" final battle quest against Morcar. Maybe he was behind the corruption of the soldiers and you've tracked him down to his hideout for that last showdown? This would then be an original creation to wrap up the pack. And you'd still leave an opening for him to not really be dead, or escape, or maybe he wasn't really Zargon, just another "guy" who worked for him. Dark Company ends, in the vintage original, with the heroes being awarded a "Ring of Brilliance" but there's no explanation of exactly what it does. Maybe it doesn't do anything, and it's just lore thing. Or perhaps it could be expanded on in a future expansion. Or maybe they'd want to give it actual abilities like an artifact. Would it play into the final battle with Morcar? It might simply be a plot device like it leads you to the hideout or something. (You mean you had it all this time and never used it... why not???). Otherwise I say that "The Dark Company" could be great as a free digital quest. As others have pointed out, if you own Frozen Horror remake, you can already play this adventure, just grab the scanned PDF from the internet. But of course there are the issues with it being written for the 2nd EU edition rules, so some anomalies will occur, plus it could stand a little bit of tweaking for such minor things as calling for more furniture than is actually found in any set (since furniture is mostly used for decoration it's not that big a deal, but still). The Elixir of Life (formerly an NA artifact exclusive) appears here, but it only brings a dead character back to life with 1 body point. Perhaps they'd simply substitute the modern version of the Elixir here? Or they could keep it as is. Dark Company only uses one board but it clears the board and lets you travel between with killed monsters (except bosses) returning to life (but already discovered treasures are not refreshed). I suppose one more explanatory tweak that would be good here is that if a hero uses pass through rock to travel to a different section of the board and the other heroes exit off the side door... what happens? Well I think the easiest way is that the isolated hero can continue exploring and just exit off the side whenever he finds a door, but then when the board is reset he teleports to wherever the rest of the group went. If it was a case of an equal number of heroes going to the two different doors, then let Zargon decide and have everyone appear at the same place again. Dark Company originally only used the assets of the Game System + 12 mercenaries, so in theory you don't need any extra doors, but at the same time this could be another reason to include extra "entrance/exit" doors.
One more thing about the Dark Company... there is a special rule for the "Doomguard" (special chaos warriors) and "Dark Warriors" (evil mercs) where if they roll even one black shield, they block all skulls. Players have complained about this rule, saying it takes "forever" to defeat these guys as a result. On the other hand if we think about how many people have "upgraded" their dark warriors to have 2 body points (like the human mercs in Frozen Horror) that makes a big difference. Perhaps here keeping them as single body point monsters would be fine. Keep fighting them until you get a lucky hit then you win. Yes, it's also true that you can still hit them with magic that doesn't use combat dice, to bypass this, but you are limited in your spells (there are "Shrines" that let you restore lost spells however, they are rare... how often can they be used? remember when you cross over, non-boss monsters return to life). Similarly instead of the Doomguard having 3 body points, perhaps they too should only have one (or two, if you want to make them doubly strong) even if you upgrade their other stats to match the "Doomguard" found in ROTWL, NA edition. Now you could also argue that Dark Company is actually the perfect place to wrap up another plotline... the "treason" of Sir Ragnar. What if instead of Hinsgrim, it's simply Sir Ragnar you're facing at the end? Then again by changing this you also kind of damage the nostalgia of the original (the original "Sir Ragnar is a traitor" plotline was not the same in the original EU edition of ROTWL as it was in the modern ROTDM+ prequel "Knightfall" and some hints dropped in "First Light" all by Avalon Hill in our present day). But if there is one treasonous knight, perhaps there could be others? Just as we never caught up with Skullmar after his escape, perhaps Sir Ragnar escapes custody, and Morcar (aka Zargon) also gets away in the end? Then you flip the page and the blank map is starring you in the face... now it is up to YOU (if you choose to accept this mission) to write what happens next!
I fully expect the rehire discounts for Mercs will be included. Will the Mercs retain their "weaker" stats and lower prices or being tweaked to be more like the FH mercs, or something new? My hunch is that probably they'll go with the simplest, most boring option and just make them like the FH mercs in every aspect, but I hope they surprise me and make it more like the original but also new in an interesting way. There is also the "potion of charm" after all, that is meant to further encourage the hiring of mercs. I believe the original also includes a specific per-hero limit on how many can be hired. So if they include more than this number in the box, those could be used as bad guys (Frozen Horror never cared if you ran out of figures since they could be used as bad guys too, you just substitute a monster of similar power at Zargon's discretion, which you could write in this quest book as well). Would entrance and Exit doors be included? All expansions included them up until SQT/PoT and then we didn't get them. ATOH didn't include them but they did include double sized "Arena Doors" that could serve the same function if desired. It has always been true that Zargon can just grab a standard "closed door" to use as an entrance/exit door if he wishes, though it's always cooler to use a special door model, if available. They have been assuming you don't necessarily have every expansion.
So we'll "lose" 19 superfluous "Men-at-Arms" card copies and likely gain 4 "monster" cards for the four evil wizards (maybe a fifth one for "Morcar"? not necessarily especially if he's just a special boss at the end, remember Sinestra never got such a card, though the Frozen Horror boss did... and that was down to original limits on what they could print and fit into the 1992 box). We'll likely gain 5 "pit of darkness" tiles and the quest book will be thick enough to include the 10 quests and any additional new rules added (not just the pits of darkness explanation). So 16-28 miniatures of standard sizes, around 40 cards, a large tile sheet (there's a "magical reference tile" that I suppose could be retained or maybe it would be turned into a single standard card, with writing and pictures on both sides like the player reference cards in First Light), possibly a fold out poster (or else just pages added to the quest booklet, you could have a fold out there too, but it still should be able to fit behind Zargon's GM screen!).
I'd fully expect to see the three new sets of Hero Spells (Protection, Detection, and Darkness) revised. They are a bit too weak as is, considering they're meant to replace one (or more) of the spell categories that the Wizard and/or Elf are choosing. You could say that the Elf spells were either overpowered, or too situational, but here the issue is why bother using most of them when the Elemental hero spells are so much more useful? So I think many of the fan suggestions here will be listened to and these spells will be tweaked (otherwise I'm imagining a scenario in which the Elf gets to choose a set of two in addition to his existing spells and the Wizard gets the rest? Maybe that is too much!).
Last edited by
Kurgan on January 3rd, 2025, 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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